She ran to the head of the stairs and listened, straining to hear over the roaring of her pulse in her ears. She held her breath, her hands pressed over her mouth as tears welled up in her eyes.
She expected to hear another voice shouting. She expected to hear a man’s voice. The man who had taken Leslie, maybe. But Leah couldn’t make out the other voice. Then her mother shouted again: “Where is she?”
Where is who? She had to be talking about Leslie, and that meant she had to be yelling at Roland Ballencoa.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!
The tears spilled over her lashes and down her cheeks. She still didn’t hear another voice. Maybe they were on the phone. If her mother was on the phone, then they weren’t in any danger.
There was only one way to find out.
Fighting her fear, Leah made her way cautiously down the stairs. The sun was coming up, giving everything in the house a strange gray-yellow cast. Her heart was in her throat.
“Where is she, damn you!” her mother shouted.
No one answered. Who would she be on the phone with at this hour? That didn’t make sense.
“Mom?” she asked, her voice tentative and not loud enough to be heard in the next room. Her mouth was dry as dust as she tiptoed across the dining room.
Boom, boom, boom her heart throbbed in her ears.
She peered around the doorway into the great room. She couldn’t see anybody—not her mother, not Roland Ballencoa. The room was empty.
Confused, she took a step into the room, then another.
“Mom?”
Suddenly her mother came up off the sofa like some fierce wild animal, the look on her face terrifying, one arm outstretched in front of her. She stared at Leah like she had never seen her before.
Leah screamed and jumped back. “MOMMY, NO!!”
As if she was coming out of a spell, her mother blinked several times quickly. At first she looked disoriented, then suddenly aware of her surroundings.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. She looked down at her hands, expecting to see something that wasn’t there. “Oh my God,” she murmured again, pressing a hand to her chest. She was breathing hard. Tears filled her eyes. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
Leah moved toward her then. Her heart was still fluttering like a trapped bird beneath her ribs. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling. I came downstairs. I didn’t know what to think.”
“I guess I was dreaming,” her mother said. She looked sick. She was pasty white and sweating. The loose gray T-shirt she wore was soaked down the chest as if she’d been working out for hours. She raked her hair back from her face with both hands and sank back down on the sofa in a way that made Leah think she didn’t have the strength to continue to stand.
“Are you okay?” Leah asked again.
Her mother nodded and tried to smile, and patted the cushion next to her. “Come sit, sweetheart. I need to tell you something.”
Leah was instantly afraid all over again. That sentence never came before good news. It was always followed by something terrible.
We need to tell you something: Your sister is missing. We think somebody took her . . .
I need to tell you something: Daddy had a car accident. It was really bad . . .
It seemed to take her forever to get to the sofa. Her knees didn’t want to bend so she could sit down.
“Leah,” her mother began. “The man who took Leslie . . . He’s here.”
Leah’s stomach did a backflip. She jerked her head around, expecting to see him.
“Not here in the house,” her mother corrected herself, patting Leah’s hand. Her fingers were like icicles. She was still breathing hard, as if she had been running. “He’s here in Oak Knoll. He’s living here.”
Leah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know whether she should be afraid or angry or what. Why was he here? Had he followed them here? Why couldn’t he just fall off the earth? Why couldn’t he just die? She would never understand why the police couldn’t have put him in prison. Everyone believed he had taken Leslie. Most everyone believed he had killed her.
“I’m telling you because I want you to be aware, sweetheart,” her mother said. “I want you to be careful. If you see him, don’t go near him. Go to the nearest adult and tell them. Call me. Call nine-one-one. The sheriff’s office knows about him.”
“Why is he here? Why does he have to be here?” Leah heard herself say. “It’s not fair!”
She sounded stupid, she thought. She sounded like a stupid little kid, but she couldn’t help it. Roland Ballencoa had ruined their lives in Santa Barbara. Leslie was gone because of him. Daddy had died because of him. They had left Santa Barbara because of him. Now he was here.
“I don’t know, honey,” her mother said.
“Did he follow us here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he know we’re here?” she asked.
Her mother glanced down at something on the coffee table. Leah’s eyes followed, going wide at the sight of the gun lying there on top of a pile of mail.
“Why is Daddy’s gun here?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears.
“I took it out last night,” her mother said. “It needs to be cleaned, but I fell asleep.”
“You’re lying.” The words were out of Leah’s mouth before she even realized she was going to say them. She jumped up from the sofa. “You’re lying! I can tell. Don’t lie to me! I’m not a baby!”
“Leah!”
“You think you’re protecting me, but you’re not!” Leah cried. “All you do is make me feel like I’m some stupid child, like I can’t understand anything that’s happening, and if you lie about it, I’ll just pretend nothing is wrong. But everything is wrong! Everything ! You can’t protect me from that! Leslie’s gone and Daddy’s dead, and—and—you drink too much, and now you have a gun! And you’re scaring me! You scare me! And you don’t care about me at all!”
“Leah, that’s not true!” her mother said. She was on her feet now too. She looked hurt, like Leah had reached out and slapped her. Leah didn’t care.
“Yes, it is!” she argued as all the pent-up emotion came boiling out of her like hot lava. “All you care about is what happened to Leslie, and how terrible life is without Leslie, and now you have Daddy’s gun, and you’re going to kill yourself like Daddy killed himself, and what’s supposed to happen to me? What about me?!”
With that, the last dam burst and all the grief came in a flood of tears. Everything she’d been holding inside her for all this time came crashing like waves dashing themselves on jagged rocks. She fell on the sofa and buried her face in a pillow, sobbing like she might die of it.
She cried for the little sister she had been when Leslie went missing. She cried for the little girl she had been when Daddy had died. She cried for who she was now—a lost, frightened, angry young woman who felt like the only thread holding together what was left of her family was fraying down to nothing.
She would be left alone, with no one. She would be the one punished for what Leslie had done that day when she was supposed to have been grounded and she went to the softball game anyway. She would be punished because she hadn’t called Mom to rat her sister out. She would be punished because she had watched Leslie go and hoped she would get in trouble.
“Leah.”
She heard her mother’s voice. She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders.
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” her mother whispered. “I’m so sorry. I won’t leave you, sweetheart. I promise I won’t ever leave you. I love you so much. I’m so, so sorry.”