Firefly Island Page 16

  The thought of the peaches dulled my euphoria as I set the cordless phone in its cradle. Daniel and I had tumbled into a fight over the bucket of fruit. He’d come home in a foul mood the night he brought it in. I’d wanted to tell him about the blog, and all Daniel wanted to talk about was me whipping up peach pies to mollify Jack.

  The War of the Peaches had been ongoing for three days, but I was in too good a mood for it right now. I had it in mind to end the fight by actually attempting a peach pie, even though I didn’t know pie crust from Pop-Tarts. I’d talked myself into it by deciding that I would photograph the entire process and use it as a blog. I was going to call it Pie-Making for Dummies. Somehow, the idea of domesticity seemed less old-fashioned when you were sharing your efforts in cyberspace.

  I knew I needed help, though, and the plethora of fancy pie recipes on the Internet were too hard to sort out. The month before, while Daniel and I were moving the stuffed dead animals to the garage building for storage, I’d noticed a dusty red-and-white-checked Betty Crocker cookbook, exactly like the one my mother had. It was just sitting on top of a box of rusty pans in the corner. The sight of it had filled me with nostalgia. Clearly, whoever had left it there wasn’t coming back for it, but I couldn’t imagine what use I would have for a cookbook, so I’d left it where it was. Now it seemed like the perfect answer to the peach pie problem. My mother swore by the recipes in Betty Crocker.

  I put on gloves and Daniel’s rubber boots before heading out to the garage. The long, narrow building was a scary place, littered with cast-off belongings from former ranch residents, as well as bits of rope and chain, ancient garden tools, and broken yard-mowing equipment from days gone by. Huge iron meat hooks hung from the rafters overhead, along with a single light bulb, which didn’t provide much illumination. It looked like a place where snakes, bats, and … who knew what else might hide.

  When I stepped inside, something was scratching and gnawing in the far corner of the room. I didn’t investigate, but crept across the uneven concrete (as much as it’s possible to creep in oversized rubber boots) and snatched the cookbook off the stack of pans. A cross-stitched apron was lying underneath. I held it up with morbid fascination, letting the dingy window light shine through the moth-eaten fabric. Had it belonged to Jack’s wife? Had the woman who’d disappeared worn this very apron?

  Dropping it, I rushed across the room, stepped into the yard, and slammed the door. In the overgrown gardens of the little house, the concrete angel watched me from a patch of sunlight. A yellow swallowtail butterfly sat on her outstretched hand, slowly fanning its wings. Shuddering, I turned away and hurried back to the house, then dusted off the cookbook before taking it inside.

  The peach pie recipe was easy to find. The page was turned down, and there was a note in the margin. For Cynthia’s wedding.

  Cynthia. Was that the name of Jack’s second wife? Or had she written those words herself? Could this cookbook have been hers?

  A chill slid over me, tickling like the stroke of a feather.

  “Okay. All right. Stop it already.” A shudder rattled my shoulders, and I grabbed my phone from my purse, then quickly made a list of the ingredients required for peach pie. A trip to the Walmart in Gnadenfeld would give me time to gain some perspective, I reasoned.

  The cookbook probably wasn’t even hers, anyway. I was letting my imagination run completely amuck.

  But even as the reassurances cycled in my head, I made it a point not to look toward the little house as I gathered Nick and proceeded toward the car.

  The drive along the rural highway was peaceful, as always—a chance to compose my thoughts and enjoy peek-a-boo views of the river. Near town, the roadsides were graced with stately old farms surrounded by picture-perfect green fields, tall hip-roofed barns, and large stone houses. The town itself was a study in contrasts. I’d read a newspaper article about how various Mennonite families had formed the community in the fifties when they were forced out of their valley by the Corps of Engineers’ plan to dam up the river and build Moses Lake. Now Gnadenfeld was home to many thriving Mennonite-owned dairies, as well as other businesses catering to tourists in search of a day trip into a simpler time.

