The Forgotten Girl (24 page)

The knot in Jason’s insides untwisted a little.

“Everything you say is true,” Derrick said. “But if she returns, I’ll bring you right over here to see her. Remember, she and I have a custody arrangement. We can’t break that. I know I haven’t been holding up my end lately, and Mom has been good about it. She hasn’t pressed it. She could, you know. She could make trouble for me, and she hasn’t. And if I kept you in Indiana when you were supposed to see Mom, then I’d be breaking the law. We’ve both let you down a lot. We can’t change the past. I wish I could sometimes.”

“But if she does come back—”

Derrick looked at Jason. “I’m sure Jason and Nora would let you know as soon as something changed.”

Sierra looked over at Jason, her face full of hope.

“Of course we would,” Jason said. “You know that.”

“There’s school,” Sierra said.

“It’s summer. By the time summer’s over, Mom will be back. She will. I’m . . . confident. And then you can get back to living with her.” Derrick leaned in closer. “But I do hope that once you are back with Mom and back in school, you’ll come see me more. Some time at Christmas. More time in the summer. Indiana’s nice. Maybe you’ll go to college over there.”

“Do you want to take a couple of days to think about this?” Jason asked. “It’s a big decision.”

Derrick couldn’t contain the exasperated sigh that slipped
out of his mouth. He looked at Jason before leaning back in the chair. “Of course,” he said. “It’s just . . . I started a new job. And I don’t have a lot of time off.”

“I heard you got a new job,” Sierra said. “That’s amazing.”

“I know. A sales job. It’s kind of like my old one. It took me long enough, but I landed on my feet, kiddo.”

A look of pride crossed Sierra’s face. Jason saw the mist in her eyes, which practically glistened as she looked at her father. The tight parent-child connection between the two of them glowed like a laser light.

“Do you have room for me?” she asked. “Are you living in a house or an apartment?”

“I have two bedrooms. You can fix your room up any way you like.”

Jason knew the battle was lost even before Sierra turned to him, her eyes no longer glowing with parental love but instead dimmed by a sense of pity. She was about to let her aunt and uncle down.

“You don’t mind, do you, Uncle Jason?”

What could he say? Could he deny Sierra the chance to be with her father?

“Whatever you want to do,” he said, nearly choking on the words. “Whatever is going to work best.”

“It might be perfect,” she said. “If Mom comes back—when Mom comes back—I’ll be staying with her, and that’s not far away from you and Aunt Nora.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I used to ask Mom if we could come and see you guys. I really did. I can see all of you more than before.”

“Great,” Jason said. He didn’t try to force a smile. If he did, he thought his face might crack.

“Do you have a lot of stuff to pack?” Derrick asked.

“I didn’t bring much. Most of my stuff is at the house.” She frowned. “That house. What’s going to happen to it? I know Mom paid the next month’s rent early before we came here. After that . . .”

“We don’t need to worry about that,” Derrick said. “But if you need stuff from there, we can drive over. It’s Redman County, right?” Derrick checked his watch. “That adds a couple of hours to our day.”

“Have you been there, Derrick?” Jason asked.

“Where?”

“To Hayden’s house in Redman County.”

“I’ve never been there. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

Sierra stared at him, her forehead wrinkled.

“I haven’t seen it either,” Jason said. “Maybe someday.”

“I’ll get my stuff from upstairs. It’s just one bag.” Sierra popped up, and on her way to the bedroom she bent down and hugged Derrick around the neck. “Thanks, Dad. What a great surprise to see you here today.”

Nora bustled and rushed through the door, dropping her bag as soon as she crossed the threshold. She came into the living room where Jason was sitting, working on his laptop. He looked up. Nora wore a concerned, expectant look on her face. He knew what she was going to ask.

“Is she still here? Did they leave?”

“About thirty minutes ago.”

Nora stood in the center of the room, her hand raised to her mouth. She turned a little bit, almost as though she was going to spin around in a circle. She stopped the movement and said, “Jesus. Shit. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I did. I called three times. You were in a meeting.”

She nodded her head and slumped onto the couch, still wearing her jacket. “I know. I’m sorry. I know. Shit. Shit.” She didn’t look at Jason. She stared off into the distance, her eyes half-closed. “I can’t believe this.”

“We can’t stop her from going with her father. He has rights.”

“I feel like a sentimental fool. I got attached to this girl we really don’t know during the week and a half she stayed here, and I shouldn’t be letting it get to me that she’s gone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I should be glad she’s gone. We can get back to our normal life, right? We don’t have to worry about her taking the car or running off with that friend of hers who’s a convict. We can just . . . be ourselves.”

