Dream Country (7 page)

“Missing?” James focused on the only word he’d heard.

“She left a note,” Daisy continued. “Two notes, actually. The police have been looking for her, and we think she’s heading out to see you.”

“So you know where she is?” he asked, feeling relieved.

“No, we don’t know. They have a clue, and I’m pretty sure she’s on her way west, but—”

“By herself?” James asked, wondering how a young girl of sixteen could make it all the way from Connecticut to Wyoming without getting hurt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Daisy asked.

“It means—” James started to explain himself.

“She’s with her boyfriend,” Daisy said hastily, backing off.

James didn’t reply as he thought about his daughter having a boyfriend, how the last time he’d seen her she’d been just ready to start kindergarten. But silence on a telephone line between two people—with as much between them as he and Daisy—worked in strange ways, and he could hear Daisy getting agitated.

“She’s always wanted to go to you,” Daisy said. “I know you think I should have sent her. You probably think this is my fault, that if I’d let her spend summers with you this never would have happened.”

“No, I—”

“But I didn’t want her traveling alone, and I didn’t want her on that ranch. I couldn’t stand thinking of her going to the place where Jake—”

“I know, Daisy.”

“You could have come here,” Daisy said.

“No,” he said. “I couldn’t.”

“He’s not coming back, James.” Daisy’s voice was shaking. “We’ve known that since the third or fourth day. Our son is dead, but your daughter’s needed you all this time.”

“He might.” James stared out the window at the black mountain against the sky, milky with stars. “He could walk out of wherever he’s been, come home looking for us . . .”

“No,” Daisy said, as she’d said a hundred times. “No.”

“I’m here,” James said, “and I’m staying here. In case he does.”

“You’re crazy, James,” Daisy snapped with impatience. “It’s been thirteen years! And now our daughter . . .”

James closed his eyes. When she called him crazy, he couldn’t disagree. He held back from defending himself the way he used to. But he wasn’t going to change his plans or his ways, even if he had gone slightly insane. Daisy had, too. What parent wouldn’t, losing a child?

“Meanwhile,” Daisy continued, “your daughter’s so starved for your love, she’s on a freight train heading out to see you!”

“You know that for sure?”

“No! I said no already.” Daisy sounded frantic. “But she was asking questions at the depot. That part’s for sure—they identified her picture.”

“Which picture?”

“What’s the difference?” Daisy asked, her voice rising with the strain.

But it did matter. James was standing by the stone mantel staring at the gallery of Sage’s photographs from birth onward. He picked up her tenth-grade picture and looked at her green eyes, her hesitant smile, her brown hair.

“They’ve alerted police departments all along the train line,” Daisy said. “People will be checking the train at the next stop.”

“Good.” James didn’t put the picture back down. His eyes stung, and even after he wiped them, his vision was blurry.

“If she calls you—”

“I’ll call you right away,” James said.

“Thank you.” Daisy’s voice was clipped, as if she’d said everything she needed to say. James held on to the receiver for a long time, wishing she’d think of something else. Instead, she just said good-bye, and so did he. Still, he didn’t hang up the phone.

Replacing the school portrait on the mantel, he picked up an older, much more familiar one.

The picture was small—just a snapshot. It stood in an ornate frame, made by Daisy from silver, gold, and stones gathered by the children from the river. The picture had been taken fourteen years ago, and it showed Daisy and James on horseback, each holding a two-year-old twin on the saddle in front of them.

Daisy was dressed in chaps, a blue chambray shirt, and a white Stetson. Her skin glowed from a summer in the mountains, but not half as bright as her smile. She embraced Jake from behind, pointing so he’d smile at the camera. James held Sage. He’d been afraid she might fall off the horse, so he was looking straight down at the top of her head, gripping her so tight his biceps and forearms were flexed. That’s how it had been back then—keeping hold of his family in this vast country had been the most important thing on his mind.

“Little one.” He said the name he had once used for his daughter.

