One day, the girl would be real.
The visions of the blond child had pushed Maggie to the edge of insanity. And with them came something else that filled Maggie’s mind even now, a darkness that threatened to destroy her, to leave her locked in a padded cell, wrapped in a straight jacket. Or worse.
The problem wasn’t so much that she was misplacing her car keys more often than usual or forgetting dentist appointments or leaving cold milk in the pantry by mistake or seeing imaginary little girls every time she turned around. It was all of that, yes, but it was something more that made her truly question her sanity. It was the certain feeling that something hideously dark and possibly deadly—something that now seemed closely linked to her secret—was closing in on her.
Something from which she couldn’t escape.
A chill ran down Maggie’s spine; the secret was no longer something she could ignore, something she might pretend had never happened. It didn’t matter whether she acknowledged it or opened it and laid it on the floor for everyone to look at.
It simply was.
Indeed, its presence had become a living, breathing entity. It was the embodiment of darkness that lay beside her at night and followed her through the making of beds and breakfast and daily appointments in the morning. It sat next to her in the car, breathing threats of destruction should anyone find out the truth—
Stop this! You’re making yourself crazy!
Maggie pushed away from her desk and gathered her things. Fresh air, that’s what she needed. Maybe a walk through the park. She glanced at a stack of magazines on her desk and did a double take. There she was again! Gracing the cover, looking directly at Maggie … the same little girl.
Then in an instant, she was gone.
Air released from Maggie’s lungs like a withering party balloon.
Yes, she was losing it—free-falling over the canyon’s edge—and there was nothing she could do to prevent the coming crash. She wanted help, truly she did, but there wasn’t anywhere she could turn, no one to talk to.
No one who would believe that Maggie Stovall was having a problem she couldn’t handle by herself.
Finally, desperate, she’d placed her name in the offering bucket when the pastor had asked which women would like prayer from an older, senior Christian. Maggie didn’t know if it would help, but it couldn’t hurt. And it was better than facing someone with the truth.
She headed for her car.
How had things gotten so bad? Years ago she would have had two or three days a month like this and called it depression. Not that she told anyone how she was feeling, even back then. She was a Christian after all, and Christians—good Christians like her and Ben—did not suffer from depression. At least not as far as Maggie could tell. But this … this thing that haunted her now was beyond depression.
Far beyond it.
This was the kind of thing that sent people packing to psychiatric wards.
2
Amanda Joy sat huddled on a narrow bed, leaning against the chilly wall of the third house she’d lived in that month. The silence was scary, like in the movies before something bad happened … but then she was only seven, and lots of things seemed scary. Especially since coming to the Graystone house.
Footsteps echoed in the distance, and Amanda gulped. Mrs. Graystone was awake, and that meant she’d be coming to check on her. Pushing herself off the bed, Amanda yanked on the covers and straightened the sheets. Beds had to be neat or …
Amanda didn’t want to think about it.
Maybe there was another place she could go, some other foster family who wanted a little girl for a while. She tugged on the bedspread as she remembered the house she’d stayed at just after summer. Her social worker had called it a mistake, a bad placement. Five days later Amanda was packed and sent to a home five miles south, a working farm with three teenage boys.
She shuddered at the memory.
The boys’ parents wanted a foster girl to give the missus a hand with laundry and indoor chores. But while she did up dishes or folded laundry the boys teased her until she was afraid to get dressed or take a shower. Two weeks later the mister found her in the barn, hands tied behind her back with baling twine. Her shirt lay in a rumpled heap on the ground, and the boys were taking turns poking at her, threatening to do terrible things to her if she screamed.
The boys received a whipping from their pa, and she escaped with her social worker before dinnertime.
She didn’t know what she would have done without her social worker. For a moment, Amanda forgot about the chores and sat slowly on the corner of her bed. Kathy Garrett.
In some ways Kathy was more like a mother than anyone she’d ever known. Anyone except the Brownells.
The Brownells had been Amanda’s only real parents. They adopted her as a baby and gave her a wonderful life for five short years.
The house was quiet again, and Amanda wondered if Mrs. Graystone had fallen back asleep. There had been an empty liquor bottle on the table when Amanda got home from school. Alcohol made Mrs. Graystone very tired, so maybe she would sleep for a long time.
Amanda slipped off the mattress and lifted the plain, gray bedskirt, poking her head under the bed. There it was. Gently she pulled out a brown paper bag, opened it, and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the contents inside. A photograph of her with the Brownells, three folded-up awards she’d won in school, a bracelet she’d found in the lunchroom the year before. She plucked out the picture and stared hard at it. The checkered dress she’d worn that year was a hand-me-down from the neighbors. All the girls in kindergarten had laughed at it, but Amanda figured out how to make them stop. She prayed for them.
She’d knelt beside her bed at the Brownells and prayed. “Dear Jesus, help those girls in my class be nice. Because they don’t have happy hearts, at least I don’t think so.”
Neither did Mrs. Graystone. Which was why Amanda had been praying for her, too. She sighed and set the photograph back in the sack. As she peered inside, her eyes fell on the yellowish newspaper article.
