Page 35 of The Witch’s Orchard

TWENTY-EIGHT

I T GOES LIKE YOU’D expect.

The festival breaks into groups looking for Lucy. The cops arrive. AJ comes in uniform. Sheriff Jacobs is a few minutes behind him, looking freshly showered and dressed for a steak dinner. A deputy with the camera equipment comes. A deputy with a dog comes.

Soon, some of Shiloh’s dad’s friends with hunting dogs come.

The dogs all follow the same trail behind the church and around the little playground on the other side and into the still mostly full parking lot.

And then there’s nothing. The deputies take statements.

Rebecca Ziegler returns with an extension cord, and then she and Bob lead the cops around the property once again, calling Lucy’s name.

Max comes. He gives Shiloh his heavy barn coat and stands beside her, pale and gray and cold as a stone. She wraps her arms around him. I don’t know whether she’s comforting Max or herself. He begins to shake, and I realize he’s crying.

“It’ll be okay,” I hear her whisper, like a mother to her child. “We’ll find her. We’ll find her. We’ll find her.”

A mantra. A litany. A prayer.

We all look.

We look in the field and we look in the trees behind the field.

We look in the playground and we look in the church and the church basement and all of the Sunday school rooms and all of the cars.

We look under the booths and in the apple bobbing tub and up and down Laurel Road and then, again, in all the same places we looked before.

We don’t find her.

We all call Lucy’s name into the night and the air grows cold and it hurts our lungs and still we call her name and, eventually, the stars fade and the night goes from black to gray to a velvety violet and a fog lies on the land.

There is no answer.

I put a cup of coffee in Shiloh’s hand.

We sit on the steps in front of First Baptist. The sun is rising, hidden behind a wool gray mist. Max is out with Shiloh’s dad’s friends, the deputies, the dogs.

There is a blanket around Shiloh’s shoulders. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know how long she’s been sitting here.

In the field beside us, men and women from the church clear away the booths, the candy, the toys, the cakes.

The coffee grows cold in Shiloh’s hands.

Shiloh’s parents approach and look at us. Shiloh’s dad’s hands are still shoved deep in his coat pockets and Shiloh’s mom holds her purse tight to her body.

“Come on, Shiloh,” her dad says. “It’s up to the police now.”

She blinks, slowly, and swallows whatever thoughts her dad’s words have conjured.

She stands and turns back toward me and her voice is hoarse from screaming her daughter’s name as she grips my shoulder tight and says, “Find her, Annie.”