She was on a freight train, heading cross-country to see him. Daisy had called the police, and they were going to intercept her, make sure she got back to her mother safely. That’s what James wanted, what he prayed for now. But holding the picture, unable to put it down, he knew he wanted something even more.

For his daughter to come home. He wanted Daisy’s mind set at ease; he wanted his daughter to be safe. But his arms ached to hold her, just as they’d ached for his son all these years.

If she made it to Wyoming before getting caught, he’d give her the biggest talking-to a daughter ever got. He’d warn her against all the maniacs you could meet and all the accidents that could happen, against worrying her mother half crazy. James Tucker shivered to think of his daughter
out there,
and he shook his head, telling himself it was wrong to wish she’d slip through the dragnet and come to the ranch.

Before he sent her straight back east.

Chapter Seven

F
our days without Sage passed. Daisy found the waiting torture. What would Sage eat? Where would she sleep? What kinds of people was she encountering out there? How far along was her pregnancy? The thoughts swirled around and around her mind. She worked to dull them, to keep herself from replaying her talk with James. She had held back from telling him Sage was pregnant: She wanted to protect her daughter from that hard reality for as long as she could.

When word got out about Sage and Ben being missing, it was as if a stranger had come to Silver Bay. There was a feeling of curiosity, danger, and sorrow all mixed together. Not everyone had heard about the notes, but most people had seen the state police with their dogs sniffing along the railroad tracks long into the night.

Silver Bay was a postcard-pretty New England town. It had two white churches that artists came from all over the country to paint. The garden club placed stone pots at most intersections, cascading with ivy, petunias, and white geraniums all summer long. The schools were excellent, the crime rate almost nonexistent. Daisy had grown up about ten miles down the shoreline, and she had chosen to come here after the divorce because Silver Bay seemed like the place least likely to pose a threat to her only surviving child.

Other mothers felt the same way. They checked their own children’s eyes for signs of drug use, smelled their breath while kissing them good night. Talking about Sage Tucker and Ben Davis, they paid extra attention to the differences—the characteristics that set those children apart from their children—proof that the same thing couldn’t happen in their homes.

When people stopped by Daisy’s to drop off casseroles, homemade preserves, frozen lasagnas, she was working in her back room. Hunched over her worktable, her long-necked lamp trained on the bone she was carving, she ignored the doorbell. The persistent ringing reminded her of how it had been after Jake disappeared, how people equated grief with hunger, as if there was any food in the world that could fill that dreadful space.

Hathaway let herself in with her key. Daisy looked up when her sister came through the door.

“I just met Felicity Evans on your porch,” Hathaway said, carrying in a basket of apples. “She told me you were inside working, and she asked me to give you these.”

“How do they know I’m here?” It was just a question; she was past cringing. People had watched her work during Jake’s ordeal, thought she was cold-blooded. They’d be saying the same thing now. She knew that she was in the category of “other”: a woman who had lost one, and now another, of her children.

“They see your car, figure you’re waiting by the phone.”

Daisy narrowed her eyes, carving the left cheekbone on the disc of bone. Her latest piece was called “Lonely Girl.” It was a simple face, open and innocent, distant as the moon. Daisy would set it in eighteen-karat gold, to show that it was precious. She would link it with pebbles of polished tourmaline, each stone representing a virtue the lonely girl carried within herself, so that even though she might be alone, she was still blessed: courage, kindness, intelligence, grace.

“Daisy.” Hathaway took hold of her sister’s wrists, making her drop her tools.

“It’s Sage,” Daisy said, staring into the small bone face, no more than an inch in diameter, yet full of her daughter’s spirit.

“Stop working,” Hathaway said. “Talk to me.”

“It’s just that—” Daisy began, her voice in control but her hands beginning to shake. “I can’t stand it, Hathaway.”

“I don’t see how you could.”

“I called James. I just told him about her being gone . . .”

Hathaway just stared, giving Daisy that silent support her sister was so good at giving, when she understood to the depths of her soul without saying a word. Daisy let herself fall apart. She needed to be held, and her sister pulled her into her arms, stroking the top of her head. Hathaway knew what to do.