“I feel the same way you do about her. I know I was reluctant to get mixed up in anything with Hayden, but I liked having Sierra around. She’s a good kid. A great kid. She’s our niece.”

“We can just be ourselves now and keep working on us. We need that. It’s good.” Nora moved around on the couch and slipped her jacket off, dumping it on the floor. She never did anything like that. She was never messy. “I thought this is the way to have a kid, you know? Just have her plopped in your lap when she’s kind of grown-up, and you can talk to her and influence her life but you don’t have to worry about all that little-kid stuff like diapers and chicken pox and getting hit by cars. God, I think I sound like a fool. Even to my own ears, I sound like a fool.”

“She’s not gone forever,” Jason said. “She’s still our niece. She’ll still be . . .”

“What?”

“I was going to say around.”

“But you can’t,” Nora said. “You can’t because you don’t know where she’ll be. Just like Hayden. We don’t know.”

“I couldn’t stop him. He’s her father. And she wanted to go. You should have seen how happy she was to see—”

“I know. I get it. I just don’t want to hear about it.”

Jason closed his laptop and set it aside. The house and the neighborhood seemed suddenly and completely silent, as though they were experiencing not just the absence of noise but its removal, its subtraction, like the darkness in a room when a light goes out unexpectedly.

“Is it okay for her to be with Derrick?” Nora asked.

“He’s her—”

“I know that part. He’s her father. I get it. But he’s friends with that Jesse Dean guy. Did you ask him about all that?”

“He said he doesn’t know what Jesse Dean is doing these days. And he said on the phone the other night that the police in Indianapolis came and questioned him about Hayden. I guess it all was kosher.”

Nora shuffled around. She picked up her coat and stood. On her way to the stairs she stopped and looked back at Jason.

“Do you ever wish we had children? Really wish it?”

“Sometimes. When Sierra was here, it was easy to see what our life might have been like.”

“Here I am worrying about whether I should take a job opportunity in New York, and if we should maybe move back there, and I wonder if I’m just focused on all the wrong things.”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

She sighed. “I’m starting to like it here. With Sierra and Hayden back . . . it felt like home. It felt like we were connected. Our lives here felt the fullest they ever felt.”

Jason agreed, but he didn’t know if it would ever be that way
again.

Jason sat in a reception area at the police station. It was pleasant enough. Early in the morning, the room smelled clean and freshly scrubbed. Coffee brewed somewhere, its aroma drifting out to where Jason waited with an elderly woman who kept reaching up and patting her bouffant hairdo into place. Jason didn’t bother picking up a magazine or checking anything on his phone. He was full of a nervous energy, one that kept him from concentrating.

Jason wasn’t sure how long he waited. Olsen came out eventually, wearing a tie and a crisply pressed white shirt. He nodded formally to Jason, as though the two of them had just agreed to something meaningful and profound, and then he led Jason back to a small cubicle cluttered with loose papers and pictures of Olsen with his children. Jason took it all in while Olsen shuffled some of the work to the side, clearing a space on the desktop.

“How have you been doing?” Olsen asked.

“Fine,” Jason said. “Okay, I guess.”

“Did you have something on your mind?” Olsen asked.

“A couple of things. I went out to see Mr. Shaw, Logan’s father.”

“To express your sympathies,” Olsen said.

“To do that, yes. But also to ask some questions.”

The detective’s eyebrows rose. “Questions?”

“Do you remember I told you that Logan had been sending cards and notes to his father over the years? Father’s Day cards, birthday cards?”

“I recall that.”

“And you took them from the house?” Jason asked.

“Of course. In fact, I’m heading back out to the Shaw house again this morning. I’m hoping that Mr. Shaw will be more communicative in the early part of the day.”

“Have you looked at the cards? Ask the housekeeper, Pauline, about them when you’re out there.”

“And? I’m assuming there’s an ‘and.’”

“And it’s not Logan’s handwriting. It’s not the ‘L’ he used to make in school.”

“Obviously. He was dead all these years.”

“Right. But what’s interesting is who the handwriting belongs to.”

Jason stopped himself. If he went forward, he was selling his sister out, implicating her in something illegal. Obstruction. Conspiracy. Possibly murder. But if he didn’t tell the police everything he knew, they might never find her. If Hayden was involved with a crime, one related to Logan’s death, then the police should have that information. The better to locate her.

“Are you going to tell me?” Olsen asked. “Or do I have to guess?”

Jason loosened his lips. “It’s my sister’s handwriting. Hayden.
She
wrote the cards. Hayden
Lynn
Danvers. She used to practice her signature in her room when she was a kid. Maybe she thought she was going to be a movie star. I don’t know. But I’ve seen that ‘L’ many, many times. It’s not exactly like my sister’s, but it’s close.
She can’t hide herself. She wrote the cards and mailed them when she was out west traveling. Or she got someone to mail them somehow. We didn’t always know where she was or who she was with.”

