Chasing Amanda Read online

  “Both of you think he was innocent, and yet, he was beaten to death,” Molly was almost talking to herself. Acknowledging her own doubt of Rodney’s guilt, she could not understand her loyalty to this man, a possible killer. “Do you have any idea who killed him?”

  Jin looked annoyed, “No, but I bet he know before it happened.”

  “Before?”

  “People don’t,” he hesitated, “no understand him.” Edie vanished further behind him. “He know things before they happen,” Jin turned and put his arm around Edie, who had her hands steepled together as if praying.

  “People say all sorts of things,” Molly rationalized.

  Jin shook his head, “Told me things that happen in future.” A look of longing passed over Jin’s face. “Rodney, he know things no one else understand. He could see…”

  Edie mumbled under her breath, “Never find her.” She turned angry eyes toward Molly, “Never find girl! They kill Rodney because he know things. No proof! No proof that he took her!” she threw her hands up in the air, and stomped toward the stock room.

  “I’m sorry, Jin,” Molly said. “I didn’t mean to upset her, but she’s right. What did happen to Kate? Did Rodney take her and kill her?” she wondered.

  Jin walked up to Molly, standing within inches of her face. She took a step back, uncomfortable around Jin for the first time since she’d known him. He pointed his index finger at the ceiling, and said, calmly, confidently, “Rodney did not kill that girl. Rodney did not take that girl. I don’t know what happened—but not Rodney.” Then he turned and walked away.

  Pastor Lett wondered how long one woman could carry on her ritual. When she had left the Perkinson House the evening before, the kid was rocking back and forth. She could not get the kid to speak to her—it was getting to be too much for her, and yet she found herself compelled to continue. Even if she had wanted to stop at that point, she wasn’t sure she could. She felt it was her calling.

  As she approached the altar, she reluctantly released the bag of seeds in her pocket, withdrew her hand, lit a candle, and knelt down as she did every morning, though this day it was afternoon, with the sun already perched high in the sky. She had slept late, her arms and legs ached from her recent labor. Her mind, devoid of energy, had acquiesced to a night of dreamless sleep.

  She bowed her head and whispered, “Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned. You know this, of course,” she said. “I’ve been a sinner for so many years that I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, but I am going to anyway. Please forgive me, Lord. I love this kid. I know it’s wrong—keeping the kid locked away like this.” She choked on her words, took a minute to pull herself together, and then said, “People would never understand. I need a sign, Lord. I need a sign that you understand what I have done and why.” She rested her head in her hand, her aged fingers splayed across her tired eyes, rubbing them as if by doing so, the simple motion would bring her clarity.

  She startled when the doors of the church slammed closed. She jumped up and turned around, hoping her visitor had not heard what she had said. “Molly,” she said, surprised, “what brings you to church this morning?” She smoothed down her jacket and walked toward her, trying to read her expression.

  “Hi, Pastor Lett,” she said, “I…I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.” The kindness in Molly’s voice eased her mind.

  As Molly limped toward her, Pastor Lett wondered if Molly could see her fatigue. Molly’s head was cocked slightly to the side, as if she were studying Pastor Lett, analyzing her. Pastor Lett wiped her face anxiously.

  “I’m okay, Molly,” she said uncomfortably. “Worried about the Porters, of course, but doing well, thank you.”

  Pastor Lett motioned to Molly’s wrapped ankle, “Running accident?” she asked.

  “This?” Molly lifted her ankle and twisted it, looking it over. “Yeah, kind of,” she shrugged. “I’m worried about Tracey, too. As time goes by, there’s less of a chance of finding her. My God, it’s so scary.” She paused. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” she offered quickly.

  “It’s okay, Molly. I’m sure He understands,” she said, motioning up toward the ceiling. “Is something on your mind? Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed? Want to talk?”

  “No. Yes,” Molly said, flustered. She was feeling overwhelmed, but didn’t want to talk about it for fear that she would then have to deal with those feelings. “Pastor Lett, it’s your brother.”

