Voices Carry Page 4

  “Yum, this looks wonderful. This was really very, very thoughtful, John. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” was all he said.

  They finished dessert and sipped their coffee, making small talk while the sun set behind them and the dots of light from the first of the season’s fireflies flickered across the expanse of grass below. They could have been any two old friends, catching up after an absence from each other’s lives. But they both knew better, and they both were saddened by the knowledge.

  When the last of the coffee had been drunk and the last bit of small talk made, John stood to leave and Genna made no effort to talk him into staying. She walked behind him through the dining room, and paused, when he did, at the doorway to her living room.

  Glancing at the many photographs that lined one wall, John said softly, “It would have been nice if you had framed one picture of us from the good times, Genna. If only to prove that you thought there was at least one memory worth keeping.”

  Without looking back at her, he opened the apartment door and disappeared into the hallway.

  Genna had no idea of how long she stood leaning against the door, as if frozen in the moment he’d walked through it. Finally, like a survivor of a battle she hadn’t wanted to fight, she moved on wooden legs. To the balcony where she blew out the candle and gathered the cups and saucers and dessert plates. To the kitchen where she rinsed the dishes under hot water before placing them absently into the dishwasher. To the front door where she slid the dead bolt. To her bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the polished wood picture frame from the small table that sat under the window.

  There was just enough light from the hall for her to make out the image of John standing at the top of a Mayan pyramid that was overgrown with vines, one arm around a laughing Genna, the other lifted in salute to the French tourist who had snapped the picture for them.

  Hard to believe that little more than two years had passed since they’d been so happy together.

  John had planned that trip and made all the arrangements for them after Genna had made a casual remark one day that she’d always wanted to see the Mayan ruins on the Yucatán peninsula. They’d spent a week in the jungle, then a long weekend on the beaches in Cancun. It had been the first time that they’d gone away together, and, as fate would have it, the last. They’d come back home just as Sheldon Woods had abducted his third victim, and the next few months had passed in a blur.

  Genna knew she’d never been happier, before or since, than she had been for those ten days. She wondered if life would hold any more such perfect moments for her.

  Unaware of the tears that rolled down her face, Genna gently returned the photograph to its place of honor on her bedside table, turned on the light, and began to pack for the next morning’s trip.

  3

  A low, dense gray cloud greeted Patsy Wheeler when she raised the wooden blind and looked out through her bedroom window to take her first look at this new day. Undaunted by the fog, she went into the small bathroom and turned on the shower, whistling while she stripped off her short-sleeved cotton nightgown, humming as she stepped beneath the hot spears of water and lathered her arms with her favorite lavender-scented soap. Singing as she dried her hair—“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”—and later as she made the day’s first pot of coffee—“Just You Wait, Henry Higgins,” it being a show tune kind of morning—Patsy’s natural exuberance could not be dampened by a little thing like early morning fog.

  Dressed in white cotton shorts and a green pullover shirt, Patsy unlocked the screen door and stood just inside, peering out at the lake. The first of the bass fishermen were already out on their boats, silently gliding fifteen feet out from Patsy’s dock, drifting through the pale gray remnants of the fog that had begun to lift as the sun rose. Content with the knowledge that all was right with her world, Patsy returned to her small kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, relaxed and happy on a peaceful Wednesday morning in midsummer.

  A single woman in her sixty-third year, Patsy had never married. “Married to my career,” she had often replied when inquiring relatives would comment on her state, and it was largely true. That coming fall, for example, Patsy would celebrate exactly forty years in the same school where she’d started her teaching career the September following her college graduation. It was, in fact, the same elementary school she and her two sisters had attended.