Amanda pulled it out and opened it carefully.
She couldn’t read very well, but she’d read the article often enough to know what it said. It was a news report of the accident that killed the Brownells.
“Icy tree limb lands on car, kills Woodland couple,” the big words on top yelled out.
Amanda felt tears stinging her eyes. The smaller letters said how the Brownells had a five-year-old daughter. But they didn’t say there was no one for her to live with once the Brownells were gone.
She remembered meeting Kathy Garrett for the first time at school that afternoon—the day of the accident. Kathy told Amanda that she had known her as a little baby and that she had helped the Brownells with the adoption. At first it had been nice, sitting in the office talking with the pretty lady. But then Kathy told her about the accident and after that her tummy had felt sick inside.
Sick and scared.
“You can stay with us tonight, sweetheart,” Kathy said. “But after that we’ll find you a foster home. A place where you can stay until another family adopts you.”
They’d found a home. A foster home, like Kathy had talked about. And then another one. And another one. But the best times of all were when Amanda was between foster parents and got to spend a night or two with Kathy and her family.
Amanda closed her eyes and pictured Kathy Garrett’s home. Warm, with lots of light and laughter and good smells from the kitchen. Someone was always talking or telling a story or singing or dancing. When Amanda was there she didn’t feel like her name was Brownell at all. She felt like it was Garrett. Like she belonged there. Like she was one of them. She even had her own chair at the kitchen table.
At times like this she wondered if they left her empty chair at the table when she wasn’t there, if the Garretts missed her as much as she missed them.
She opened her eyes again, folded the article, and slipped it back inside the bag. It was the sam
e bag she’d had for two years, and she was careful not to rip it as she folded the top down and slid it back under the bed.
Kathy Garrett was married to a happy man named Bill. He would lay on the floor and wrestle with the kids until they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. He always laughed. But one time …
One time Bill didn’t laugh. When he brought everyone together in a circle once to pray for Amanda. During the prayer, when he thought she wasn’t looking, Amanda caught him crying. Not loud tears like kids cry, but quiet ones that rolled off his face and didn’t make his nose sound stuffy.
Amanda stared at the barren walls in the chilly room, but in her mind she could see Bill and Kathy, laughing, playing with their children. Lots and lots of children. The Garretts had more kids than anyone Amanda knew. Seven altogether, all squeezed into three happy bedrooms. Kathy liked to say it wasn’t the size of the house that mattered, it was what the house was made of. After living in a dozen different houses in two years Amanda was sure of one thing: Kathy wasn’t talking about bricks and carpet and stuff.
She was talking about feelings. So as far as Amanda was concerned, the Garrett house was made of all love and sunshine.
There were footsteps again and Amanda’s heart quickened. Mrs. Graystone had four other foster children living with her, all of them crammed into two small bedrooms. Her husband drove a truck for a living and was hardly ever home. The other kids liked to tell secrets about Mrs. Graystone, and the first day Amanda arrived they told her what they thought of their foster mother.
“Old Graystone uses all our money to buy her smelly cigarettes,” one of the kids told her that first day.
Amanda frowned. “What money?”
An older girl laughed out loud. “The gov’ment money, goofball. She’s supposed to use it to buy us food and clothes and stuff.”
“Yeah, but she never does,” the first boy poked Amanda on the shoulder. “You’ll see soon enough. Two meals a day if you’re lucky. And if you’re hungry at night then too bad for you.”
The kids had been right; Mrs. Graystone’s house was made of scary sounds and hungry nights. Lots of hunger.
There was a sharp knock at the bedroom door, and Mrs. Graystone burst inside. She was a big woman with an angry mouth and rolls of stomach pushing against her flowered dress. Amanda jumped to her feet and backed up against the farthest wall as Mrs. Graystone waddled toward her.
“Why aren’t you cleaning your room?”
Amanda looked about and saw nothing out of place. “I made the bed and picked up the clothes like you said.”
“Anyone could do that.” She came closer and shook a finger at her. “Do you think I brought you here so you could live like a princess?” The woman’s voice rattled like windows in an old house when the wind blew hard outside.
“What else do you want me—”
“Don’t be impertinent with me, young lady.” Mrs. Graystone’s face was red, and Amanda was scared. The woman had never hit her, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. Other foster parents had done it. Not all of them, of course. Some of Amanda’s foster placements had been wonderful homes like Kathy’s. But her stay at those homes was never permanent. They were something called short-term or crisis-care stays. Something like that. After a little while in those places, Amanda always got packed up and sent to the next foster home.
Since she was not sure what impertinent meant she squirmed toward the corner of her bed and remained silent.
Mrs. Graystone lowered herself over Amanda and glared at her. “I don’t need no insolent brat living with me. I can make the same money with someone who’ll do as I say. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman raised her hand, and before Amanda could take cover it came crashing down across her cheek. The blow made her fall to her knees, and she gasped for breath. I’m scared, God, help me!
Amanda covered her face with her hands and felt her body shaking with fear. Don’t let her hit me again, please …
“Don’t you yes, ma’am,’ me, missy. Now get up and get to work.”