Olsen may have tried, but he couldn’t hide the interest that passed across his face. He couldn’t play the cool, disinterested public servant when presented with something choice.

“You’re sure it’s Hayden’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Would you know your own sibling’s handwriting?”

“I’m an only child, but I see your point.” Olsen nodded, still absorbing the news. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll look into it.”

Jason leaned forward. “See, the two things are probably related. Hayden and Logan. If you find Hayden, then maybe we find out what happened to Logan.”

“Thanks for piecing that together for me,” Olsen said.

“I want my sister found.”

“I was being sarcastic,” Olsen said. “I could piece that together on my own. But I’ll check out the handwriting on those letters today. Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”

“Right. Okay.” Jason didn’t even know if he wanted to bring up the next thing. He didn’t know what Olsen could do for him. “Maybe I’m just looking for you to set my mind at ease about something that happened yesterday.”

“I’ll ease your mind if I can. The police are good at that.”

“My brother-in-law came to Ednaville yesterday. Ex-brother-
in-law. Sierra’s father. He came to the house, and he asked to take Sierra with him. I guess he thinks she should be with him now until Hayden resurfaces.”

“He is her father.”

“He is.”

“What did the girl think of this? Did she offer an opinion?”

“She wanted to go,” Jason said. “We put the question to her, and she said she wanted . . .” Jason felt the emotion rise unexpectedly and catch in his chest. He cleared his throat. “She said she wanted to go with Derrick, to stay with him this summer or until all of this blows over.”

Against all logical hope, Jason wished that the detective didn’t notice the emotion in his voice. But how could he not? He was a detective. He noticed just about everything, especially the emotions of a man in the midst of a criminal investigation.

“Are you worried for the girl’s safety?” Olsen asked.

“No. I don’t think so. She seemed happy to see him.”

“He’s not abusive in any way, is he?”

“No.”

“Do they have a custody arrangement?”

“It sounds like they do. I don’t think Derrick has been utilizing it or supporting Sierra.”

“Then you probably did the right thing letting her go with him. She might benefit from being with her father at a time like this.”

“Right.”

“Which is not to say you weren’t doing a good job with her, you and your wife.”

“Thanks.”

Olsen glanced away. He seemed to take a quick look at the photos of his own family that adorned his cubicle. He looked back at Jason and said, “So your sister wrote those letters to Mr. Shaw?”

“It looks that way.”

“Was your sister up on the Bluff that night with you and your friends?” Olsen asked.

Jason paused and thought about it. He could see so many
aspects of that night vividly, more vividly even than recent events in his life. But it didn’t mean he knew every single thing that happened.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She might have been. I don’t remember seeing her.”

“Did she know about the fight between you and Mr. Shaw?” Olsen asked.

“Everybody did. Once the police started questioning me, everybody found out. A lot of people heard about it that night. You know how it is with kids and fights. A fight happens and then everybody starts talking about it.”

“So your sister may very well have been up there on the Bluff, and she may very well have known about the fight you had with Mr. Shaw.”

Jason started to say something, but the detective kept talking.

“If this is your sister sending these letters, then that implies that she’s covering for somebody, right? I mean, why else do it? Unless she herself was responsible for Mr. Shaw’s death way back when. Is that possible?”

“I doubt it.”

“What kind of relationship did she and Mr. Shaw have? Were they friendly? Or more? You brought this up the other day. You said they were flirtatious or something like that. Now that you’ve had time to think about it, do you have any other sense of their relationship?”

“No, I don’t. Hayden wouldn’t hurt someone.”

“But she had a drinking problem. Some people drink and get violent.”

“Hayden didn’t.”

“Not ever?”

“No. She was careless. Reckless even. But not violent.”

“She’s back in town now. She needs to make amends for something from her past. She’s seen with Jesse Dean Pratt. She leaves her daughter behind and hasn’t made any contact with her. Or with you. And now these letters are in her handwriting, at least as far as you can tell. And you seem pretty certain.”

“I’m the one who fought with Logan that night,” Jason said. “If anyone hurt him, it was me.”

“You’ve been thinking about that fight more?”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything else you need to tell me, then? Anything else you remember?”

“I just remember that I hit him. I knocked him down.” Jason shook his head. “I don’t know what happened after he left me.”

Olsen’s face looked inscrutable, a blank mask. “Thanks, Mr. Danvers.”

“Can you tell me . . . is there anything new? Any news about Hayden?”

“As soon as there is, I’ll let you know.”