  Pastor Lett stiffened. She turned away to hide her discomfort and settled herself into the rear-most pew. She breathed slowly, unable to find her voice. She had known this time would eventually come.

  “Pastor Lett, are you okay?” Molly asked.

  She nodded her head in confirmation and managed, “Yes, fine. Tired.”

  “No wonder, with all that’s going on. It’s so reminiscent of what happened with your brother. I’m so sorry.”

  Pastor Lett kept her eyes trained on the wooden pew before her, wondering how much Molly knew about Rodney.

  “I’m sorry, that was rude of me,” Molly said, bringing her hands together in her lap. “I just recently learned that you had a brother,” Pastor Lett felt her glance at her, “and that you lost him.”

  Pastor Lett’s body visibly relaxed as the statement replaced her fear with relief. “Yes, years ago,” she said.

  “I know. I wanted to tell you that I’m so sorry,” Molly said.

  Pastor Lett felt the comfort in her voice. “Thank you,” she said. “He was a special person.”

  Molly looked away, then back into her eyes, and said, “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been.” She hesitated, contemplating discussing Rodney on a level that would expose parts of her past that she’d never discussed with Pastor Lett. “May I ask you a few things about him?”

  Pastor Lett repositioned herself in the pew, cleared her throat, “Sure,” she said.

  “Well, I was told that he ‘knew’ things about Kate Plummer’s disappearance. Do you know about that? Anything about him knowing things?” she asked with innocence, not accusation.

  “Yes,” she sighed as if she had been asked about that one too many times. “He knew a lot of things. Sadly, his gift became his misfortune. People found out.” She looked at the stained glass window on the right wall of the church, noticing for the first time how very bright the reds and yellows were against the more vivid greens and blues. The complexity of the colors, like life, made her half-smile, half-smirk.

  She looked at Molly, but knew she couldn’t talk about Rodney with truth in her eyes, so she lowered her gaze. “He was apparently walking around town, like he usually did when I was running the church, or holding services, and he was repeating what he saw, or rather, what he knew—and I guess a few people heard it and went straight to the police.” Pastor Lett shrugged, rolled her shoulders backward, as if she could rid her body of a pesky ache. “I accepted long ago that those people were just trying to protect their own children. Not many people really knew Rodney.”

  Molly nodded, sitting forward in the pew.

  “He was the kindest boy. Never hurt a fly. He was a bit slow. Drove my parents crazy as they got on in years,” she looked away, as if reliving a memory. “They passed a few years back. Mom, of cancer, and my father, well, I think of a broken heart. I brought Rodney here with me twenty-five years ago, he was just twenty-one years old then.”

  At the mention of his age, Molly’s eyes grew wide.

  “Rodney was…an accident if you will,” she turned her head to the side and looked at Molly. “There were eleven years between us.”

  Molly nodded again, understandingly, she thought.

  “He used to help out the residents with yard work, stuff like that, but even those he helped didn’t really get to know him. They considered it charity.”

  “Pastor Lett,” she began, “I sort of…know things, too. I wanted to find out if he knew things the way I sometimes do.”

  She smiled, ruefully. Everyone thi
nks they’re special. “Well, what do you mean?” she asked, to humor her.

  “I have visions—I guess you call them that—sometimes early in the morning when I’m not really asleep but not really awake, other times when I am near a place where there is danger or something is going to happen,” she said, her hazel eyes pleading for understanding.

  Pastor Lett politely paid closer attention. “Go on,” she said.

  “I’m not always sure if what I see is real or not,” she looked away, as if embarrassed by her admission.

  “I’ve never met anyone else who truly possessed the same power as Rodney,” Pastor Lett said. “Perhaps, Molly, your insecurities, or your past, interfere with your present,” Pastor Lett said authoritatively.

  Disheartened, Molly replied, “No, I’m sure it’s not that.”

  Pastor Lett continued, “When Rodney was a little boy, he used to tell me that things were going to happen. Bad things were going to happen. I never gave any credence to what he said to me, but then, as I got older and started really paying attention, I realized that they had started coming true, and the connection was undeniable.”

