was off the charts. She couldn’t bear to think beyond finding her lost other daughter.
She went back upstairs to get her jacket and roust Annabelle out of bed. While her daughter dressed she called Graden and made arrangements for him to be sure the tile setters were taken promptly to Stephen’s bathroom when they arrived. Thankfully, the plumbers had done a good job without her supervision. She’d have to count on the same thing from this work crew.
Cee Cee’s foster parents, Abe and Leola Johnson, lived on the north edge of town in a rambling white clapboard farmhouse with a barn out back and a large truck patch lying fallow beside it. Through the curtain of rain, Lily could see Abe in the barn with the three other foster children who lived with them, all boys ranging in age from ten to sixteen.
Cee Cee loved her foster brothers, but she had hated the work she was required to do around the small farm. She enjoyed sketching and reading, particularly fantasy and sci-fi. Her art work was good, and she often talked about studying at a great art institute someday. Lily had planned to help make the girl’s dreams come true.
Lily’s heart hurt as she parked her Jeep. With her fear for Cee Cee growing so huge it seemed impossible to contain and her trust in Stephen still shaken because he’d left for work before she could ask him about his lie, she sat there a while with the windshield wipers going and the heater on.
“Mom?” Annabelle was eager to go inside and see what they could find out. She hadn’t been happy about being awakened, but a shower and breakfast had turned her into an amateur detective. She’d spent the entire drive on her phone with her friends, tying to discover a lead.
“Okay.” Lily pushed aside the worry that had plagued her since her conversation with Toni, and braced herself for what would come next. “Let’s go inside and see if we can get a lead on Cee Cee.”
Leola came to the door in a chenille housecoat with an apron on top. She wore floppy houses shoes, and her hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed. She frowned at them standing on the other side of her screen door.
“I wondered who’d come calling at such an unholy hour without letting me know a thing about it first.”
The unholy hour was ten thirty, long past time when most people, even the woman’s husband and foster sons, were hard at work.
Lily had already girded herself for an unfriendly audience. Cee Cee didn’t tell her much about her home life, but she told Annabelle stories that broke Lily’s heart. There was nothing physical, nothing that could be reported, but there were a million other ways to break a young girl’s heart and her spirit. Sharp words and punishing silences, withheld approval and nasty looks.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Johnson, but I need to speak to you about Cee Cee.”
“What about her?” The woman said, and Lily’s fragile hope vanished. This woman didn’t know where Cee Cee was or who she was with. She was stubborn as a post behind her closed screen door and clueless as she glared at them.
“May we come in?”
“You might as well since you’re already here.”
Lily and Annabelle sat together on a sagging sofa in a sparsely furnished but clean front room where the wide-screen television was the centerpiece. They learned exactly nothing they didn’t already know about Cee Cee’s disappearance. To make matters worse, Leola seemed unconcerned.
“The girl’s nearly grown,” she said. “And she’s always had a mind of her own. I can’t keep up with her comings and goings. Besides, I thought you’d be doing that since she was with you.”
The woman was only saying what Lily had already thought. She should have been more watchful. She should have known what was going on under her own roof.
“I think we should report her missing to the police,” Lily said.
“She wasn’t with me when she left. I don’t have a thing to report.”
Since Leola was a foster parent, she probably didn’t want a missing child report showing up under her watch.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Johnson. I can assure you I’m going to do everything in my power to find her.”
“You do that, Mrs. Perkins.” The woman looked pointedly at the large diamond on Lily’s left hand. “But don’t come back whining to me if you find out she’s run off with some boy and got herself pregnant.”
Lily’s