CHAPTER 25
“Who wants doughnuts?”
My spine stiffened like it did whenever Mom was having one of her good days. They were scarier than the difficult ones. When she was off, I knew to never let my guard down. But sometimes when she was in a happy mood, it would relax me, draw me in, remind me of how she used to be.
It hurt so bad when she’d switch, then.
“I do!” Junie said, appearing behind me, smiling big.
I shot her a look. Neither of us had mentioned how close Mom had been to another vacation yesterday, but it made her good mood now extra alarming.
“I know,” Junie said to me, pushing past to slide into the breakfast nook. “It’s an eat-your-vegetables day.”
I breathed a tiny bit easier. “Eat-your-vegetables day” was code for “strap in for a bumpy ride.” I’d explained it to Junie this way, when she was old enough: some days were crummy from sunup to sundown, and that was actually a positive because it meant you were using up your allotment of bad juju in a single day. The next day was a guaranteed good-luck day. Same theory as eating your vegetables first so there was only tasty stuff left on your plate.
Mom smiled over at me. “How about you, Heather? Want doughnuts?”
She had her hair done my favorite way, crisply curled with a white scarf tied like a headband, its loose ends draped over her shoulder. Her gaze was liquid and clear, eyeliner and peacock-blue eye shadow making her eyes appear impossibly large. Her rouge matched her lipstick. She looked like a television star, there in our kitchen, prepping the Pandolfo greaseless doughnut maker. I assumed everyone in Pantown owned one. They were carmaker Sam Pandolfo’s final invention, a cast-iron mold that cooked six doughnuts at a time. The original recipe called for whole wheat and raisins, but Mom made hers tasty, skipping the dried fruit and dusting her doughnuts with cinnamon sugar.
“That’d be great,” I said, sitting across from Junie. “Thanks.”
Mom hummed while she worked, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” I thought, every swish she made with her hips and private smile with her lips ratcheting up my nerves. Junie acted oblivious.
“I wish Maureen hadn’t run away,” she said, reaching for the orange juice carton.
Mom stopped. Swiveled. Her face had turned to wood. “What?”
Junie nodded. “Maureen ran away a couple days ago. That’s why we couldn’t play both nights at the fair.”
“Who told you she ran away?” I asked.
I’d brought Maureen’s diary home, where I’d paged through the rest of it. It contained only four more entries, all of them dated from this summer, each of them listing what she’d worn （pink velvet shorts, softball T-shirt with pink sleeves, lucky #7）， what she’d done and the number of men she’d done it to （two tonight. bjs only!!! he promised）， and what she’d been paid （$75—easier than waitressing. men are dumb.）。 Reading it made me positive that Sheriff Nillson knew what had happened to her.
“Charlie,” she said, referring to a kid in her grade who lived two blocks over. “He said Maureen was running with a bad crowd.”
“Hush,” Mom said, her voice sharp. “Don’t talk about Heather’s friends like that.”
I glanced at Mom with surprise. She rarely stood up for me. “It’s okay, Mom. Junie’s just repeating what she heard.”
“Well, was she?” Junie asked. “Running with a bad crowd?”
I considered the question. Ed set off my radar, but he hadn’t yet done anything wrong that I knew of. Ricky was trying his best to be a tough guy and Ant was close behind, but they were both familiar, and kids. Those three men in the basement room with Maureen, though? They were rotten to the core.
“She might have been,” I said, “but she didn’t run away.”
“How do you know?” Mom asked.
Her sudden interest in the world was unnerving. “She had no reason to. Nothing new was happening at her house. What would she be running away from? Besides, she would have told me.”
I believed that less every time I said it.
“How are my beautiful ladies this morning?” Dad asked, appearing in the kitchen, tightening the royal-blue tie at his throat. He gave Mom a kiss on the cheek, his hand lingering at her waist, and for once, she didn’t pull away.
That was too much for Junie to ignore. “What’s wrong with you two?”
They glanced at each other and chuckled, a purring sound I hadn’t heard from them in a while. Everything about this morning was off. It made me crabby.