Endings by Linda Richards (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

it is possible to sit in front of a television and slip from station to station without a single mention of Atwater. He is loose somewhere, but he has gone quiet. Maybe he’ll hide forever. But there is nothing to see here, and the newsies have moved on.

I lean into that. Begin to get my mind around it. Begin thinking about plants and maybe cooking; puttering. Pushing away thoughts of splendid, questioning eyes. Lost children.

There are several days of this, but not enough of them to make up weeks. I am in a sort of stasis, but I apply myself. Tell myself to snap out of it. I take forest walks with my new pal. Make excursions into town for dog food and other supplies. Spend time in the garden. More time at the stove. Time to pass and fill. And just as I feel myself begin to relax into a sort of rhythm, the news trickles to me: a little girl has gone missing. And as I wake, the world wakes up again, too. And both of us—the world and I—we sit up and pay attention again. It’s like someone has turned a light switch on. Or maybe, shut it off.

Her name is Emma Schwartz and she is six years old, forty-two inches tall, and forty-eight pounds. We are told clearly that she is an average six-year-old, and she has been poached from a house just outside the city, while the babysitter sat in the other room. The parents had returned from an evening out to find that their little girl was gone. No signs of a struggle. Nothing broken in the entry or exit. It was possible a door had been left unlocked—and in—and then out—he had gone.

One can imagine Atwater with the child over one arm. Perhaps placating her, “It’ll be okay. I’m taking you to your mommy.” It’s a horrible picture and I force it away.

I see the distraught babysitter on the screen. She is a pale teenager with watery blue eyes and pale hair. The newsies capture her beside herself with remorse and, yes, even grief. The seriousness of this has not escaped her. There is a very good possibility that this loss will be complete.

“I was so sure I had locked the door,” she explains to the reporter. The words are smooth, the sides worn down. This is not her first interview and the words are beginning to feel dog-eared from use.

“And you didn’t hear a sound? You weren’t alerted by a knock or a cry from the child, or …”

“No,” the babysitter says, breaking into this litany. Her voice is still calm, but there is a wild look in her eyes. She wishes things were otherwise. You can see it. But they are not. “I’m sure of it. There was nothing.”

“Are you absolutely sure you locked the door?”

The hesitation is deep. “No,” she says after a pause that feels like twenty minutes but that had to have been less than fifteen seconds. And then again, “No. I’m not sure.” Eyes downcast, remorse thick on her like fuzz coating a tongue.

I hear all of this in increasingly alarmed tones on the various channels I search. Once again, experts are brought in and friends. We see the missing child’s tearful parents. The father has the studious air of a college professor, which I suppose is possible as San Pasado is a college town. He has glasses and a long chin. Today, his face is void of expression. But the lines on his face indicate this is not his usual look.

The missing child’s mother herself appears to be little more than a child. She has a waiflike face under so much hair, there would seem to be danger of it bending her neck from the sheer weight of it all. Together they are an attractive if slightly eccentric-looking couple. And they are beautiful in their grief. You can feel that anguish come in waves over the television.

At first it is not conclusive that Atwater is involved in this disappearance. I know in my heart that this is his work, even while I hold my breath in hope that it is not. I don’t want it to be Atwater. I want him to have fallen under a bus somewhere. Or, better still, gotten some sort of awful virus and drowned in a puddle of his own phlegm. Even though that feels very specific, the sentiment is clear: I want it to be anything that would remove him from the picture. Out of any picture. Forever. But the markers are right. After a few hours it is conclusive. It is Atwater, the police tell us. Or maybe it is more correct to say that the markers are wrong.

I sit in front of the television and watch and listen, but I don’t truly hear. My mind sees again little Ashley at the edge of Atwater’s garden. Ready for planting. Arden’s pale face drawn in on itself in fear for her daughter’s life. And though the timbre of his voice has faded in my mind, and I can’t quite remember his tone, I see us both in the dimly lit RV and the words I hear are painfully clear.

She was just so very tiny. And perfect. And she looked so soft. I really just wanted to pet her skin.

I shudder with all of it and try to shake it off like a wet dog, though I find to my distress that it is impossible to do that. The marks he has left have rooted too deeply.

I find myself wondering how much time we have. Last time we managed to bring little Ashley home, if not perfectly intact, then at least alive. How long would it have been? She’d been missing maybe four hours at most before we found her. I’d had the sense that things had been about to get worse just as we intervened. But I also knew that, in the past, there were those among his victims he