Her Daughter by Anya Mora

Author:Anya Mora [Mora, Anya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

We exit the back door with our jackets pulled up high. We pull our hoods over our heads, but as I look up to the sky, the clouds have begun to part and though it’s still gray, the rain isn’t falling quite so heavily.

“Hopefully that will help with the investigation,” I say.

“Probably better than the snow,” Abel says. “I can only imagine how hard it was for people to look for clues when everything was covered.”

We begin to walk with our heads down low, crossing through the backyards of our neighbor’s houses, winding down the street. I don’t want anyone to notice us, to stop us, and thankfully, no one does.

If anyone is trying to meet our gaze, we don’t match it. Wordlessly, we head to the one place that is on all our minds — Cory’s house. I know the police don’t want us to be outside, but I feel claustrophobic inside. I need to be looking for my little girl, not staying locked inside my house. I’ve spent enough years feeling trapped.

When we’re two houses away and can see it in the distance, Olive gets nervous. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. What if Ruthie is there, and we see something we can’t unsee?”

Abel grunts. “Don’t say that,” he says. “Ruthie’s fine. Ruthie is going to be perfectly fine. Maybe she got lost.”

We all know how improbable that is. After twenty hours of her being gone, of course, it would be a happier ending to this story than the more likely one. The Jacobson house is on a corner lot. It’s a big two-story Tudor, run-down and ramshackle, moss growing on a roof that needs to be replaced and a crumbling red brick chimney. The front porch has a step with a cracked board, and the landscaping, though covered in snow and slush, has clearly not been tended to for years, maybe decades. The chain-link fence is ripped in places, and there’s a big dog in the backyard growling. I hear him growling at anyone who passes.

Maybe Olive is right. Maybe being here is a bad idea. Still, I urge them on.

“I just need to know something,” I tell them. “I’m tired of being the last to know.”

“I don’t know how much we’ll find out being on the outside looking in,” Olive says, her words making her sound so mature, so grown.

“I know,” I say, “I just hope.”

Hope, the word hangs in the air, and we watch as Boone and another officer I’ve never met before speak with Cory’s grandma on the front porch. She’s in a wheelchair, an oxygen tank strapped to it, tubes running into her nose, helping her breathe.

Cory runs up the steps, his jeans long and dragging in the slush. He’s in a black, short-sleeved T-shirt, not wearing a coat. His hair is long and greasy. He has a thick silver chain hanging from his belt loop holding his wallet in his back pocket.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he shouts at Boone and the other officer.

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