“What did he say?” Hathaway asked after a long time.

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Go ahead. Tell me.”

“He’s still waiting for Jake.” Daisy pulled back so she could see Hathaway’s eyes. “Now he thinks Sage is coming to see him, so he’s waiting for her, too. We don’t know for sure, though, do we? I mean, I’m just guessing. We don’t have any definite proof. She could be anywhere—”

“Calm down, Daisy.”

Daisy took a deep breath. “But James believes me. He’s ready for her, if that’s where she’s going.”

“Vigilant,” Hathaway said, her neck long and her head held up. Daisy knew her sister thought James was noble in an insane sort of way. When Daisy would rant and yell about his not accommodating the inconveniences of divorce, not coming east to see Sage so Daisy wouldn’t have to send Sage west, Hathaway could always see James’s side.

“It was hard to tell him,” Daisy said.

“It couldn’t be easy for anyone, but especially not for the two of you.”

“We don’t see eye to eye on anything,” Daisy said, trying to breathe. “How were we ever married?”

“I think . . .” Hathaway began, but she held herself back.

“I was nuts,” Daisy said. “That’s what. Moving out west, marrying him. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t, pretending.” She trailed off.

“Pretending what?” Hathaway asked. “To love him?”

Daisy shook her head. No, she had never had to pretend that. “Living a life that wasn’t mine. I’m from New England; this is where I belong. I like things safe. We couldn’t last, you know? I see that now, but no one could have told me then.”

But even as she spoke, her words didn’t quite ring true. She had loved the West, found depth and meaning there that she still felt today. Her jewelry proved it, and so did her dreams. At night she dreamed of red rocks, long trails, big sky, the scent of cedar and sage, the feeling of James’s arms around her shoulders.

“Americans marry Frenchmen,” Hathaway said gently. “Italians marry English. Why be so hard on yourself because you married a cowboy? You always loved horses, loved to ride. To me it seems natural, especially knowing you and James together.”

“I was living a fantasy,” Daisy said, as if trying to convince herself. “That’s all. It wasn’t real.”

“You had two kids,” Hathaway said. “That was pretty real.”

“Did I somehow curse them?” Daisy asked, tears pooling in her eyes. “Being selfish, doing what I wanted to do?”

“No, Daisy. No, you didn’t.”

“I wish the police would call,” Daisy said, staring at the phone. “They must have located the train by now. They must have found Sage. Or not found her. What if she’s not on it? What if it’s a wild-goose chase, and she’s somewhere else instead?”

“Trust yourself, Daisy. You told me you know she’s heading west.”

“I do know it.” Daisy closed her eyes.

“Just think of how many miles they have to cover, how many trains there are crossing the country at any given time. Sage is in one little car, and it’ll take them some time to find it. But they will.”

“I can’t wait till she gets home,” Daisy said.

“Me, neither.”

Daisy bent over, holding the small bone face that reminded her of her daughter. People said her pieces were magical, that they were filled with love; if that was so, Daisy was pouring everything she had into this one small, flat carving. When the other mothers looked askance that she would be working on a day like this, they didn’t understand that carving bone ghosts was the way Daisy prayed. Just like James rode into the hills and Sage went hiking in the woods. This was Daisy’s way.

The train stopped well after midnight in a cornfield outside of Lone Tree, Iowa. Sage was lying on her side, curled into Ben’s body. She had been dreaming of cantering across her father’s ranch on a white horse, its mane and tail flowing out behind. The sky was blindingly blue, and she was riding easily homeward, so happy she felt as if her heart might burst—until the train began to stop with a screech, metal grinding against the tracks.

“What’s happening?” she asked, terrified.

“It’s . . . we’re crashing!” Ben said.

Ben held her tight from behind, and for a long, jolting thirty seconds, they were afraid they were going to die. The train hurtled forward, the pressure of the brakes trying to hold back several thousand tons of locomotive and freight cars. Sage closed her eyes, both arms instinctively clutching her middle, to hold the baby inside her. Shuddering as if it was going to explode around them, the car kept flying forward, then slowed, then came to a complete stop.