  Despite its humble roots and charming Mennonite bakeries, Gnadenfeld was also the home of a large Proxica Foods production facility that was squarely on Al’s environmental enemies list, right beside Jack West. Last winter a huge scandal about Proxica’s chemical contamination had broken wide open, and the cleanup was still ongoing. According to Al, even though Proxica had been forced to pay massive damages, nothing could eclipse what they’d done. Al had been active in helping Gnadenfeld recover from the impact of the bad publicity, so that the tourists would return. The town was one of Al’s pet projects.

  My interest in Gnadenfeld was much less noble than Al’s. The town had a Walmart, and when you’re living so far from everything that is familiar, stepping into a Walmart feels pretty much like heaven. Unlike my day-to-day shopping in Moses Lake, where baitfish, live worms, milk, and soda pop were stored in disturbingly close proximity, in Walmart, the live fish were all the way on the opposite end of the store from the groceries. Call me fussy, but it seemed like it should be that way.

  For his part, Nick was a good shopper. We talked about the colors of T-shirts, the pictures on CD covers, the letters on product labels.

  Nick watched commercials and liked to repeat them. “There a Pine-Sol!” he said and pointed to the shelf, then raised a brow and added disdainfully, “Oh, and they got that baw-gin bwand pine cleaner. It leaves diwt behind.” I was fairly certain Nick was the smartest kid on the face of the earth.

  In the baking section, we ran into a familiar face. Nick remembered Keren Zimmer immediately and asked her where all the summer enrichment kids were. “They’ve gone home for the day.” Keren smiled and tousled Nick’s hair. “I came over here to get some fertilizer for our garden that we all planted together. Did you know we had a garden? It’s right there in town, in the little courtyard beside Books and Java. All the kids worked on it together, and tomorrow we’re going to pick green beans, cook them at the church, and see how good they are to eat.”

  “Awesome!” Nick cheered. “I wike beans!”

  I laughed and patted Nick on the back. What a great kid. I was fairly certain he hadn’t seen a real live green bean. Not on my watch. Getting away from the prepackaged convenience foods and learning to make something real was on my to-do list. Al had been after me about it. Anything that came in a box, bag, or Styrofoam container, she was strictly against, especially for developing humans, like Nick.

  “You all can come and help us with the garden, whenever you have the time,” Keren reiterated her invitation from weeks ago, turning to me with a smile that was welcoming and a little timid, as if she felt more comfortable relating to children than adults. “We water the garden every day, but on Tuesdays and Fridays we do our science lesson there. We pull weeds, add compost from our compost bin, and pick the vegetables if they’re ready. The garden is a new thing I’m trying to get started. I’m hoping I can carry it into the school year. The kids up in Chinquapin Peaks live with such rampant food insecurity. Many of the homes don’t have enough groceries in them, especially at certain times of the month, and what they do have is usually high fat and low nutrition. The kids don’t know how to eat vegetables or how to cook them, and a lot of times, neither do their parents. But here’s what I’m finding with the garden—it’s different when kids grow it themselves. They want to eat it because they had a hand in making it. It’s like feed a man a fish or teach a man to fish. If we can get these families started growing food and show them how to preserve it, they’ll have healthy food and they’ll feel good about where it came from.”

  “That sounds fantastic.” I was vaguely aware that I’d completely misjudged Keren—stereotyped her, really. The conservative clothes, the long hair bound into a bun. I’d imagined her to be unbelievably sweet, unrealistically naïve about the world, bl
and, and not someone I’d really want to cultivate a friendship with. Not hip enough. Not interested in anything I was interested in. In reality, she was a force to be reckoned with, a young woman determined to make a difference.

  Her enthusiasm radiated like light from a supernova. “I think it will be, if I can just get the money we need and the cooperation of the parents. I’d love for every family in the school to have a supper garden. Growing up, all I ever saw were Mennonite homes. Everyone we knew grew vegetables in the summer, then put them up for the winter. We all had tomatoes ripening in our cellars until after Christmas. We hardly ever had to buy vegetables.”

  “That’s amazing.” Keren made me want to run right out and plant a garden. I thought about my upcoming peach pie adventure. There was something earthy and primal about rendering sustenance from the most basic of components.

