Page 86 of The Witch's Orchard
Big, thick tears roll down Shiloh’s mother’s cheeks as she blubbers something about turning away for a minute and then Lucy being gone.
“Keep looking,” I tell Shiloh. Shiloh takes her dad and they grab other members from the church, who begin to spread out and search.
“Lucy,” they shout. “Lucy!”
The name rings out like disparate, off-tempo bells as word spreads that a little girl is missing.
“Where?” I say to Shiloh’s mom. “Where? Show me the booth.”
The woman leads me to her booth. Close to the church and situated right under a huge oak, her table is littered with apples and a vintage fondue pot full of melted caramel. There are a couple bowls of nuts and chocolate sprinkles and marshmallows and a big tray of apples, already driven through with sticks. On the back of her plastic folding chair is her coat, and behind that a little blanket strewn with toys.
“This is where she was?”
Shiloh’s mom nods and I watch as she pulls herself together enough to talk to me.
“She wasright there,” she says. “I told her that as soon as her pepaw came back from running the hayride he’d take her around the festival. She said okay. She was playing with her toys. I gave her some marshmallows and then I got up to talk to my friend Lisa. I only stepped away for aminute.She wasright there.”
“Okay,” I say. I kneel down before the blanket and stare at the scene. There’s a plush little dog and a couple of storybooks and a heavily rubberized tablet with a game still playing. There’s a doll, too, lying face down.
It’s an old doll.
The doll’s delicate arms and legs hang out from its fancy lavender dress, trimmed with ruffles and lace. I reach for the doll, then hesitate, suddenly very aware that this is likely a crime scene. Still, I have to know. We all have to know. And it has to be now. I pull a pen out of my pocket and use the base of it to gently turn the doll onto its back.
Its head is an applehead. The shriveled flesh is wrinkled and grainy, and the hair fastened to the top of it with glue and pins is exactly the same hue and texture as that of Molly Andrews.
“Oh…” I breathe. “Oh no.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT GOES LIKE YOU’Dexpect.
The festival breaks into groups looking for Lucy. The cops arrive. AJ comes in uniform. Sheriff Jacobs is a few minutes behind him, looking freshly showered and dressed for a steak dinner. A deputy with the camera equipment comes. A deputy with a dog comes.
Soon, some of Shiloh’s dad’s friends with hunting dogs come. The dogs all follow the same trail behind the church and around the little playground on the other side and into the still mostly full parking lot. And then there’s nothing. The deputies take statements. Rebecca Ziegler returns with an extension cord, and then she and Bob lead the cops around the property once again, calling Lucy’s name.
Max comes. He gives Shiloh his heavy barn coat and stands beside her, pale and gray and cold as a stone. She wraps her arms around him. I don’t know whether she’s comforting Max or herself. He begins to shake, and I realize he’s crying.
“It’ll be okay,” I hear her whisper, like a mother to her child. “We’ll find her. We’ll find her. We’ll find her.”
A mantra. A litany. A prayer.
We all look.
We look in the field and we look in the trees behind the field. We look in the playground and we look in the church and the church basementand all of the Sunday school rooms and all of the cars. We look under the booths and in the apple bobbing tub and up and down Laurel Road and then, again, in all the same places we looked before.
We don’t find her.
We all call Lucy’s name into the night and the air grows cold and it hurts our lungs and still we call her name and, eventually, the stars fade and the night goes from black to gray to a velvety violet and a fog lies on the land.
There is no answer.
I put a cup of coffee in Shiloh’s hand.
We sit on the steps in front of First Baptist. The sun is rising, hidden behind a wool gray mist. Max is out with Shiloh’s dad’s friends, the deputies, the dogs.
There is a blanket around Shiloh’s shoulders. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know how long she’s been sitting here.
In the field beside us, men and women from the church clear away the booths, the candy, the toys, the cakes.
