Page 63 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Sure,” he says. “I’ll be there after work. Around seven.”

“See you then.”

I hang up and switch to the other call.

“Is this Annie Gore?” the voice says. It’s female and young. For a brief, heart-thudding moment, I think maybe it’s Jessica. A fantasy blooms in my mind that maybe she’s somehow found out that I’m looking for her, maybe she’s escaped—however briefly—found a way to get ahold of me.

“Yes?” I answer. “Jessica?”

“What? No, I… look, meet me at Starling Point,” the voice says. “Twenty minutes. I have information for you.”

“Wait, what—”

But the line is dead. I look at the phone in my hand, grab my keys, and go out the door.

TWENTY-TWO

AQUICK SEARCH ON MYphone and I find directions to Starling Point. After a few near misses and slow crawls, I turn onto a little upward-tilted gravel road and follow it up the side of a high hill. Mountain laurel bushes, still green and dense, whoosh by both sides of the car; their flowers have dropped and a few half-rotten blooms lie on the ground below. Beyond the bushes, deeper into the forest, all I can see is mist.

I’m relieved when the greenery opens up at the top of a hill and I find a little hatchback parked against a guardrail and two teenagers standing together against the passenger-side door. I roll up slowly, watching them, and realize these are the older siblings of Jessica and Olivia: Tam Hoyle and Nicole Jacobs.

“Hey,” Nicole says when I get out of the car.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

Nicole shrugs and says, “Yearbook staff.” Like that explains everything.

“Cool car,” Tam says. Obviously a guy of impeccable taste.

“Thanks,” I say, giving Honey a little pat. “What’s up?”

They trade a glance and then Nicole says, “We want to help.”

“Okay,” I say. “But… how?”

Nicole bites down on her bottom lip, and Tam nudges her shoulder.

“Come on,” Tam says. He’s tall with broad shoulders, built a lot more like Tommy than Mandy Hoyle. But Tam’s voice is soft and thoughtful, with an undercurrent of kindness that I could never picture coming from his father.

“We can trust you, right?” he says.

“Sure.”

Nicole leans back, dipping her hand into the car’s passenger seat. She comes back out with a little stack of folded-up papers. She hands them to me and I open them.

It’s all drawings, in crayon. Spirals litter page after page after page. Red, yellow, orange, and pink, they run corner to corner.

“What is this?”

Nicole crosses her arms tight in front of her, hunching her shoulders together protectively the same way Kathleen does.

“My sister’s drawings,” Nicole says. “Olivia made those when they brought her back.”

“You mean after she was kidnapped?”

She nods.

“For how long?”