The Girl in the White Van by April Henry

Author:April Henry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

AMY DOWD

When I got the phone call about Savannah Taylor, the missing girl, I hadn’t thought about my Jenny for almost ninety minutes. Which was nearly a record.

Especially on a Saturday. On weekdays at the bank, I could lose myself in the minutiae of the day. Talk to customers about the houses and cars they were buying, nod along as they enumerated the merits of wrap-around porches and side-curtain air bags.

In my desk drawer was a photo of a four-year-old Jenny. She had her arms wrapped tight around my neck and her head tucked into my shoulder. Looking at that photo hurt. Physically hurt. It set off a hollow ache in my chest and stomach, even my arms and legs.

But that wasn’t the reason I had hidden it away. No, I had done it so that no one would ask about her. I’d also changed my nameplate and business cards to my maiden name, even though the divorce wasn’t finished yet. I couldn’t deal with the way people looked at me when they saw the name Dowd.

The pain was no longer fresh and raw. Now it was like a throb, as constant as the hidden beat of my heart.

I always hoped that Jenny would come to me in a dream. But she never did. Bob said she had for him. Why not me? Was she mad that I had accepted her death?

Over the past ten months, I’d gained twenty pounds. Eating mindlessly helped my brain go quiet, as I rhythmically chewed and swallowed until the bag or box or bowl was empty. And there was no point in working out, in running on a treadmill to nowhere.

No matter how I spent my time, I was always one minute farther away from Jenny. And the space between us just kept getting wider.

It wasn’t like she had fallen through the cracks. Night after night, her disappearance was the lead story on the local news and then the national news. A pretty white teen from an intact family? The media ate that up.

The cops used dogs, helicopters, psychologists, hypnotists, and even a psychic who offered her services for free. They searched creeks and abandoned buildings. Questioned known child molesters. Staked out Island Tan at the exact time and day Jenny had disappeared, questioning anyone who might have heard or seen something.

Only they turned up nothing.

They lifted hundreds of fingerprints from the tanning shop and, one by one, ran them through the system. A few turned out to belong to people with criminal records, mostly girls who had shoplifted. A sizable percentage belonged to unknown people.

It was like Jenny had been teleported into a different dimension. I still lay awake at night trying out different scenarios. Had the dad or boyfriend of a client taken sick notice of her? Or was it someone she knew well? Had someone robbed the place and then decided to take the only witness as well? Was it even possible that she had left, run off with the money

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