  Molly released a breath, her disappointment subsided. “So it is true. He did know things.”

  Pastor Lett nodded, “He knew facts and details about catastrophes that he couldn’t have read about or predicted by any means.” She turned her body toward Molly and looked her in the eye, welcoming the opportunity to discuss this hidden aspect of her brother’s life, craving the acceptance, and, she was ashamed to admit, the purging of the burden. “I don’t know how to tell if what you see, or what you know, is real, but I can tell you that with Rodney, it was. It was a little scary.” She took a deep breath, about to reveal what nobody understood, or cared to try to understand, years ago. “When Rodney was four, he woke up on June 16, shaking and crying. I remember because for years afterwards, every time he cried in the morning I prayed for a full forty-eight hours, even as a young woman, that nothing bad was going to happen. Anyway, he ran around our house yelling, something about a big bomb going off. The poor kid, he spent the whole day—and even slept that night—in the cellar, petrified. The next day, of course, June 17, 1967, China exploded its first hydrogen bomb. Rodney worried for years that they would bomb us and we’d all die.” She looked away, remembering Rodney screaming and frightened, as their parents yelled at him to just be quiet and stop making up stories. The memory saddened her.

  “Then there was the time, he was about five years old, when he started talking about this man that would walk on the moon in the month twenty. We had no idea what he was jabbering about. He kept repeating, over and over, ‘Month twenty, man walk on moon.’ He drove us crazy, until July 20, 1969, when he bound into the room and said to me, ‘See! Man walk on moon month twenty!’” Pastor Lett let out a little laugh. “We didn’t own a television back them. My parents believed television was the root of all evil,” she laughed at the thought, pausing to savor the memory. “That’s how it was with Rodney. When he knew something, he really knew it.”

  Molly could barely contain her enthusiasm, but Pastor Lett’s comment had subdued her notion of exposing her clairvoyance. The last thing she needed was for Pastor Lett to think she was crazy. She understood what she thought was Pastor Lett’s angst over Rodney’s visions. “It must have been difficult to bear that burden all by yourself.”

  She looked at Molly then. Finally, a little understanding instead of pity. “Yes. It was hard,” she said, “but I loved him—very much. People didn’t understand. No one took the time to see past the allegations.” Anger crept into her voice as she sat up taller and looked at Molly, “And now it’s like he never existed to them. They pummeled him and forgot him—forgetting that he was a person, a brother, a son. Pummeled him and walked away, thinking they were protecting their community from some…monster.” At this, Pastor Lett released her anger, “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was never able to protect him—not then, and not in the end.” Pastor Lett stood up and tried to pull herself together. “Molly, there were things he said that never made sense, too.” She looked away from Molly again, drawing into her own mind, “We had times like that, too, times where ramblings meant nothing more than torture to my poor brother, and a mere inconvenience to me.”

  Hannah meandered aimlessly through her barns. She had felt a sense of unease since the afternoon when she had taken part in the search for Tracey. The woodsy smell of the fallen damp leaves and the fear-stricken faces of the volunteers—faces that she knew hid the secret panic that they might find Tracey’s cold, lifeless body—coalesced and reawakened the memories that she’d forced herself to suppress; memories that she knew, at any moment, could send her into a frenzied state of panic and expose her secret. She had thought she could escape her own thoughts—do the deed and then act as though it had never happened—but they mixed with an overwhelming sadness and confusion that she could not keep at bay. And the anger—she could feel the rage mounting inside her with every breath she took. That anger, she feared, would lead to her discovery. She closed her eyes and ran her hand along the rough wood of the stalls, trying to suppress the memories that played in her mind with shocking clarity, like a rerun of a bad horror movie; the fight, the cold evening air, the desperation—Oh, the desperation! Tears streamed down her cheeks. She swiped at them with the sleeve of her rough wool sweater which left almost imperceptible scratches on her face. Others might not notice the thin abrasions, but Hannah took the quick piercing scratches as her due, punishment for what she’d done. Suddenly, guilt hit her with such force that it stopped her in her tracks. She stood, staring at her horses and wallowing in her own emptiness, the unfairness of life. She became uneasy and crouched down to gain control of her own body. She glanced up at Hunter, her Appaloosa, in whose curious eyes she saw accusation. Hannah covered her face as sobs wracked her body, her heart breaking all over again. She knew it was wrong! She’d broken rules—rules of society—and it distressed her. But she was mine, mine! Not theirs, not his! She slid to the ground, slamming against the hard wooden stall, her legs splayed in front of her.