  A strand of blond hair teased her cheek, and she pushed it away purposefully. She seemed to want something from me, but I couldn’t imagine what it might be. “I never knew there were places like Chinquapin Peaks. I really didn’t. Not until I started teaching last year.”

  “That must be really hard to deal with sometimes.” I thought of the story of the foal, of what I’d written at the end of it. Sometimes, changing a life wasn’t as easy as taking an hour out of your trip to a bed and breakfast. Sometimes, it required much more work than that.

  “Several of my kids come to school so hungry on Mondays. I have to feed them before I can teach them.” She looked at Nick, probably thinking what I was thinking—that Nick would never know what it felt like to show up for school with an empty stomach. “Anyway, I’m boring you. I’m sorry.”

  “No … no, it’s interesting.” Right now, I wanted to go over to the gardening department, whip out the credit card, and buy Keren whatever she needed. Then I realized that when Nick started school—next year for preschool or the following year for kindergarten—he would be walking through the doors with the kids who came from those houses Keren was describing. I didn’t want him to learn about that reality.

  Having been given an upper-crust education all my life, I’d never had to contend with such things. I couldn’t imagine placing Nick, with his sweet nature and open, innocent personality, in such a situation. He would be exposed to bad language, bad behavior, a myriad of grown-up information shared by kids who’d already seen too much of life.

  I wondered if there was a private school anywhere within commuting distance, where we could enroll Nick. Where he would be protected.

  I blushed, imagining that Keren could see the questions scrolling through my brain.

  Almost without thinking about it, I found myself leading the conversation to more comfortable things—away from hungry kids and supper gardens, to peach pie. Keren, having no idea of the war of conscience inside me, happily shared tips on how to easily peel peaches by dipping them in boiling water, then in ice water. She showed me where to buy refrigerated piecrust—much easier than making your own and almost as good, she assured me. By the time we parted ways, I felt competent to bake a peach pie, if not to save the world. I’d almost managed to scoot supper gardens and hungry kids completely out of my mind.

  On the way back home, Nick was so preoccupied with a new Pez dispenser that he’d already forgotten about Keren’s invitation to help with the summer enrichment garden. We’d bought some green beans in the produce department, though I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them. Eventually Nick fell asleep clutching them in his car seat, along with the Pez dispenser.

  When we pulled into the ranch, he was wide-awake and ready to play. While he and Pecos went to work digging in the sand pile, Betty Crocker and I got busy in the kitchen. I discovered two things: Number one, Betty has a talent for making things look easier than they are. Number two, I would probably never make a living baking pies. Eons had passed by the time I’d skinned the peaches and soaked the tags off the blue glass pie pans I’d received as a wedding gift. After that, I pitted, sliced, sugared, and struggled through sealing the crust, all the while taking pictures and thinking of what I would say about a non-pie-baking girl’s afternoon with Pillsbury and Betty Crocker. The story was starting to hum in my head, making me laugh, despite the fact that my lopsided pies weren’t likely to grace the cover of Woman’s Day anytime soon.

  “Thank you, Betty,” I said and picked up the cookbook before preparing to commit my creations to the oven. Something white and rectangular slid from the pages and fluttered to the floor. An envelope. I stood looking at it before picking it up and turning it over. The flap was open, a letter on faded yellow paper inside.

  Something tightened the muscles in my neck as I read the three lines of text, hastily scrawled on the paper, the writing seeming rushed and uneven.

  Will meet you on the old dock at eleven tomorrow night. Please, please don’t say anything to anyone. Still so unsure, and must think of the children. So very afraid now …

  My stomach clenched, and a sick feeling gurgled up my throat. Who had written that note? When? Was it her? Had she written it? Was she running away from Jack West? Was she afraid of him? Had she sensed that something terrible was coming?

  But she mentioned children. Jack’s second wife only had one son. Could she have been expecting another? Was she pregnant when she died?

  Or was this letter completely unrelated to Jack? Could it have been written by someone else who lived on the ranch … perhaps a woman meeting a lover on the lakeshore?

  There was no way to know.

  Outside, a peacock called, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t heard a peep out of Nick in forever. How long, exactly? I wasn’t even sure. I’d left him in the yard with Pecos when I’d started the pies… .

