Sheine Lende by Darcie Little Badger

Author:Darcie Little Badger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Levine Querido

THIRTEEN

“What are you doing?” Marcos exclaimed. “It’s late!” He pointed at the clock hanging over a rustic set of drawers, the only furniture in their motel room, aside from two twin beds. Shane sat on the floor with a map of Texas spread across the brown carpet in front of her. They’d reached Kansas before Mrs. Park tiredly announced, “That’s all for tonight, sweeties.”

But before she could rest, Shane had to check something. “I’m curious,” she explained. “Mom, Bobby, and Donnie all disappeared in Less Crossing. What about the others?”

Marcos, who was already dressed in pajamas, his teeth brushed and his face washed, crawled to the edge of his bed and gazed down at Shane’s work. Using information she’d learned from reports on the radio, she’d marked the locations of the other ring incidents with Xs of blue dental floss. Three of them were in towns, and two were in the suburbs of Austin.

“Why do you care so much about the other people?” Marcos asked. “They’re already found.” As he spoke, he scratched Nellie’s shimmery head. The old hound had plopped down at the foot of the bed, too, as if wanting to join the conversation.

“I’m looking for a pattern. And I think I’ve found one. All the points are near a thin gray line with dots, see?” She double-checked the legend. “That’s a railroad track. They shut down the railroads after everything happened, so …”

“What?”

“Guess the authorities noticed this, too.” She waved at the Xs. “You think somebody was riding ’cross Texas, spreading rings like a Johnny Apples?”

At that, Marcos cocked one eyebrow incredulously. He had thick, dark eyebrows, which heightened every expression on his serious little face.

“What?” Shane asked.

He shrugged. “How does this help us find Ma?”

“I don’t know.” It probably didn’t, if she was honest. However, trains might explain why Lorenza went missing in the first place—how the rings were distributed.

Marcos nodded in acceptance, his somber eyes skimming the map, as if he’d find Lorenza’s location marked somewhere among the multicolored lines and symbols. “Shane,” he went on meekly, “what if … Mom’s …” After a moment of hesitation, he mouthed the word: dead.

“No.” Quickly, Shane stood. “She’s alive.” She walked across the room and gently nudged Nellie aside, making room to sit next to Marcos. “I know that for a fact.”

“You do?” For the first time since Lorenza went missing, Marcos’s eyes seemed hopeful, and he even smiled faintly, as if Shane had offered him a gift. “How?”

“When somebody in the family dies, somebody Nellie knows and loves, he howls. Doesn’t matter where they are. It ain’t a normal howl, neither.”

“You’ve heard it before?”

“Three times,” Shane said, and her clever brother must have understood the implication, since he didn’t ask When?

“Ma is out there,” she promised him again.

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