Over Her Head (2 page)

I went jogging at seven thirty. I found the girl at seven forty. For once, my cell phone was charged and on me, and I dialed
911.

So simple. And she was going to be having nightmares about it for months. Maybe even years.

Lord, please block the sight of that poor girl lying on the sand out of my mind.

“Nick, what will happen now?”

“It’s too early to say. When we find out who it is, the coroner will notify the parents.”

Laurie felt her control waver again. She could just imagine what that might be like. A stranger on your doorstep, telling
you your child was dead.

She shook her head at herself. Colin was always telling her that her imagination tended to run away with her. There were some
things a person just couldn’t think about and still keep functioning.

“You don’t look so good, Laurie.” Nick leaned over and rubbed her shoulder. “Come on. Let me give you a ride home.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s not even half a mile. And I didn’t finish my run.”

“Quit being brave. It’s me, remember? The guy who beat up Melvin Hartzheim for you in third grade.”

As he’d probably planned, the tension in her shoulders relaxed. “And all because he said he had a crush on me. Good thing
your methods changed later on. I’d never have been able to get a date.”

It was a relief to be able to take refuge in silly memories, the kind that only family hung on to for years and years. That
poor little girl on the sandbar had probably had friends and cousins and people she laughed with. Maybe someone had even beat
up a bully for her once. But all that was over now—cut short before it had even really blossomed.

She had to stop thinking like this or she really would break down again.

Nick dropped her off in front of the house. When she’d closed the door of the police sedan, he leaned over and rolled down
the window.

“Make yourself a hot cup of tea, okay? And take it easy for the rest of the day. You still look a little shell-shocked.”

She nodded and fingered the keys in the pocket of her jacket. “Thanks, Nick. I owe you for looking after me.”

He shrugged and flashed Auntie Lou’s lopsided grin at her. “Your tax dollars at work.”

With a wave he drove off, and Laurie let herself into the house. They’d moved in here when Anna was born—their dream home,
the one she didn’t plan to leave until they pried the keys out of her age-spotted hands. The lots on their street were big
and the trees were old, like the houses. Theirs had the typical Pennsylvania shape, with steep gables, thick stone walls,
and ten-foot ceilings with plaster medallions around the light fixtures. When the owner of the building company had retired
and Colin had been promoted to president five years ago, they’d remodeled the kitchen. It had taken months to transform the
dark, damp lean-to that had been added in the twenties into a clean, light-filled area where people liked to congregate, but
it had been worth every minute.

A cup of stale coffee was still waiting in the pot for her to get back from her run. She poured it down the sink and then
glanced at the phone.
You are not going to call the junior high to ask if Anna is in class and okay.

Because of course Anna was okay. In fact, she was probably just heading off to second-period math. If Laurie called, it would
do nothing but embarrass her daughter, and then they’d all have to deal with the fallout when she got home from school.

Was the drowned girl’s mother thinking of calling, too?

No, that wasn’t possible. The coroner’s voice had carried, and she’d heard him mention that the girl had probably died in
the middle of the night. So somewhere there was a frantic mother whose daughter had not come home. Who wouldn’t be in homeroom,
or going to first period. Somewhere, a woman was probably calling in a missing-persons report.

But if that was the case, wouldn’t Nick have known about it? Laurie made a mental note to call him at home tonight to find
out if one had been filed.

Then she stopped herself.

This is none of your business. The police will look after it. And a few days from now, you’ll read the details in the paper,
send up a prayer for the parents, and go on with your life. This is some other mother’s tragedy. It has nothing to do with
you.

Laurie frowned as her troubled thoughts took on Colin’s practical tone. Practicality in one’s husband was a wonderful thing
a lot of the time, but it was just a fact that she and Colin saw the world differently. Sometimes that was good, such as during
the kids’ homework, when he supervised math and grammar. But her brain didn’t run on the narrow track of rules and structure.
Her skills were the kind that encouraged them to think about what the holes and the mountain really meant in Louis Sachar’s
novel, or why the table of stone broke when Aslan came back to life.

