Mrs. Durham called.
“Yeah?”
“Daisy must still be in the woods. Go fetch her, will you, before that stew spoils? Both of you.”
“Can we finish our beading first?”
“No,” she said more sternly than she meant to.
“Okay. Come on, Lydie.”
Mrs. Durham handed Emaline a biscuit in a paper bag. “Here,” she said. “Give this to her right off. She’ll be half-starved by now. And keep at it till you find her, you hear? I’ll whistle for you if she beats you home.”
After Emaline and Lydie had hiked the forest path for a little while, chatting and calling for Daisy every now and then, Lydie put a fresh piece of gum in her mouth and said carefully, “Your mother seems pretty upset.”
“She’s always upset,” Emaline said. “Upset and worried. Like I said, we haven’t pulled ourselves together like you and your ma have. She’s just overreacting. Honestly, how far could Daisy have gone? She’s only four year old! She’s probably poking around for frogs or stones, the way she always does.”
“Daisy?” Lydie shouted.
Another half-hour passed.
“Little girl, little girl, where have you been? Gathering roses to give to the Queen,” said Emaline. “Little girl, little girl, what gave she you? She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe. Daisy?”
“C’mon, Daisy, we’ve got a biscuit for you,” Lydie called. Her voice was getting scratchy. “What time is it, anyway? It gets dark so early this time of year.”
“It’s…God! It’s going on four. I had no idea. She’s been out here since—when did Ma say she sent her out?”
“I don’t know. Hey, do you see any deer traps?”
“Oh, no,” Emaline moaned. “Boys and girls come out to play, the moon does shine as bright as day. Come with a hoop, and come with a call, come with a good will or not at all… Daisy!”
The girls walked on until they were dragging. “Are your feet hurting as much as mine?” Lydie asked.
“They’re burning,” Emaline said. “I’d love to dip them in the river about now…the river! Ma never lets her near the water alone, it’s so cold, and the undertows and the drop-offs, what if she accidentally…?”
“No one jumps into the river by accident, Em, not even a little kid. Calm down. You either jump or you don’t, and she knows better…hey, listen.”
“What?”
“Shhh. Listen. Over there, I think, in the brambles. Footsteps.”
“Daisy? Daisy?” Emaline called. Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot, but no one answered. “Daisy?”
A raccoon waddled out into the open. It rubbed one eye and swished its plump tail, blinked, and scooted back into the brush.
“If I’d just gone straight home like I promised,” Emaline said. “If only I’d been on time. If only…”
“Look, maybe Daisy’s already home,” Lydie said. “Maybe your ma whistled for us but we were too far away to hear. Maybe that’s why we can’t find her.”
“So should we—?” She straightened abruptly. “Lydie, listen. I hear something…Daisy?”
“Nope, just us,” came a man’s voice. Emaline’s neighbor Jed Pike and his son Emmett stepped out from a crowd of evergreens. “Your mother called us about Daisy. Afraid we haven’t had any luck so far.”
Emaline stole an anxious glance at Lydie.
“Don’t you fret now,” Mr. Pike said, stepping closer. He smelled like cows and hay. “My nephew is out here too, and your mother had an alert put on the radio, so there’ll be others. We’ll find her. Say, you ladies have lights?”
“Lights?” Emaline said. “No. We didn’t think we’d be out this long. We thought we were just—”
“You might want to get something then,” he said. “The sun’ll set in another hour.”
The girls stared at him.
“Good idea,” Lydie finally said. “C’mon, Em, let’s scoot back to your house for a flashlight or a lantern.” She tugged at her cousin’s arm until Emaline finally let herself be pulled along.
When they got to the house, Emaline couldn’t find her mother—the house was so crowded with neighbors and friends. “What are all these people doing here?” Emaline asked Lydie. “Look at all the food they brought, like for a funeral.” She looked around for Jack, but he didn’t seem to be here. Maybe he was out looking for Daisy.
“Why is everyone staring—?” Emaline said. She stopped mid-question, her legs suddenly wobbling, her head light.
Lydie helped her onto the sofa. “Let me get you some water,” she said, lifting Emaline’s feet onto the coffee table. “Or some juice. You need something—I’ll fix you a plate.”
“No, I’d gag on it.” She leaned her head against the sofa and closed her eyes. “I’m fine, I just need a minute. Just one minute.”
“Miss Durham?” came a deep voice overhead. “Emaline Durham?”
Emaline looked up to see her Aunt Clarisse and a uniformed man hovering on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“Emaline,” said the big man with the brick-red mustache. “I’m Victor Brown, state trooper, and I want you to know—”
“I’ve seen the trooper. He’s older than you. And a lot shorter.”
“That was Billy Moore.” He said the old trooper’s last name like it was MOO-wah, like it had no ‘r’ in it, like he wasn’t from around here. “He left a few weeks ago. I’m your trooper now. I’m in charge of this case.”
“Case?
“Case. Your aunt wants me to tell you—”
“Where’s my mother?” Emaline took her feet off the table and started to stand, but Lydie pulled her back down.
“In the kitchen, dear,” Clarisse said, taking a seat on the sofa and squeezing Emaline’s hand with her pudgy one. “She really wants to see you.”
“Well, what the heck does he want?”
“I just—your aunt wants you to know we got a lotta men searching for your sister,” the trooper said, twisting one end of his mustache between his fingers. “Upwards of a hundred, by my last count, including the whole fire squad.