The silence was deafening. Ben and Sage looked at each other, then got up and moved quickly to the sliding door. It was dark in the car, and when Sage pressed her cheek against the metal door, it was freezing cold. Through the narrow crack she could see a midnight-blue sky, luminous over the cornfields. They had to be almost all the way through Iowa. Several police cars were parked along a road running parallel to the tracks, their blue strobe lights flickering.

“What are they doing?” Sage asked. “Are we at a station?”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said.

Sage knew he was right. They had been traveling aboard the train for four days, long enough to know the rhythm of station stops. The engineer would start putting on the brakes gradually, slowing the big train bit by bit instead of all at once. Sage had felt nervous the first time, her stomach lurching as the weight of the train worked at coming to a complete stop. She and her mother had taken a train only once—from Old Saybrook to Boston—and there hadn’t been half as many cars as this one.

“Start at the front and work back!” someone yelled from outside.

“Two teams,” a different voice called back. “One takes the rear, the other goes forward.”

Sage pressed her face harder against the door, trying to see what was going on. Police officers with flashlights seemed to be everywhere. The light beams swept across the train, pointed low, as if to look along the tracks. Sage tried to tell herself maybe the train had hit something—a cow or a deer or even a person—and the police were trying to see if it was still alive. But deep down she knew: They were looking for her and Ben.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

Sage stepped back from the door. She gazed up at her boyfriend. He kept his cheek glued to the door, peering out the crack. The last two days he hadn’t said very much, and when she’d wanted him to hug her, she had felt he didn’t want to. She had a nervous feeling all the time, waiting for something to happen; maybe she already knew what it was, but she was afraid to tell herself.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“They’re checking the cars,” Ben said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Half the guys are up front, the others are back here.”

“They’re looking for us.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Probably.”

Sage held herself tight. She wanted Ben to tell her everything would be fine, he’d take care of them, they could hide among the crates and keep going to Wyoming. Her heart was pounding so hard, she’d never known she had so much blood in her body. Opening her mouth, she realized it was too dry to talk.

“You think they’ll arrest us?” he asked, twisting his head to see more.

Sage hadn’t thought of that. She tried to take his hand, but she couldn’t pry it off the metal door. “Ben?” she asked. “Ben?”

“They’re two cars back,” he said. “Maybe three.”

“I love you,” Sage repeated.

“Oh, Sage.”

“We have to get to the ranch.”

“That’s just a dream,” he said without looking at her.

“No,” she said, holding her stomach. “It’s real.”

“Real . . .” he murmured, as if he’d never heard the word before.

“There’s a cabin for us there. The sky is so big and blue . . . the stars fall right down to the ground. We’ll fish in the streams . . .”

“Our mothers called the police.” Ben’s voice cracked. “That’s why they’re looking for us.”

“I know,” Sage whispered. Sitting down where she stood, she pressed her face against her knees. Tears spilled over as she thought of her mother. Picturing her mother’s eyes, she actually felt her mother’s hand brush her cheek. She remembered nights when she couldn’t sleep, when her mother would sit on her bed and tell her stories of mustang families galloping through the canyons. She knew that her mother would have called the police the first day she was gone, that she wouldn’t rest until Sage was somewhere safe.

“I think we should go home,” Ben said, crouching beside her.

“I am going home,” Sage said hoarsely, and she meant Wyoming, not Silver Bay. With her eyes squeezed tight, her knees drawn up to her chest, she was picturing the West. She saw red rocks and fields of grain, mountains against the bright sky. She felt her mother’s touch again, and she saw her father’s eyes—the way they looked in the picture he had sent her—and she cringed with pain.

Sage wasn’t running away from home; she was going
to
home. She had a mother in one place and a father in another, and something she didn’t understand was pulling her west. Even with the policemen waiting to take her back, probably ready to give her a free plane ticket back to comfort and safety, she knew she couldn’t go.