  If Patsy’s life seemed to reflect a certain sameness, a lack of apparent excitement, it did not want for fulfillment. She had chosen to stay in the house she’d grown up in after her parents had passed on, buying out both of her sisters’ interests, because she loved the house and couldn’t imagine living anyplace else. She’d had the same feeling about the cottage on Bricker’s Lake. Her parents had built it years before, shortly after their marriage, and the entire family spent every summer thereafter swimming, boating, and fishing off the dock that jutted into the lake like a stubby finger. Every year without fail, just as her parents before her had done, Patsy opened the cottage for the season on Memorial Day weekend, and closed it up for the winter on the first weekend in October. Oh, she’d taken the occasional trip, visited Europe several times and enjoyed every minute she’d spent touring the French countryside and drinking Guinness in Irish pubs and exploring solid German castles. But she never tired of the cottage that faced the lake, never tired of her neighbors, though so many of the original folks were gone now, their little summer homes having changed hands. And over the past few summers, she’d seen more and more of the cottages rented out, an entirely new phenomena. But that was okay too. Patsy brightened. Always fun to meet new people, to make new friends.

  Like that woman who is renting the Palmer place next door. Patsy unconsciously peered through the curtains at the well-kept cottage to the right of her own. Seems like a nice enough soul, though it would be easier to get to know her if she was here during the week instead of just on the weekends. Said her job kept her traveling so much, but she was looking forward to spending as much time as she could here.

  Patsy tried to recall exactly what the new neighbor—Nancy, her name was—did for a living. Something about computers. . .

  She hummed a few bars of “Camelot” and sipped her coffee, thinking how nice it would be to have a friend here at the lake this summer. Not that she was lonely, or that she lacked for friends. She had good neighbors here and back home in Tanner, a little town just north of Pittsburgh, and there were colleagues and students she’d known over the years. She never felt that her life wanted for much. On the contrary. Patsy Wheeler would tell anyone who asked that she felt blessed and fulfilled, especially since that hot, humid August morning almost nineteen years ago when she opened the back door and found a child huddled, sound asleep, in the farthest corner of her deck.

  One of the Cotters’ kids, Patsy had thought at first, thinking that perhaps one of a neighbor’s seven children had slipped out during the night and had wandered a little too far down the road.

  Patsy had put her coffee down on the deck railing and squatted next to the sleeping form, stretching one hand out to gently touch the girl’s shoulder. The second that contact was made, the child’s eyes flew open in terror and one word—“NO!”—split the serenity of the morning.

  “Shhh, it’s all right, honey,” Patsy had cooed. “It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  The girl’s large hazel eyes had filled with tears and she began to sob.

  “Oh, now, baby, it’s okay.” Patsy attempted to ease the child into her arms for comfort, and it was then that she noticed the girl’s nightgown was ripped straight down the front, and that even in her sleep, she had clutched both sides, wrapping the gown around her slender body like a robe.

  And her feet—dear God, the child’s feet were caked with dirt and dried blood, as if she’d walked barefoot for miles through glass.

  Patsy gently turned the girl’s face to hers, and her heart just about broke. There wer
e scratches on her neck and one cheek, while the other bore an ugly bruise that started just below her eye and ended just above her chin.

  “Oh, sweetheart, who did this to you?” Patsy whispered and drew the little girl to her.

  The girl began to tremble, her small hands clenched in dirty fists, the tears now silent as they flowed in irregular paths down her cheeks and dropped onto the jagged neckline of her nightgown.

  “It’s all right now, honey. No one will hurt you here. I promise.” Patsy bit her bottom lip and rocked the weeping girl until the tears finally stopped.

  “What’s your name, sweetie?” Patsy asked when she sensed that the girl’s breathing was returning to normal.

  “Genevieve Snow,” the girl replied in a small voice.

  “Genevieve is a lovely name,” Patsy said, still rocking the girl in her arms.

  “My friends call me Genna,” she offered.

  “I like that, too. Which do you like better?”

  The girl paused, as if trying to choose.

  “Genna.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll call you,” Patsy said, then cautiously asked—though almost afraid of the answer—“Can you tell me what happened to you, Genna?”

