Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (25 page)

“How nice of
you to
come visit me today before Michael
demands all your attention tonight,” she said with a cheeky smile,
but her face fell when she looked at Julia more closely.
“What’s the matter? You look worried.”

When
her
grandma came toward her and pulled
her into a hug, Julia broke down in tears. Without asking anything
else, Gran took her inside and walked her to the kitchen, where she
silently and calmly poured the two of them a cup of tea. She pushed
the cookie jar across the table and Julia dug up a chocolate
cookie, eating it without really tasting anything. Her whole body
felt weak and she slurped some of her tea to get warm and fight her
dizziness.

“Grandma,” she started in a small voice.
“Didn’t you say you thought something was going on with Anne the
other day?”

The old
woman
looked at her searchingly. “I had a
certain feeling something was off, yes.
Has something
happened?”

Julia nodded
and softly related to her grandmother what Anne had told her
that morning – how she seemed to really believe
in the fairytale she’d made up by herself.
How scared
she had been.

“Oh dear.” Gran looked
shocked.
“You’re right to worry about
this. I know Anne loves fairytales, just like you, but it doesn’t
make sense for her to escape into a story she’s actually afraid
of.”

“Could it be
she’s come up with that fairytale to
protect
herself from something
she’s afraid of?”

Gran fell
silent for a moment. “You said she mentioned she wasn’t allowed to
talk about it?
She said it was a secret?”

“Yes?” Julia
held her breath.

“It reminds
me of the peculiar behavior of a friend I used to have
when I was a young girl.” Gran stared at the cup
of tea in her hands. “She used to love making up all kinds of
fantastical stories, but I always found her to be a bit anxious and
guarded in her behavior. Sometimes she would mention a secret she
wasn’t allowed to share with anyone. At some point, we found out
her father beat her up regularly. He might have done other things
to her, too. I always felt as if she was harboring a great
sadness.”

A shiver ran
down Julia’s spine. “You think Anne is being
abused
by someone
close to her?
Someone we know?”

“I don’t know. It is a
possibility.”

“But
who?
Who could it be?” Frantically, she
ran off a mental list of people Anne dealt with on a daily basis:
people in their neighborhood, at school, during music
lessons...

Gran put a
hand on her arm. “If I were you, I’d discuss it with your mother
this afternoon and involve Anne too. She could talk to the doctor,
or maybe to someone in Child Care. There’s no point implicating
each and every person who comes to mind. After all, you don’t want
to make any false accusations. Certainly not in a case like
this.”

The confrontation with Thorsten came back to
her in a flash, and Julia cringed. Her grandmother was right – she
didn’t want to go down that road again.

“I’m going
home
,” she decided. “And I’ll call Mom to
ask her to come back a bit early so we can talk to Anne
together.”

“Good luck,”
Gran said. “I’
ll call the two of you
tonight.”

Deep in
thought, Julia cycled home. The sun was shining and the birds were
singing, but it was as if a troubled shadow
hovered over her. Thinking about Michael’s visit tonight
didn’t even help – she was worried sick about Anne. She’d never
been so scared in all of her life.

After putting
her bike back in the shed, Julia crossed the street to visit the
neighbors. Thorsten had suggested talking to his mother, so that’s
what she’d do first. It was possible Mrs. Ebner had noticed
something peculiar about Anne’s behavior too.

Sabine and
her mother were sitting on the lawn playing a card game. Julia
froze, a bud of panic blossoming in her chest.
Where
was her sister?

“Hey, Julia,” Sabine
greeted her.
“Anne just left. She said
she was going to her grandmother.”

“To Gran?”
Julia felt the blood drain from her face. If
that were true, she would have bumped into Anne on her way back
from Eichet… unless her sister had decided to cycle through the
woods.

“See you
later,” she mumbled, running back to her own house to get out her
bike again. At break-neck speed, Julia raced to the woods, gasping
for breath by the time she reached the main forest trail running
between the trees. From this point onward, she would have to slow
down because of the bumpy road, but she tried to use it to her
advantage by feverishly looking left and right in the hopes of
spotting Anne somewhere.

When the path
ended and the trees thinned out, Julia c
ame to a complete stop and stared unseeingly at the blue
sky peeking through the chestnut trees at the end of the trail. She
felt sick to her stomach, dread sending a spike of adrenaline
through her veins. The tension coursing through her body made her
muscles feel weak.

Anne was
nowhere to be found. She didn’t believe for one second that her
baby sister had decided to visit Gran today. She’d been wanting to
go back to the forest since last night, and so she’d snuck off,
disappearing deep into the woods.

Julia patted
both her pants pock
ets looking for her
cell phone until she remembered it was still at home. No phone
calls to Anne or her grandmother, then. In despair, she slowly
swiveled around, peering in every direction. She parked her bike
against a tree and in a last-ditch effort to find Anne without
help, Julia started to jog alongside the edge of the woods. Maybe
she’d discover Anne wandering around somewhere if she headed north,
where the forest turned darker and denser.

“This is
crazy,” she mumbled to herself after
trotting along for five minutes without finding a trace of
her sister. There was no point spending a fruitless afternoon
darting around like an idiot.

Just as
she
decided to turn around and go back to
her bike, Julia suddenly did spot someone walking between the trees
further up north. The figure was still far away, but it was
definitely some hiker trudging through the woods. He might have
seen Anne somewhere. Julia closed her eyes and tried to slow down
her breathing. She’d wait here and address the person when he
emerged from the forest. When the walker drew nearer, she saw it
was a boy not much older than she was.