But sometimes Colin’s practicality wasn’t good. He would give the shirt off his back to a needy person, or front a customer
some scrap lumber for free, but to listen to that person’s troubles made him uncomfortable. Colin never borrowed trouble.
He spent his energy trying to make sure it stayed as far away as possible. This meant the insurance was always paid up, their
cars went in for maintenance on the exact date recommended by the manufacturer, and there was always gas in the generator
in the garden shed, in case the power went out.

But there was more to life than gas and insurance. There was sorrow, and joy, and sharing the highs and lows of life. And
sometimes there were things she could only share with her women friends—the ones she’d found in her Bible study group. On
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she job-shared as an administrative assistant in the literature department at Murdo University,
a private college that sat on the hill on the other side of the highway. But Thursdays were the highlight of the week, when
her Bible study group sipped Maggie’s apricot tea and drank from the water of life as they made their way through—this month—the
Psalms.

Half an hour after Nick had dropped her off, she showered, and still feeling that chill that just wouldn’t wear off, she walked
six doors down, tapped on the door, and stepped into the Lessers’ living room. She closed the door quietly behind her and
pushed the “door dog” back into its place along the bottom, where its long knitted body kept the drafts out.

Besides Maggie, half a dozen women were already there. The sound of their voices settled like a blanket of comforting normalcy
around her shivering soul.

And then the chatter died away.

“Laurie, good heavens, look at your face. Are you all right?” Maggie took her coat and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Laurie?”

The study was held at Maggie’s house to encourage her in her sometimes halting Christian walk, but Laurie led it by tacit
understanding. Everyone was used to looking to the members of her family to lead things in Glendale—and they’d been doing
so since Great-great-grandpa Tremore had brought the railroad through here when the town wasn’t much more than a clearing
in the woods.

She had to pull it together, even though her spirit felt bruised and her mind was like a frightened bird, unable to settle
on anything for more than a minute. All she wanted to do was unload the whole morning’s story on the group, to share it so
that maybe the horror would dissipate. Talking it over would bring normalcy back. She hoped.

Laurie glanced from one concerned face to the next. Natalie, Maggie, Cammie, Mary Lou, Donna, and Janice. Her spine stiffened
a little.

Janice Edgar was the incumbent mayor’s wife, and if there was anyone who could make Laurie Tremore Hale, of the Glendale Tremores,
feel not only fat, but also not very bright, it was she. Not that she tried to, of course. She was unfailingly pleasant and
always had a perfectly chosen word in season. But despite this, around Laurie she always seemed stiff and proud. She was tall
and slender, and her blonde pageboy fell in perfect parentheses on either side of her face. Laurie’s mahogany-brown mane did
whatever it pleased unless she braided it tightly in a French braid, where it lay down the center of her back and sulked between
her shoulder blades.

Janice was the type that presided over mayoral teas. Laurie was the type that organized them—and never the twain should meet.
Until a few weeks ago, when Pastor Dayton suggested that Laurie invite Janice to prayer group.

With Janice here, she absolutely could not fall apart. Maybe that was a blessing. “I’m fine. Thanks.” She gave Maggie’s hand
a grateful squeeze. “Does anyone know if Tanya Peizer and Debbie Jacks are coming?”

“Debbie and Jeff went to his mother’s,” Donna Carter said. “She’s going into the hospital in Pittsburgh for some tests.”

“And Tanya?”

Tanya was fairly new to their group, and they hadn’t quite gotten to the point of friendship. Friendliness, yes, but not friendship.
When the other women, most of whom Laurie had known all her life, shook their heads and looked blank, she said, “I’ll give
her a call when I get home. See if she needs anything.” Sometimes a person needed nothing more than encouragement, or sometimes
something more substantial, such as a casserole, or a hand getting the housework done.

