Page 10 of The Witch’s Orchard

SEVEN

“Y OU GOTTA TALK TO the cops, Annie,” Dr. Horton had said.

This was years ago.

I can’t help thinking about it. Driving out of that muddy holler and back toward Quartz Creek, there is a sick heat in my belly at the remembered scene, and I can’t stop it from coming.

I was sixteen at the time. I had my license but no car. Still, I’d been able to drive my mom’s ancient Escort, my mom moaning in the passenger seat, to Leila Horton’s place, Happy Paws Veterinary Clinic.

Leila was an old friend of my mom’s. They’d grown up together—the same rough neighborhood, the same rough parties. But Leila got a scholarship to Eastern Kentucky University and my mom got married and pregnant, not in that order.

“I can’t,” I told her.

“She’s got three cracked ribs,” Leila said.

My mom was resting in another room. It was Sunday and the clinic was closed except for emergencies.

We were standing in Leila’s office. It was nice, with pictures of her kids on the desk.

Her kids were younger than me. A little girl and a little boy wearing nice sweaters, playing in the leaves with a golden retriever.

I’d never had a pet. Never had a cat or dog to bring to Leila’s.

I always just brought my mom, even before I could legally drive.

“Annie, he’s gonna kill her,” Leila said. “I know he’s your daddy but—”

“I can’t make her press charges,” I said. “I can’t make her do anything.”

“Oh, Annie…” Leila said. She crossed her arms and sighed through her nose. “You still mostly staying with your granny?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t stay with them.”

“All I can do is give her some Tylenol, wrap her up in elastic bandages,” Leila said. “You know I can’t prescribe anything.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t bleeding inside.”

“Jesus, Annie,” Leila said, and then looked chagrined, like she hadn’t meant to reveal her horror. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?”

I’d shrugged and said, “What I need is the ability to get around, Leila. I need wheels.”

She’d pressed her lips together, looked out the little window.

“How about a job?” she said.

That was how I was able to get my first car, a 1993 Pontiac LeMans.

I cleaned the Happy Paws Veterinary Clinic after school every other day.

I only quit when I joined JROTC. I took my mom to the clinic four more times before I graduated.

The day before I left for the Air Force, I sold the car for what I could and took the money to Leila, told her to put it in the charity vet care fund.

I didn’t own another car until I got out of the service.

“Okay, Honey,” I say now, my voice a little strangled as I pull onto Main Street. “Let’s get something to eat.”

I need to take my mind off my own hard case, I think, and put it onto the one I’m actually getting paid for. And I might as well get some lunch while I’m at it.

Honey purrs at me, and I look for a spot.

Parallel parking with Honey is its own kind of adventure, and if you’re not careful you’ll wind up with Honey’s ass sticking out for any old car to come by and smack.

I take a deep breath and keep an eye out, eventually maneuvering into a tight space just a few yards down from Shiloh’s Sweet Treats.

“See,” I say. “I had it all along.”

I get out and lock her up, my belly already grumbling.

Like the rest of Quartz Creek’s Main Street, Shiloh’s is a two-story redbrick rectangle with a glass storefront.

Unlike the rest of Main Street, it’s busy.

A woman comes out and gives me a quick “Howdy!” before going past me.

I take the brief pause in traffic to make my way inside, where I’m nearly bowled over by the intensity of the warm, sugary air.

I work my way around the crowd to a long glass counter filled with breads and cookies, cupcakes, and pastries.

A few other customers peer into the glass and some sit at little café tables jammed into the corner of the store.

“Morning!” a woman says. She’s young and smiling and she wears a red apron.

“Shiloh?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “In the back. You need to talk to her?”

I say that I do.

“Shiloh!” she yells through a set of double doors. “Somebody here for you!”

Another woman comes out a moment later, wiping flour from her hands. She’s broad-shouldered and she’d probably be six feet tall if she weren’t wearing chunky platform heels. But she is. So, she’s more like six-three.

“Hi!” she says. “You must be Annie. I’m Shiloh.

” She thrusts her hand toward me. Big open smile, big curly brown hair, big strong hand.

I get the idea everything about this woman is outsized.

Like she’s too grand for this small, normal world but she’s making the best of it.

I like her immediately. I take her firm hand and shake and feel flour dust in her palm.

