Innocent Blood by Susan Koehler

Author:Susan Koehler [Koehler, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Innocent Blood, Missing Person, Missing Father, Disappear, Disappearance, Football, Oil Field, Reckoning, Sinkhole, Paranormal, Hi/Lo, High Interest, High/Low, low reading level, Texas, Reluctant Reader, Scary Stories, Struggling Reader, Striving Reader, Teen Years, Teen Stories, Teen, YA, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781728479514
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

9

Over the course of her long walk home, Rosa is lost in thought. A local legend. It seems so silly. She doesn’t know a lot of local history, but she knows Foggy Creek’s abandoned oil field has been a desolate space for decades. She has no idea who owns it.

And Kyle Baron. Could he have been related to Horatio Baron? Was Mr. White trying to tell her that Kyle’s death was in some way paying for the sins of an ancestor? How does Mr. White know all of this? It’s not like he’s a local. He only started teaching at Foggy Creek High recently, and no one knows much about him.

Rosa shudders remembering the motion she saw in his steely gray eyes. Or did she really see it? First hearing voices, now seeing Mr. White’s eyes swirling. Maybe Manny is right. She’s been through a lot lately.

When her father first disappeared, Rosa held onto hope. She was sure he would return. There would be an explanation. Maybe he was lying in a ditch somewhere, injured. Some Good Samaritan would find him and take him to a hospital. There would be a phone call. Tears of relief and joy. The waiting would end, and everything would go back to normal.

But as time passed, hopes for finding Luca diminished. The rumors began. But Rosa knows they can’t be true. Her family is tight. Her father had plans for their future. There’s no way he would leave. However, as twisted as it seems, Rosa still clings to those rumors. If he chose to leave them, that means he’s still out there somewhere. And if he’s still out there somewhere, that means he could still come back.

By the time Rosa gets home, her water bottle is empty, and her head is filled with confusion. All the thinking has not allowed her to sort things out. It has caused her to relive the pain. She is happy to fall into her mother’s waiting arms. But why is her mother home from Rose Grocery? And why is she sobbing?

“Mama, what is it?” Rosa asks.

Marisol Vieja takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and makes the sign of the cross. She leads Rosa to the sofa, and they sit facing each other. Then her mother begins to speak. “The sheriff called,” she says. “They have found your father’s truck.”

As her mother struggles to remain calm and continue speaking, Rosa fights to breathe. It’s as if she’s been punched in the gut. She knows that nothing good can follow this news. She holds tightly to her mother’s trembling hands and listens as the next words come.

“His truck was parked off the road in a thicket of bushes and trees. He found some shade to keep the truck from getting too hot, but . . .” she dissolves into tears, so Rosa finishes the sentence for her.

“So that’s why they didn’t find the truck when they searched. But Mama, how did they find it now?” She is breathing again, thinking logically, trying to be the strong one now.

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