Page 9 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Yes. And I told them someone had taken my baby girl. They…” She pauses, her mouth twisting into a bitter frown before she continues.

“The cops came. Asked me questions, looked around. They checked the cars of all the people at the church that day. But it’s not like they really made an effort or anything.

No dogs, no hunt in the woods up behind the church.

They think us Hoyles are trash. Always have.

The cops accused me of ‘misplacing’ my child. ”

She laughs bitterly, hugs her arms tight to her body. She’s a small woman, shorter than me and waif-thin, her nearly white-blond hair and uncanny blue eyes and upturned nose making her look like a tragic fairy who wandered out of a storybook and never found her way back.

“How do you ‘misplace’ a child?” she asks. “Jessica was a good girl. She wouldn’t run off. She was sitting right there, swinging. Pumping her little legs. She was wearing pink tennis shoes. And then she was gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. And I am. I’m sorry for the way she was treated.

Sorry for all the grief she’s endured. Sorry for this last photograph of Jessica beaming out at Mandy every day, a reminder of what she has lost. But I’m not here to get caught up in the maelstrom of Mandy Hoyle’s pain.

I shift my weight as if I can shrug off the heaviness of the emotion that’s just been laid on me.

“What time of day was it?” I ask. “When Jessica was taken?”

“Morning,” Mandy says. “It was morning. I was pregnant at the time with James and I’d been having powerful bad morning sickness.

And Jeffrey was in the backseat asleep in his car seat.

That boy never once slept through the night.

Bad dreams and howling like you wouldn’t believe.

But he always drifted off in the mornings so I just let him sleep. ”

“Did you notice anything strange before Jessica was taken? Anyone hanging around?”

Mandy shakes her head.

“She’d been just about to start kindergarten, though she was already reading a bit.

I’d been helping her with books I got from the library.

I’d taken her up to the school, got her registered; I was so excited for her.

And a little worried too. She was small for her age. Almost six when she was taken.”

“What happened between the time Jessica was taken and the time Olivia Jacobs went missing?” I ask. “I heard something about a donation fund.”

Mandy’s cheeks redden and her mouth pulls together in an angry frown before she lets out a puff of air and says, “Tommy started an online donation fund basically the day after Jessica was taken, which I didn’t even know about.

He said later on, when I asked him about it, that we couldn’t trust the cops and that’s why he did it.

But I never saw a single cent of that money and we never did hire a PI.

Still, I can’t say he was wrong about trusting the cops.

I was shouting the whole time that they should’ve called in the FBI right from the start but nobody listened to me.

Not until after Olivia Jacobs was taken did anyone pay a single bit of attention.

Before that, plenty of people were going around town whispering about how Tommy and Dwight—that’s Tommy’s cousin—had cooked up the whole thing to get rich and betting Jessica would turn up in our backyard like nothing ever happened. ”

“Were they questioned?”

“Of course,” she says. “But it didn’t come to anything. And then Olivia Jacobs went missing and suddenly everyone realized it was real. That someone was taking our babies.”

“Why did they suspect Dwight?” I ask.

“I just told you—”

“Right, but why him specifically? Were he and Tommy close?”

She hesitates. I wait. Outside, the rain lets up a little.

Eventually, she says, “Well, it turned out the donation campaign had been Dwight’s idea, at least according to Tommy. And, well, he’d done something similar before. Kidnapped his own little girl.”

“Kidnapped her?”

“Well, you know what I mean, not like a real kidnapping. Not like what happened to Jessica. The common kind. Dwight and his wife split up. She took the daughter, moved back in with her mama, and got a lawyer to handle the court stuff. Then, one day he picked the girl up from school to stay with him for the weekend and he just didn’t bother bringing her back.

His ex-wife called him and asked what was going on and he said if she wanted her daughter back, she’d have to take him back too.

Well, she wasn’t having it for a second.

She went straight to the sheriff’s office, and they went over there and explained he’d have to go sit in jail if he didn’t hand over the kid. ”

I nod. Mandy is right. This kind of kidnapping is depressingly common. The sort of thing ex-spouses do to hurt each other when, mostly, it only really hurts the kid.

“So, what happened?” I ask.

“Well, she got her daughter back, took full custody, and moved out of state. She lives all the way up in New Hampshire, if you can believe it. But this was years ago. Dwight is older than Tommy by seven years. He’d already gone and got remarried to Elaine Davis by the time Jessica was taken.

But everyone knew about what happened. Still remembered it.

You can’t keep something like that quiet in a town this small and nobody was shy with their accusations. ”

She sighs, looks back at the photo of Jessica, and says, “Then, later on, I remember Dwight had something to do with the last kidnapping.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something about the day Molly was taken,” Mandy says.

“He was at the Andrewses’ farm that day fixing a pipe.

When they went around interviewing people, I remember Elaine being worried they’d try to pin it on him and the rumors would start all over again, but it never came to that.

All Dwight had to do was give a statement.

He’d been called over there to fix a pipe and that was the end of it.

But after that, I think they’d sort of had their fill of small-town gossip.

They moved to Charlotte not long after.”

“Can I get their number?” I ask. I’m not sure what help they can be, but if Dwight was a witness on the day Molly was kidnapped, I can’t ignore it.

“He’s not there anymore,” Mandy says. “He and Elaine moved back.”

“When?”