Tanya was a single mom, and she lived in that eyesore of a new subsidized apartment complex next to the big discount store
on the far side of town. Laurie often felt guilty when she looked at Tanya, who barely held things together and was dealing
with a teenager who, from all accounts, was quite a handful. She did what she could, though. It was Laurie who had been behind
the cook-in after prayer group last month, where they’d each brought a freezable dish or a plastic container full of snacks
and loaded them all into Tanya’s beat-up Honda. Over her teary protests, mind you, but she’d still driven away with it all
in the end.

Laurie tried to get her brain working along normal lines. She needed to start the study. She needed to open with prayer. But
instead, her knees buckled and she landed in one of the living room chairs, more by accident than design, and began to cry.

“Laurie!”

Cammie slid into a chair next to her and pressed a tissue into her hand. Maggie poured a cup of steaming tea and offered it.
The rest of the group pulled their chairs in, as if they could offer comfort just by leaning closer.

Laurie knew she was distressing them, but she couldn’t help it. What had happened that morning was sitting inside her like
a pipe bomb, ready to explode.

“I need you to do something for me,” she managed at last, after blowing her nose and wiping her eyes.

“Of course,” Maggie said. “Please drink some of this. Tell us. It’s got to be something awful. I knew the minute you walked
in.”

Laurie took a deep breath. “I need you to pray for me. When I was jogging this morning, something awful did happen.” She paused.
“I found a body.”

Silence.

“It was a girl. Probably in Anna’s class. She looked about that age.”

“Who?” Cammie said. “Who was it?”

Laurie took a sip of tea, then another. “I don’t know. I called 911 right away and they sent an ambulance. But of course it
was too late. Then I had to go down to the sheriff’s office and give a statement.”

The group of women clustered around her. “Oh, Laurie, how horrible. No wonder you’re so upset.”

It felt so good. No statements of logic, just love and the concern of sisters in Christ surrounding her with warmth. She told
them what little she knew, and she even refrained from embellishing the story with speculation and educated guesswork, in
case someone might think she was being too dramatic.

When she was finished, from the edge of the little group, Janice spoke up. The voice that Laurie had heard on television,
confident and persuasive on whatever civic point she was making, was soft and hesitant now.

“Should we pray?” Janice’s fingers riffled the top corner of her Bible’s pages, over and over. “For the family, I mean. Whoever
they are. Some poor mother needs to be lifted up before God right now, don’t you think?”

I should have thought of that.
Immediately Laurie felt like an attention hog, guilty of asking for her own support when what she should have done was ask
the group to pray for the unknown woman.

“That’s exactly what we should do,” she said.

“Janice, maybe you could lead us?” Maggie suggested. “And maybe you could put in a word for Laurie, too.”

Laurie would have thought that Janice would jump at the chance to lead in this intimate little group the way she led out there
in public life. Or that she’d take charge and delegate to someone who had known Laurie and Tanya longer, such as Cammie or
Mary Lou. But instead, she hesitated, looked around as though she were trapped, and then nodded at last.

“All right.” Laurie could hardly hear her. Janice’s face had gone completely white. She closed her eyes with that resigned
look that people got when they were about to dive off the highest platform at the community pool.

“Father God, thank you for the strength we’ve received as a result of this time here with you. We pray for our sister Laurie
and ask that you give her the strength to move on after this experience. And please, Father—” Her voice broke, and she swallowed.
“Please give your strength to this girl’s mother and her family. Lift them up with the hope that is in you, and wrap your
love around them so they’ll know they can get through it. Be with them as they grieve, and remind them that you lost your
Son, too. Amen.”

When Laurie opened her eyes, Mary Lou said, “We need to find out who it was and see if we can do something for them.”

Laurie spoke up. “My cousin Nick is investigating. But the family has to be notified before they announce anything. It might
be in the papers tomorrow.”

“I’ll find out.” Janice’s voice firmed, and beneath her pale skin Laurie glimpsed the mayor’s wife. The one with connections.

Well, Laurie had connections, too. She was just going to have to lean on Nick a little. After all, she had found the poor
child’s body, so she should be the one to take the lead in helping the bereaved family through this terrible time.