  But that was … I glanced at the clock. Over two hours had passed.

  I had the moment of panic that comes from realizing you’ve zoned out in a potentially dangerous way. Normally I kept track of Nick’s whereabouts by listening for the sound of his chats with Pecos, the high whine of tricycle wheels on the back porch, or the rattle and crash of Lego avalanches in the bedroom. Even with my limited parenting experience, I’d learned that boys are easy to track via sound. Daniel and I had made sure to put things like cleaners and paint thinners on a high shelf, so that Nick could have the run of the place.

  But I’d been so preoccupied with the idea of baking the perfect pie and sharing my adventure with the world that I hadn’t been listening. I hadn’t even looked out the window.

  “Nick?” I called, thinking maybe he was in his room, reading or coloring. “Ni-i-ick?”

  No answer. No sound.

  “Nick?” I held my breath, strained into the silence. Nothing. I had the eerie feeling of being utterly alone in the house, a terrible sixth sense I didn’t want.

  My mind rushed ahead, the pie story giving way to horrific scenarios. What if he’d discovered some dangerous chemical tucked in the back of a closet that I’d failed to check? What if he’d gotten into something? What if he’d put a Lego or another small toy in his mouth and silently choked on it? Or somehow gotten the mini-blind cords loose and accidentally tangled one around his neck, or …

  What if he’d figured out how to open the gates, then left the safety of the yard? There were all sorts of potential dangers out there. Horses in the barn, cattle in the pasture, wild animals hiding in the woods, coyotes that howled at night, rattlesnakes curled up in the shade beneath prickly pear cacti …

  “Nick?” My voice cracked the silence, high, sharp, demanding. “Nick, if you can hear me, answer right now! Where are you?” Wiping flour on my shorts, I ran to the back door, pushed open the screen, yelled into the yard, listened, threatened, and listened again. Nick had never hidden from me before—not unless we were playing our little games of hide-and-seek. Surely he could tell from my voice that I wasn’t playing now.

  Panic swelled as the echo of my voice died. The yard was sun-filled, incredibly still. Nick’s little collection of toys sat basking in the golden light, a tiny ye
llow bulldozer with a mound of sand piled in front of it, poised for action, a miniature stack of tree bark ready to be used in the building of a fence or a house. Nick seemed to have abandoned his game in midstream.

  Letting the door fall closed, I hurried through the house, checking every place I could think of, yelling Nick’s name. Tears blurred my eyes and my heart hammered, the sound beating faster, faster, faster. When I’d gone through the house again, I checked the yard inch by inch, every bush, flower bed, and hidden space. There was no sign of Nick anywhere.

  Fear like I had never experienced seized me as I raced back to the house, stumbled through the door, and grabbed the phone. I tried Daniel’s cell. No answer. My hands trembled as I searched for the West Research lab number in the yellowed Rolodex Jack had given us.

  “Please, please, please …” Moments seemed to stretch painfully as I waited for Daniel to pick up. He’d told me he would be in the lab all day, since Jack was gone to some sort of business meetings in Dallas.

  One ring, another, another. What was I going to say? I’ve lost Nick? I don’t know where he is? I forgot about him while I was trying to bake those stupid peach pies to keep Jack West happy?

  “No, no …” The click of the answering machine left me desperately alone. “Please, God. Please let him be all right …” There was water all around us—the shallow creek behind the barn and the lakeshore across the pasture. Could Nick walk that far? Would he? Could he have set out for the lake on his own? He didn’t even know how to swim without his floaties… .

  I imagined Nick slowly walking into the water, the waves sweeping over him. No. No, he couldn’t be by the water. The yard gates were all closed. The latches were too heavy for Nick. Where could he have gone?

  Was it possible that someone had taken him from the yard? Who? No one ever came here but the UPS man and the ranch hands. None of them would have let Nick out of the yard without telling me. The dog was gone, too. Pecos never left Nick’s side. During our weeks at the ranch, they’d become so tightly bonded that Pecos slept on the ground outside Nick’s window at night.