“I sure did,” Dad said jovially, not picking up on the accusation beneath her words, the warning. “I said Jerome was having a dinner party.”
“But I thought it was just for us. That we were the only ones invited.”
“I was the only one who was invited, if we want to get technical,” Dad said, chuckling, still not understanding. How could he be so blind? “But he’ll be happy to—”
“I think we should go home,” I said from the back seat, chilled and sweating at the same time. “Now.”
Dad turned to me, his forehead lined. It cleared when he saw my stricken expression, finally realizing. “Of course. Yes, I should have mentioned it was a larger party. Can you forgive me, Constance?”
The car held its breath. A kid biked past. Junie raised her hand to wave, caught herself, dropped it to her lap. I chewed on my bottom lip, waiting.
“Nonsense,” Mom said, finally. “We’re here now.”
We all exhaled.
Mom waited for Dad to come around to her side of the car and offer his arm. Junie and I followed them up the walk. With every step, I became more certain that this was the house, the one that had swallowed Maureen and made her do terrible things. The location was right, the feel, the way there wasn’t anything feminine about it, no flowers out front, not even shrubs, just grass and sidewalk and house. Nothing soft in the home’s lines, either, no welcoming touches like on most Pantown bungalows. Just a big, bleak square.
What did it mean if Jerome Nillson had forced a teenage girl into his basement and made her give BJs to him and his friends? What did it mean that the girl was now missing?
It meant he was a perv, one with power, and that Maureen wasn’t ever going to be found.
I felt as hollow as Easter chocolate by the time we reached the front door. Sheriff Nillson probably had had something on Maureen, caught her hitching or with her mom’s pills. Told her if she helped out at a party, he’d erase the stain. And then he’d offered to pay her, exactly like her diary said. Maybe he even bought her jewelry. That would explain her Black Hills gold ring and those new earrings, those pretty bobbing gold balls, just expensive enough that no high school girl would buy them for herself.
The door opened. Sheriff Nillson stood there, his thin red lips curved upward beneath his bushy mustache. “Gary promised he’d bring the whole family, and here you all are!”
“I’m a man of my word,” Dad said, shaking Sheriff Nillson’s hand even though they’d surely crossed paths at the Stearns County administrative building, where both their offices were, earlier today.
Mom handed him the Bundt cake, seeming smaller somehow than she had in the car. “I hope you can use this.”
“Thank you kindly, Constance,” he said, taking the cake with one hand and embracing her with the other. He squinted over her shoulder while hugging her. “Junie Cash, you’ve grown up five years since I saw you in church on Sunday!”
Junie blushed.
I felt bad for him because now he had to think of something nice to say to me.
“You’re looking good, too, Heather,” he said, his eyes still on Junie.
“Thank you.”
“Come on in, everyone,” he said, stepping back to let us enter. “Let me pour you all a drink. The others haven’t arrived yet. Should show up any minute.”
“What are you having?” Dad asked.
“Just a cola for now,” Sheriff Nillson said. “Might have to talk some business tonight.”
“I’ll have the same,” Dad said.
“Who else is coming?” Mom asked, standing just inside the door. I wanted to push past her, to figure out how to get a peek at the basement—there was still a chance I was wrong about which house it had been—but I couldn’t be obvious.
“I can tell you who’s not coming,” Sheriff Nillson said to Dad. “That mick from the Cities.”
“Gulliver’s not so bad,” Dad said, smiling like they shared a joke.
“If you say so,” Sheriff Nillson said, winking before he strode across the living room toward an ice bucket and a row of bottles full of amber-colored liquor. He threw some names over his shoulder, addressing Mom this time. “I’m expecting Deputy Klug and his wife, and Father Adolph.”
“Oh,” Mom said. “Oh.”
It was all happening so fast, this normal talk and movement on the surface, and below, Mom’s terror growing. I looked around to see if anyone else had heard it, the delicate pop indicating she had left her frame of mind. She was floating, untethered, just inside the front door. She would sink her claws into the first person who could moor her. I’d witnessed it a dozen times before. It wasn’t cruel; it was survival. Her head was lolling, searching for me, or maybe Junie. Dad was smiling, chattering at Sheriff Nillson, oblivious. Behind him was an open doorway with carpeted steps leading down.