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“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Ellie said. “When Ava’s mother sees it, she’ll be even more upset than she already is.”
“If I hadn’t reported it, someone else would.” Angelica gripped her phone. “Ellie, as soon as the interview was over, I received a text. You need to see it.”
Ellie went still, her heart skipping a beat. “A tip on who took Ava?”
“Not exactly.” Angelica worried her bottom lip with her teeth then angled the phone so Ellie could read the message.
There are other missing girls out there. Don’t forget them.
A cold shudder ripped through Ellie.
Thirty-Eight
Willow Circle
Jan Hornsby struggled for a breath as the reporter on the TV finished interviewing the detective in Crooked Creek. Another child had gone missing. Six years old.
The same age as her Becky had been.
She’d been stolen on her birthday six months ago.
Her throat burned with unshed tears as she glanced at the Christmas tree that she couldn’t bear to decorate. How could she celebrate the holiday when her baby girl was lost to her?
“Lordy, that poor family. What is the world coming to?” Jan’s seventy-five-year-old mama said with a sad shake of her head.
“I don’t know, Mama.” Jan looked at her mother, saddened for the Trumans and tormented by her own memories. She’d come to live with her mother last month when she could no longer stand to be in the empty house that used to be alive with Becky’s laughter. She’d thought being here would help with the loneliness, but she felt as if she’d abandoned Becky by leaving her home, as if one day her daughter would just show up and skip into the room begging for chocolate chip cookies.
Unable to pretend she wasn’t thinking of her own daughter’s disappearance, she wrapped a shawl around her, then stepped out onto the back deck of the house and looked into the gray skies, and the weeping willows that backed the yard. Some said the trees were no good, that they drew snakes, and at night she’d heard the eerie hoot of the owl that had made the trees its home. Its tiny eyes pierced the darkness as if it tracked evil around her.
The branches hung low, sagging, as if mourning the loss of their spear-shaped leaves just as she mourned the loss of her daughter.
Yet when spring came, they would be the first to leaf. Would Becky be here to see them?
Pain wrenched her gut, and she clutched her stomach to keep from wailing as her last day with Becky floated through her mind.
Her little girl had been so excited about the festival in Chattanooga along the Riverwalk. They had arts and crafts and music, a petting zoo, pony rides and face painting. In her mind, she saw Becky sitting still as the artisan painted a rainbow of colors on her cheek. Then she’d jumped up and squealed and raced to pet the goats in the petting zoo area.
She’d paid the artisan, then raced after Becky, but in the blink of an eye, Becky was gone.
Shivering now, she clenched the shawl around her shoulders, the terror she’d felt in that moment returning like a live beast inside her.
The police had investigated. Searched.
Found nothing.
She called them every week to see if they were still looking, but as each day passed, she sensed their drive fading, that soon her precious sweet child would be forgotten.
Some days the pain was so intense she didn’t think she could go on. But she had to.
Becky was out there somewhere and needed her.
Despair overwhelming her, on her phone she signed onto the Facebook group she’d started as a support network. She’d called itMothers of Missing Children.
Bonding with other mothers had opened her eyes to how the system sometimes failed and how easily lost children and their families got shoved aside for newer cases. And who else could possibly understand the unbearable agony of wondering where your child was, if they were hurt, hungry, being cared for?
If the mothers didn’t fight for their lost children no one would.
She refused to let Becky be forgotten.