Her
heart stopped when he came even closer. The
sunlight hit his long, blond hair. Two bright, blue eyes bore into
hers. He emerged from the trees and Julia’s hands started to
tremble.

She was
staring at
the angelic face of Legolas
with Thorsten’s blue eyes.

It was
the
Prince of the Forest. The boy Anne
had drawn in her sketches – the drawings Julia wasn’t supposed to
have seen.

11
.

“G
rüss
Gott
,” the boy greeted her
politely.

Julia swallowed.
“Hi there.” Her voice sounded shrill, but the
boy didn’t seem to notice. He passed her and walked on, veering off
to the right to get to the road leading down to Eichet. Julia
hesitated for a second, then started to follow him at a distance,
sweat pooling in the palms of her hands. She hoped he wouldn’t look
back.

Anne had met
this guy in the forest. This very guy. She was sure of it. And this
was her chance to find out where he lived and tell him to leave
Anne alone.
What if
he
had given her drugs? What if he had abused her, even?
Julia tried to blink back tears. With a knot in
her stomach, she followed the guy until he entered a detached house
in one of the richer neighborhoods of Eichet, a short distance away
from the next block of houses on the quiet street.

Julia
indecisively stopped behind a big tree next to
the boy’s residence, her eyes fixed on the front door. Now what?
Was she absolutely sure this guy had done something wrong – or was
she about to saddle another innocent person with a bunch of
sinister motivations and make a fool of herself for the second time
today?

Frowning
deeply
, Julia let out a sigh and turned
around after memorizing the street name and the house number. She
started to jog back to the place where she’d left her bike. Maybe
she was kicking up a fuss over nothing. Maybe Anne would be back by
the time she got home. And if not, she’d call her on her cell and
tell her to come home immediately. She’d call her mom, too.
Everything would be just fine.

When Julia
turned into her street, Mrs
. Ebner
emerged from her house and crossed the street to stop her.
“Julia,” she said with a worried face. “What’s wrong? Have
you found Anne?”

“No, I haven’t.”
Julia put her bike against the fence. “I’m going
to call her now. And my mom as well.”

“I’m sorry I
let her go by herself. I feel so bad now. I didn’t think there was
any harm in
letting Anne go to her
grandmother, but then Sabine just told me…” Her voice trailed
off.

“What?” Julia prompted the neighbor
anxiously.

“Sabine says
Anne
is in the habit of going off on her
own into the woods a lot lately. And she has no idea what Anne is
doing there. Sometimes your sister would get a text message and
she’d take off shortly afterwards, and she wouldn’t tell Sabine who
it was from, but she did mention she was going to ‘work on her
story’.”

“Oh my God.”
Julia lowered herself onto the fence, her legs
shaking. “And she only told you this
now
?”

“Yes, because
Anne
kept saying it was a secret. Sabine
didn’t want to betray her trust.” Mrs. Ebner’s face looked pale. “I
think you should call the police. There’s something fishy about the
whole story, I’m telling you.”

“I’m going to
make a few phone calls.” Julia went inside and ran up the stairs to
get her cell phone and check it for messages. No missed calls or
texts. She called Anne and heard it ring several times before
switching to voicemail. “Anne, you have to come home right this
instant,” she said hoarsely. “And please call me back when
you
get this.” She hung up and called her
grandma.

“Hello?”

“Gran, it’s Julia. Is Anne with
you?”

“No, she isn’t. Julia, what’s going on? Did
you talk to her?”

Julia took a
deep breath. “No, I didn’t get the chance. She wasn’t here when I
got home. I’m going to call Mom now, okay?” Her voice
cracked.

“You do that. Let me know what happened,
dear.”

“I will, Gran.”

Julia hung up and called her mom’s cell. No
reply. She didn’t want to just leave a voicemail, so she called the
landline. Fortunately, Uncle Helmut answered the phone after two
rings.

“Hey. It’s
Julia. Is M
om still with you and Aunt
Verena?”

“Yes, they’re
having coffee out on the patio. You want me to get her?”

“Please.”
While Julia waited for her mother to come to the phone, she got up
and walked over to her sister’s room. Haphazardly, she pulled open
cabinets and drawers to look for Anne’s sketchbooks and diary.
Maybe she’d find some more clues in there.

“Hi
, sweety. Have you talked to
Thorsten?” her mom said, interrupting her search.

“I have, but
he doesn’t know anything. Mom… Anne is gone. She lied to the Ebners
about wanting
to visit Gran and she took
off to go to the forest alone. I think…” Julia took a deep breath,
a sob escaping her throat.

“Slow down,” her mom
called out.
“What happened? Why are you
so upset?”

In fits and
starts, Julia told her mom what Thorsten had said, what Gran had
told her and
the mysterious guy she’d
bumped into when she was looking for Anne in the woods.

“Okay. I’m
coming home right now,” Ms. Gunther said, her voice trembling. “But
first I’m calling the police. They might be there sooner than me,
but you can go ahead and talk to them. Tell them the
exact
same
story you’ve told me.
I’ll be there as soon as I
can.”

Julia clicked off.
In the meantime, she’d managed to dig up a big
pile of sketches Anne had made. She blindly stared at the other
portraits her sister had done of the blond boy from the woods.
There were three more besides the drawing she had already seen
once, and the resemblance was striking. She had to give these to
the cops as evidence.

Anne’s desk
drawer contained her diary. It was locked with a flimsy lock that
didn’t seem too hard to pick. Julia
took
the diary downstairs to get a small screwdriver from the toolbox.
After three attempts, she managed to pry it open.