“Oh, a couple months ago, I guess. Beginning of summer.”

“Why’d they come back?”

“Elaine’s mama passed. Left them the house. I guess they figured taking over her old place was cheaper than paying city rent.”

“You don’t talk to them?”

“I don’t hardly have the time. Besides, gone this long, I barely know them.

They come into Ellerd’s—the diner where I work—but I don’t much get to speak to them since they always come during the dinner rush.

They didn’t bother to keep in touch—even to ask how the search for Jessica was going—and I suppose I understand.

But I never felt the need to reach out, if you know what I mean. ”

“Can I get their address?”

She gives it to me and I fish inside my bag for a moment and pull out a card, hand it to her. She looks at it.

“If you think of anything else…” I say.

She stands there, staring at me a moment, my card in her hand.

“Hold on,” she says. She turns and jogs out of the room.

I hear her going up some stairs and then I hear her walking around above me.

While I wait, I look at the old picture of Jessica.

Of all Mandy’s children, Jessica is the one who most resembles her.

It’s the same fair skin, the same pale blond hair, the same tiny nose.

There’s an intelligence too, I think. A daring bright spark that shines through Jessica’s eyes the same way it shines through Mandy’s.

That’s what I saw when I met her at the door, I realize. That keenness.

Jessica is the kind of kid who draws media attention.

Maybe she would have. Maybe if she’d grown up in a neighborhood of cute brick ranch houses instead of this old, run-down holler.

Maybe if her family hadn’t been broke and rowdy.

Maybe if her daddy hadn’t been out of work, her mom exhausted, abused, and poverty-stricken, a sense of ruinous resilience permeating from her hungry blue eyes, the kind of woman who makes people uneasy, puts them off guard with her earnest need.

I turn my gaze to another set of photos and find what must be Mandy’s and Tommy’s relatives.

In a wedding photo from fifty years back, a lanky red-haired man grips the waist of his plump, dark-eyed wife.

There’s a framed photo of Mandy, Tommy, Jessica, and Tommy Junior— Tam, I think.

Mandy’s hair is ten-years-ago stylish and Tommy looks less haggard and restless, almost happy.

Then there’s another senior photo, this one of a young woman I don’t recognize.

She has bright eyes and her pale, strawberry-blond hair hangs in long, shimmery waves around her bare shoulders.

“Odette,” Mandy says as she reenters the room.

“Who?”

“Odette. Tommy’s little sister. She died.

Eleven years ago now.” Mandy smiles wistfully at the photo.

“She was a good girl. So sweet. She used to keep Tam and Jessica for us. But, she had a real sad streak. She drank too often and too much. Never around the kids, of course. But she’d have spells, you know.

Anyway, she had a spell, drank too much.

Passed out and didn’t wake up. Poor thing. What a waste.”

I find myself frowning at the photo. At the tragedy heaped on tragedy around me.

I don’t have the time or inclination to dwell on it, though, and I’m about to leave when Mandy holds her fist out toward me and says, “I want you to have this.”

She opens her hand like a flower. There’s a wad of tightly rolled bills inside.

“I’ve been saving up,” she says. “Wherever I can.”

“Mrs. Hoyle—”

“I want you to find Jessica too,” she says. “Please.”

“Mrs. Hoyle, I’m already looking for Jessica.

Because I’m looking for Molly. Max Andrews is paying me to look for a week.

You don’t need to pay me.” I close her hand around the money and gently push it back toward her.

She bites her lips together and tears come to her eyes again.

Her eye makeup still stays put. It’s got a lot of practice, I think with a sad, sick feeling in my stomach.

“I will look for Jessica too,” I say around the lump in my throat. “While I’m looking for Molly, I will look for Jessica.”

“You promise?” she asks, barely a whisper.

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll be here for a week. I will look all day, every day. I promise I will look, but I can’t promise I will find her.”

She nods, sniffs, closes her fist tight around the money.

“I’ve been… I’ve been hoping to leave,” she says, waving her arm to take in the room, the house, the holler, this whole life.

“I could never afford it. Not with the kids. This is Tommy’s house, Tommy’s family’s house and land and everything.

I’d like to take the kids to my cousin’s in Virginia.

Start over. She could get me a job at the place where she works, I think.

There’re benefits. Good pay. But I always thought”—her voice goes tight and tremulous—“what if she came back?”

The sick sadness spreads out of my belly and up through my chest. My heart is hot and angry inside my ribs and I feel my cheeks flush.

It’s a familiar feeling. An aching pity mixed with rage and helplessness.

Something I haven’t felt since I was a kid.

Since I was home, standing in front of my own mother, the waves of her throbbing need crashing over me.

“Jessica,” I say. My voice, higher and thinner than it should be, surprises me. I clear my throat but it still feels thick.

Mandy nods. She says, “What if Jessica came back and she couldn’t find me?”

“I’ll look,” I say. And then again, “I will look.”

A few seconds later I’m back in my car. The rain thrums the roof and I take long, slow breaths with my hands tight on the wheel as I watch Mandy Hoyle carry some scraps out to the dog and wave at me.

“Oh, Honey,” I breathe, turning the key. “I’m in over my head here.”

Honey rumbles sympathetically. I pull out. Roll back up the hill and out of this holler. I tell myself to think about something else. Anything else. But everything in sight reminds me of my home, my old life, and all those old memories are stirred to life.