  “Brother Michael. Ripped my nightgown.” Genna had raised her small, battered face to Patsy’s, whose heart, already broken, had shattered right then and there.

  “Brother Michael?” It had been an effort for Patsy to reply calmly, afraid to react lest she frighten the girl into silence. “Your brother, Michael?”

  “No.” Genna shook her head. “Brother Michael. At camp.”

  She pointed past Patsy, in the direction of the road and the woods beyond.

  “Do you mean the church camp up on the hill?” Patsy asked. “Do you mean Shepherd’s Way?”

  Genna had nodded.

  “Is Brother Michael one of the other campers? Or a counselor?”

  “He’s the Shepherd,” Genna told her.

  “He’s the Shepherd,” Patsy repeated flatly, having heard all too many times over the years how adults in positions of authority used that authority to abuse those in their trust.

  How much, Patsy wondered, should she ask, and how best to phrase it?

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Genna nodded. “He hurt me when he hit my head and when he held me down and got on top of me. My head hit the ground and it hurt then, too.” She rubbed the back of her head. “So I pushed him”—she shoved her hands out in front of her as if shoving someone away—“and he fell back and I pushed him in the stomach with my feet and he fell away. And I got up and I ran and ran and ran through the woods. I thought he was following me, but he didn’t find me, did he?”

  A flicker of triumph crossed her face and her swollen mouth turned up slightly on one side.

  “No, Genna.” Patsy forced back the rage that was welling inside her. “No. He didn’t find you.”

  “Am I going to be in trouble for running away?” The smile was short-lived as this possibility occurred to her.

  “No. You won’t be in trouble.” Patsy stood and held out her hand. “Let’s go inside and we’ll see about those feet and have a little breakfast while we think about what we’re going to do.”

  Once inside, Patsy locked the door behind them—just in case—and helped Genna up onto one of the stools at the counter in the kitchen. The child needed cleaning up—she’d hobbled on those bloody feet all the way from the deck—but there was the question of evidence and what might be destroyed.

  She poured small glasses of milk and orange juice and sat them before Genna.

  “Are you hungry, Genna?” Patsy asked, debating whom to call first. What to do first.

  On the one hand, Patsy knew the authorities had to be called immediately. On the other, Genna was a scared and injured child, and years of caring for wounded children, in her classroom and in her home as an occasional foster mother, had taught her that, above all else, a child needed to feel safe.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “Is cereal all right?” Patsy opened the cupboard where several boxes of cereal lined up like soldiers awaiting her command.

  Who do you call first when you find an abused child outside your back door?

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “What kind do you like best?” Patsy stood aside to let Genna choose.

  Perhaps the state police?

  “This kind,” Genna pointed to a box of flakes, then added, “thank you.”

  “You are welcome.” Patsy poured the flakes into a blue plastic bowl.

  Calling the police first seemed a bit, well, harsh. Would that not frighten the child all over again?

  “Peaches?” Patsy asked, trying to maintain an outward calm.

  “What?”

  “Would you like peaches cut up in your cereal?” Maybe Brian, her nephew, who was a county assistant district attorney?

  “I never had that.”

  “Would you like to try?” Or her niece, Pamela, who was a social worker?

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  The child is too damned polite, Patsy thought as she sliced a ripe peach atop the cereal. After what she’s been through, should she be this calm?

  “How old are you, Genna?” Patsy asked without turning around.

  “I was just nine on my birthday.”

  “You look younger than nine.”

  “That’s because I’m small.” Genna nodded.

  Patsy served Genna’s breakfast, and having no stomach for food herself, sat down on the stool next to Genna’s and watched as one spoonful after another made its way neatly from the bowl to the girl’s mouth.

  “Honey, I think we need to tell someone that you’re here,” Patsy said. “And I think we need to call your parents.”

  “Why?” The spoon hung suspended midway between the bowl and Genna’s mouth.

  “What Brother Michael did to you was wrong, Genna. It was very wrong. Your parents need to know. And they’ll be worried when someone from the camp calls and tells them that you’re missing.”