  “Damn you, Charlie!” she yelled, startling the horse. Hannah pounded the concrete floor with her fists until her hands throbbed. She wiped her nose and waited for her trembling to subside. She looked up toward the ceiling and whispered, “I am so sorry, baby. I am so, so sorry.”

  Hannah pet Hunter and smiled at Gracie, a colt that she had recently inherited from a friend. “I can’t bring you guys with me. I have to be quiet this time.” She often treated the horses as people. Hannah spent more time with her four-legged friends than her two-legged ones. “But look, guys,” she said as she held up a handful of flowers, “I’ve got a present for her.” Hannah stuffed them into a knapsack and laughed a shaky little laugh.

  She made her way through the meadow that ran along the back of her barn, thankful that the only neighboring houses were acres away, and disappeared into the woods. Hannah had made that trek so often that it seemed second nature to her. She was at home in the fields and certainly in the woods. Today, though, Hannah felt as if she were being watched. She nervously scanned her surroundings, thinking about what would happen if she were ever caught. The thought turned her stomach. What would people think? How would I survive? Images of hard women flew to the forefront of her mind—big, stocky women with too many muscles and short, spiky haircuts that screamed of a manly presence, women who would circle her, looking her up and down like a piece of fresh meat. She envisioned herself standing there, old and weak, ripe for the taking, or beating, or whatever it was they did to each other in jail. Whatever it was, she was sure she would not survive it. Her head dropped with the weight of the world resting on her shoulders. I had to take her there. There was no other option. If people had found out she was with me, surely he would have come and taken her and done God-knows-what to me.

  Hannah resolved to be strong. What am I doing, living one life during the day and an entire other life that no one knows ab
out? The poor girl. She couldn’t know that I had to keep her from them. Hannah wiped her hands on her jeans and said to the surrounding forest, “There’s no way they’ll find her.” She took one tentative step, then two. Her steps grew strong, determined.

  Ten

  Tracey was again being dragged through the darkened tunnels. She wondered where she was being taken, but after being trapped in the dark, musty room with the mattress all day, she was glad to stretch her legs. It seemed like Mummy was always gone. Mummy had told her that they were going outside. Outside! Tracey was excited when she first heard that word, but her distrust of Mummy subdued the excitement. Tracey hurried, hardly able to keep up with her captor’s fast, purposeful gait. The speed of their trek gave Tracey an inkling of hope. Maybe she was going outside. Maybe she was being brought back to her own mommy and daddy. If they were going outside, then someone would surely see her, and Tracey was confident that her parents were searching for her. This was it! She was about to go home, she was sure of it!

  “Keep up, Tracey, Mummy is in a hurry,” the captor said.

  Tracey liked how nice Mummy was acting, and she was relieved that Mummy had finally changed her clothes and didn’t stink so badly. Tracey rushed as fast as she was able—the last day of resting on the putrid mattress had lessened the ache in her legs.

  “We’re going outside, Tracey! Outside!” Mummy said, cheerily.

  Tracey believed this would be a good day. Mummy hadn’t read from the Bible today, and she didn’t even worship in the morning. Tracey worried about why they hadn’t gone to the praying place, but she didn’t ask.

  The passageway narrowed, and tears stung Tracey’s eyes, tears of hope, tears of hope that she would not let tumble down her cheeks for fear of upsetting her captor. She held her arms tight against her body, away from the dirt walls. The narrowing tunnel caused Mummy to walk sideways to fit through. Tracey held her breath—the stench from the walls reminded her of wet, dirty puppies, the way they shake themselves off and splatter you with water and bits of dirt.