But eventually, as I knew she would, she looks into my eyes.
35
Vicky
“I can do the grocery run,” I say.
“Jeez, with what?” says Miriam, my boss, bent down in her office with the safe open, trying to scrounge up whatever petty cash she can. Her “office” is really a converted garage. We’ve tried to maximize every square inch of this property to fit as many people as we can in our shelter.
Miriam is a lifer at Safe Haven, one of the people who started it up thirty years ago after escaping an abusive relationship of her own. She has a severe look to her, rarely smiling, heavy lines on her face and silver hair pulled back tight, trim as a drill sergeant with much the same demeanor, though she has as big a heart as anyone I know.
“Low on funds already?” I ask. “It’s only the middle of the month.”
“We have twenty-two dollars,” she says. “To buy two hundred dollars’ worth of groceries.” She fishes into her jeans pocket and pulls out some cash.
“That’s okay, I have some money,” I say. I think I have maybe forty dollars.
“Don’t start spending your own money,” she tells me. “I don’t pay you enough as it is.”
But people have to eat. These women who come to us, seeking refuge from abuse, often with their kids—we aren’t providing much of a “haven” if we can’t supply them with meals. As it is, we buy as cheaply as we can, cutting out coupons, looking for sales, buying generic. Good thing I have many, many years of practice doing so.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just drop it. I’ll get as much as I can.”
? ? ?
I go to the shelter’s kitchen, reviewing the stock of groceries we have remaining and putting together a list. Then I debate whether to go to the superstore ten miles away or the local grocery store, with the four pages of coupons. The superstore is usually cheaper; we pay a one-time annual subscription fee—which I assume is how that chain makes its money—and buy groceries at a lower cost. But with coupons for the local grocery store, I might be able to stretch my dollar more. I have twenty-two dollars that Miriam gave me and thirty-seven of my own, and I have to make it count.
I’m midway through the comparison, clipping coupons and banging on the calculator, when my phone buzzes. It’s from Rambo, of all people, a text message. Why is my private investigator texting me? I open the message, all of three numbers: 911.
I pop out of the chair and head outside. I’ll want good reception. And more importantly, privacy.
? ? ?
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, walking into the parking lot outside the shelter, phone pressed against my ear, my feet crunching gravel. “Please, just—just tell me this is a joke.”
“Sorry, kiddo,” Rambo says to me. “It’s no joke.”
“When?” I say. “When did this happen?”
“They found the body five weeks ago. They identified her through DNA two days ago. The article was in the Register-Herald online. You can read it yourself.”
There’s no way in hell I’m looking up that article. Not on any phone or computer that can be connected to me.
“Where—where was the body found?” I ask, as if that matters.
“Bolt Mountain. You know that place?”
“Never heard of it. I’ve never even been to that part of the country.”
“Me neither,” he says. “It’s about a buck fifty, two hundred miles from where she lived.”
“And you’re sure it’s her?” I ask, flailing.
“I can only tell you what I’m reading, kiddo. ‘The skeletal remains of a woman found in August on Bolt Mountain have been identified as Vicky Lanier, who disappeared in 2003 from her home in Fairmont, West Virginia, at the age of seventeen.’ So that sure sounds right to me.”
God, that poor girl. Somebody killed her and buried her up in a mountain.
But also—poor me.
I look up at the sky. “So the missing person I picked as an alias is no longer a missing person. She’s no longer off the grid.”
“Well, she is in one sense, I suppose.”
“You’re not funny, Rambo. I’m totally screwed, in other words.”
No. No. Not when I’m this close. Not when I’m—this—this can’t be happening. Could my luck be any worse?
“Ms. Vicky, Ms. Vicky.” Rambo sighs. “I don’t know what you’re up to, and I don’t wanna know. But as of this moment, yes, if you’ve been telling everybody that you’re Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, who left at age seventeen in 2003, then a quick Google search will tell them one of two things. Either you’re lying, or a town of less than twenty thousand people had two girls named Vicky Lanier of the same age who went missing the same year.”