Amanda separated her fingers so she could see Mrs. Graystone again.
“Move your hands from your face!”
Amanda’s cheek felt hot and sore but she did as she was told. The woman pointed to a broom that stood in the corner of the room. “I want that hardwood floor swept and polished. And when you’re finished you can take a rag to those awful walls. I swear the last brat who had this room didn’t do any better than you.”
She was still on her knees, afraid to move. Kathy’s coming today. It won’t be long. Just a few more hours and I can leave. Kathy won’t let me—
“Move it!” Mrs. Graystone grabbed Amanda’s arm and yanked her to her feet. Then she pulled a rag and a bottle of floor polish from her apron and tossed it on the floor. “I want this place clean in an hour or you can forget dinner.”
The woman took slow steps toward the hallway, then slammed the door shut as she left.
Why does she hate me? Are You there, God? Don’t You hear me? All I want is a mom and a dad. I’ll clean my room perfect every day I promise. But please, God please give me a mom and dad. Someone like Bill and Kathy.
Tears stung at the girl’s eyes as she took the broom and worked it across the floor in long strokes. She would be eight in six months and though she was small for her age, she’d been sweeping floors for as long as she could remember, so she had the task finished in a few minutes. Her mind began to drift back to when she was little, before her adoptive parents were killed. As she took the rag and began working polish into the floor, she started to cry harder.
Even if she were going to see Kathy later, it wouldn’t solve anything. She’d still be a ward of the court, a foster child looking for a family. She wandered tentatively over to the brown sack and the photograph of her with her adoptive parents, the Brownells. They had been wonderful people, but they hadn’t been like real family.
She closed her eyes and she could hear herself asking the familiar question:
“If you adopted me, how come I can’t call you Momma and Daddy?”
Mrs. Brownells answer was as clear now as it had been that spring day all those years ago. “Child, we will always think of you as our daughter, but Mr. Brownell and I never planned to have children and we don’t think it proper for a child to call us by so familiar a term. Mr. and Mrs. Brownell suits us better. But it doesn’t mean we love you any less.”
Even back when she was five the answer had felt uncomfortable, like a shrunken sweater. She studied the picture once more and as she went back to work on the floor she thought of her mother. Her real mother.
The Brownells had told her about a young woman who had been unable to care for her new baby and so, out of love, had given her to them to raise. But ever since God had taken the Brownells home, Amanda had kept a secret wish that somewhere out in the big world her real Momma was missing her.
And that one day God would bring them back together again.
3
Maggie stood in the parking lot outside the newspaper building, pulled her running shoes from the trunk of her car, and slipped them on. Just then her cell phone rang, and she exhaled in frustration. What now? I only have an hour to finish my run and get the boys. If she didn’t burn off some of the anxiety coursing through her she wouldn’t make it through the day. She grabbed her purse and yanked the phone from inside.
“Hello?”
There was a hesitation on the other end that almost made Maggie hang up. Then the voice of an older woman cut the silence. “Maggie Stovall?”
“Yes?” Great. Now I’m getting sales calk on my—
“Maggie, this is Laura Thompson. From church. I’m sorry to bother you … ”
As the woman’s voice trailed off, Maggie pictured her: late sixties, gray hair, soft face, always involved in one committee or another. Concern transcended Laura Thompson’s voice, and Maggie felt herself tense up. What would Laura Thompson want with her
? “No, that’s fine. What’s going on?”
The woman cleared her throat. “Well, dear … we picked names last week, and I wanted you to know I got yours.”
Maggie’s mind was blank. Names? What was Laura talking about? “I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“The prayer team, remember? You put your name in the basket so one of us would pray for you.”
Maggie’s concentration was waning and without reason her heart began to race. “Prayer?” Then it hit her. Laura was right; she’d written her name on a slip of paper requesting one of the older women in the church to pray for her. She’d never expected a phone call from one of them. Silent, anonymous prayer was one thing, but this … She felt her cheeks grow hot. “I remember now. So, uh, thanks for letting me know.”
“Yes, I’ll be praying. And I’m here for you, dear. If you need anything, anytime. You can call me. We’ll pray on the phone, or I can meet with you. Whatever you’d like. Whatever’s on your heart.”
Pray with Laura Thompson about what was on her heart? The idea was so terrifying it was ludicrous. Impossible. If Laura knew her secret everyone at Cleveland Community would know, too. And they would never look at her the same. Maggie’s heart beat faster still, and she managed a polite laugh. Control, Maggie. Show her you’re in control. “Thanks for the offer, Laura. But really, everything’s fine. I only asked for prayer because … well, you know … it can’t hurt.” She laughed again, forcing her voice to sound upbeat.
Silence.
She knows. Oh no, it can’t be. How did she find out about me, Lord? Maggie closed her eyes and forced her trembling knees together. “Laura?”
“Yes, dear, I’m here. It’s just—”
Maggie cut her off. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d still like you to pray. But there’s no crisis or anything, that’s all.”
“Okay.” Laura didn’t seem convinced. “I’ll let you go, dear. But I’ll be praying all the same. My number’s in the church directory.”