  “But I’m not missing. I’m right here.”

  “But here is not where you’re supposed to be,” Patsy said gently. “Do you know the phone number where I can reach your parents?”

  Genna looked at Patsy with eyes that spoke of her infinite patience.

  “Of course, I know the phone number. But I’m not going to call them.” Genna took a sip of her orange juice and placed the glass gently on the counter.

  “Why don’t you want to call them?”

  “My daddy and momma will be real mad at me and I’ll get a beating,” she announced matter-of-factly.

  “Genna, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I did.” Genna shook her head, and tears like tiny pearls welled up in the corners of her eyes. “I did not obey Brother Michael.”

  “If Brother Michael was trying to hurt you—trying to do something to you that was wrong. . .”

  “Jesus said, ‘Obey the counselors.’” What little color Genna had was beginning to drain from her face, confusion and doubt playing off each other in her eyes.

  “Genna, I don’t think that what Brother Michael did was exactly what Jesus had in mind. I think you were right to do just as your teacher told you to do. Running away was the right thing.”

  Patsy paused. She didn’t know exactly what Brother Michael had done, though the child’s terror had been genuine enough and the torn nightgown sufficient proof that whatever the counselor had done, it was a safe guess that it probably wasn’t anything that Jesus would have sanctioned.

  “Genna, I’m going to call someone who can help us straighten this out. . .”

  Thirty minutes later, a dark blue Mustang pulled into the narrow dirt and gravel driveway that ran parallel to Patsy’s house. A tall young man got out and, after a cursory knock at the front door, walked right in.

  “Aunt Patsy?” he called.

  “In the kitchen, Brian.”

 
Brian Henderson walked into the kitchen to find his favorite aunt sipping coffee and feeding breakfast to a small girl with pale honey-colored hair and the biggest hazel eyes he’d ever seen.

  “Genna, this is my nephew, Brian. He is a lawyer. This is Genna, Brian,” Patsy had said with exaggerated calm, “and she has a story to tell you. . .”

  And tell her story, Genna had. Though reluctant at first, once she realized that the story was going to have to be told, Genna gave it her all, not missing a beat from the second that she woke up in Brother Michael’s arms to that very minute that Brian walked into Patsy’s house. Brian, looking shaken, had called the state police and within less than ten minutes, two state troopers pulled into the drive behind Brian.

  By noon that day, all hell had broken loose at the Way of the Shepherd Summer Camp.

  And Patsy’s life had never been the same since.

  She couldn’t help but smile, though Lord knew that she’d have done anything—anything—to have spared Genna from all that had happened. The attempted rape should have been the worst that could have happened to the child, but in the long run, what came after had perhaps caused even deeper damage to the girl’s soul. Over the years, Patsy did all she could to make it up to Genna, but even she knew that she could never completely undo the past. Patsy had stood by Genna through it all, and in the end, with the court’s blessing, had taken the child home and raised her as her own.

  “And never regretted one minute of it,” Patsy said aloud as she stepped out onto the deck and headed toward the lake. “Not one minute.”

  She walked across the flat expanse of grass, thinking back to Genna’s phone call the night before. She had decided to take a little time off and thought she might join Patsy at the lake for a week, if, of course, that was all right with Patsy.

  Patsy chuckled. There was nothing that pleased her more than having Genna there for whatever time she could spare out of her busy schedule. A day, a weekend, a week—Patsy looked forward to whatever time they had together. That Genna was not of Patsy’s flesh and blood was only a technicality, as far as Patsy was concerned. Genna was her girl. One of Patsy’s proudest days had come one year on Mother’s Day when Genna, away at college, had sent Patsy a card in which she had written that the best part of her life began the day that the fates had led her, literally, to Patsy’s door. Every once in a while, when Patsy was missing Genna too much, she’d take that card out and read it again. It never failed to fill her eyes with tears and her heart with pride.