“I’ve got some bread going in the back. Did you need to talk or were you just coming in for brunch?”

“Both, actually.”

“Okay!” she says. “Just follow me.”

She heads behind the counter and through the double doors and I follow her into the kitchen while she says, “I just took the pumpkin bread out.” She cuts a slice off the orange loaf on the cooling rack and puts it on a little white plate with a pat of butter and a silver spreading knife.

She sets both down on the butcher-block work surface, where a wad of pale dough sits, puffy, in a sea of flour. “You want some milk?”

“Sure.”

She pours a glass of whole milk. “Good?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I smear butter over the warm bread, my mouth watering.

I almost forget that I didn’t just come here for lunch.

Shiloh was Max and Molly’s babysitter the summer Molly was taken, so she’s the closest thing I can get to being able to speak to a parent in person.

And it’s always possible she knows more than she thinks she does.

“How’s it going so far?” she asks before plunging her knuckles into the ball of dough.

I shrug. “About like I expected. Asking questions that have mostly already been answered in Max’s notes or by Max himself or, at least, in old news articles.”

“So why ask them?”

“Well, sometimes asking those same questions stirs people into some kind of action. Sometimes, if someone’s been sitting around…

maybe knowing something they should’ve said and didn’t or maybe they didn’t do something when they should have, even remembered something that didn’t seem meaningful at the time but does now…

you come back around and ask them again, without a badge on your chest, and they get stirred up. Think maybe they have a second chance.”

“That makes sense.”

“So today I go around asking questions. Tomorrow, I see if anyone wants to do anything about it. I did meet someone I didn’t expect, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“An old woman in the woods out past the creek.”

“Ohhh,” Shiloh says. She pauses kneading for a moment and sighs. “That would be Susan McKinney. She’s, um, sort of a psychic? Did she offer to read your cards or anything?”

“No, but she did say I could come by later, if I wanted answers.”

Shiloh goes back to kneading. “Well, that’s cryptic.”

“Have you ever been to visit her?” I ask.

Shiloh snorts. “When I was in high school one of my friends—Amy—wanted to go. It was her sixteenth birthday and she’d been fighting with her boyfriend…

something about… Gosh, it seemed so important at the time; I can’t believe I can’t remember now.

Anyway, me and her and a few of our other friends crammed into Susan’s cabin and she read Amy’s fortune and told her that Bradley was cheating. ”

“And?”

“Well, wouldn’t you know it? The very next day Amy found him down at the parking lot with Kacey Bazler.

Anyway, Susan McKinney is harmless, as far as I know.

A lot of women in town visit her and give her a little cash or whatever they happen to be able to trade for whatever it is she provides.

Maybe it’s just peace of mind, you know? ”

“Yeah.”

I watch her knead the dough for a while and then ask, “You were the Andrewses’ babysitter, right? It was in the book Max gave me.”

Shiloh nods.

“Yes,” she says. “Just that one summer. Before Molly was taken.”

“Not after?”

She shakes her head. Her hair and eyes are the same shade of deep coffee brown.

She sighs, sad and reminiscent, as she pushes her fists into the dough.

I take a bite of the pumpkin bread and have to keep myself from groaning at the spicy-sweet warmth of it.

The bread is otherworldly. Magical. Or maybe I’m just cold and wet and frustrated.

Either way, I’m grateful for the unexpected treat.

“No,” she says. “After Molly was taken, the Andrews family didn’t use a babysitter anymore. Mrs. Andrews didn’t… go out. She never left Max alone after that. She took him to school. She picked him up. If he had band or sports or whatever, she went along and watched.”

“What were they like? Max and Molly?”

“Max was quiet,” Shiloh says. “Like he still is.”

She frowns, looks away from me and down at the dough and says, “Molly was rambunctious. Good-natured, though, super sweet. She had a ton of energy but she was very eager to please. I remember she drew me a picture one day and, when I got there, she was running with it to show me. She was so excited. She tripped over a toy in the living room and smashed her face against the leg of a chair. She had to get stitches where she’d split her chin open, and I felt so bad.

But the family was really good-natured about it.

Mrs. Andrews just iced it right up and I watched Max while Mr. and Mrs. Andrews took Molly to the doctor instead of going out to dinner. ”

“You weren’t there the day the kidnapping happened, right?”