Problem Child (Jane Doe #2) - Victoria Helen Stone Page 0,41
my back.
“Lady, I don’t owe you shit.”
“We’re your family!”
“Fat lot of good that ever did me.”
When I pass my father, he’s set the fries aside and taken up his bourbon again. The TV is blaring now, our little family reunion insufficient to hold his interest. I breeze right past him toward the door.
My mom follows me outside. “You get back here.”
“A few minutes ago you told me to get the hell out of your house. I’m gettin’.”
“We need help. We’re out here suffering—”
“I can’t imagine that Social Security doesn’t treat you just fine, considering Central Baptist paid for a good chunk of this place. You ain’t gonna starve, Mama, and Daddy looks like he’s getting more than enough to eat. And drink.”
“So do you, you fat ass.”
“Oh, good Lord,” I mutter, nearly skipping down the ramp. The yard might be a dried-out mess, but damned if it isn’t a welcome sight now. Even the gray sky looks prettier now, but then again, I’m facing away from the steam cloud.
A glance toward the old trailer reveals the little window that used to be my room. The glass is cracked. I cracked it.
I stop and stare at the long line that reaches diagonally through the glass from one corner to another. I should have destroyed this place back then. I wanted to. But where would that have landed me? Living in an even more broken-down trailer on this same worthless land.
I leave my mom behind, still screaming my name as I drive away.
CHAPTER 11
I drop in on Central Baptist Church on my way out of town. It’s a Tuesday afternoon, so I expect things to be quiet, and they are, but there’s always a church secretary around keeping things running. I enter through wooden doors badly in need of a coat of paint.
The last time I was in a church, it was a shiny glass-and-metal warehouse for righteous souls, but Central Baptist is a small-town place. The chapel is dark, the pews are ancient, and I’m sure the basement meeting rooms still smell like mildew. They always did.
I’m not struck dead when I step into the small receiving area, so I continue toward a couple of open office doors I see past the bathrooms. Despite the gloomy day, it’s hot in here. If memory serves, it was always hot in here. Too much furnace in the winter, and nothing but a couple of window air conditioners in the summer. At least the basement was cooler during post-service potlucks, and that was all I cared about.
“Hello?” a woman calls from a room farther down. “Can I help you?”
“Hi there!” I lay on my Okie accent as I slide into the doorway. “I’m looking for Pastor Truman? He around?”
“No, ma’am.” The round-faced woman has a friendly tone, but her mouth is pulled into a perpetual frown that highlights the deep lines between her bushy eyebrows. “No. He left us several months ago.”
“Dead?” I ask.
“Oh no! Not at all. He moved up to Missouri, I think. Quite a surprise, but we are working on hiring a new youth minister. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I think Pastor Truman knew my niece Kayla?”
“Kayla?”
The eyebrows draw even closer together. She looks about fifty, but a good threading would take five years off her face, and she has kind eyes.
“She’s missing. You may have heard about that. Sarah’s granddaughter?”
“Sarah. Oh. Of course.” The lines smooth out a little when her face flattens at the sound of my mother’s name.
“Anyway, I found Pastor Truman’s card in my niece’s room, and I thought she may have confided something to him, him being a youth minister and all.”
Her face creases in genuine worry. “I’m so sorry about your niece, but I honestly don’t remember seeing her around here. Pastor Truman was here for several years, though, so maybe that card was from a while ago?”
“Could’ve been. When did he leave?”
“Oh, six months ago, I guess. Just out of the blue! His wife was pregnant with their third, and I guess she missed her family up in Hannibal, so off they went. He only gave us a week’s notice, but happy wife, happy life, right?”
“No scandal, then?”
“Of course not!”
“All right. Thanks for your help. And my mama’s really enjoying that new trailer.”
“Oh, sure, well . . . Tell Sarah we say hi. We ain’t seen her in quite a while now.”
“Since she got the trailer?”
“Well . . .”
“Don’t worry, she’ll be back around next time she needs something. You have