up behind me. When he went around my car, he sat on his horn. Then the next time…That’s when he came at me. When I saw you go by, all I knew was that the size and color of your truck were the same as the other.”
He couldn’t tell from her tone if she still suspected he might have been its driver. Of course, she had responded to his call once she’d recognized him.
“I can’t believe anybody around here would do that.”
“I thought it might be kids. Showing off. Terrorizing the tourists.”
He thought about the possibility. His few encounters with the local population during the months he’d spent here hadn’t extended to any of the teenage population. Judging by the acts of violence the papers reported in other places, he supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that some local kids, drunk or stoned, might have pulled this kind of stunt.
“You are going to report what happened to the sheriff?”
“I don’t have a lot to tell him. I doubt big, dark pickups are all that rare in this area.”
They weren’t, of course, as evidenced by the one they were sitting in. His was perhaps bigger than most, but a lot of the local farmers used their trucks for hauling supplies and produce and even for towing trailers filled with livestock. All of which called for heavy-duty vehicles.
“Besides, I get the feeling Sheriff Adams thinks I should just go back home and wait for someone else to figure out what happened to my daughter. The problem is, if I do that, I don’t think anyone ever will.”
He knew from town gossip Lorena had repeated to him today that most people believed the baby’s body must have been washed downriver. Under certain conditions the currents in the Escatawpa could certainly be strong enough to take a child out of a father’s hands, which according to Lorena was Wayne Adams’s explanation of what had happened.
“She would be eight years old now,” Susan went on, the anger he’d heard before no longer in her voice, leaving it flat and hard. “Everyone said she looked like Richard, but…with babies that age, it’s so hard to tell. And now…”
He waited through the silence, knowing there was nothing he could say that would temper the pain of her loss. Despite the passage of time, it was all still there in her voice.
Her chin lifted again as she swallowed the emotion that had threatened her control. Slowly she shook her head.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’d know if she were dead. I’d know.” The declaration was almost fierce, brooking no argument. “She isn’t. She’s out there somewhere. Without anyone of her own.”
“Ms. Chandler—”
“That was the one thought I clung to all those years. That she was with Richard. I hated him for taking her away from me. I cursed him for not telling me where she was or why he’d taken her, but…no matter how bitter I was toward him, there was no doubt in my mind that he loved her. And I knew he’d take care of her.”
The rain pounding on the roof was the only sound in the cab after her last impassioned sentence. Even their breathing seemed suspended.
“Now…” she said again, turning to face him. “Don’t you see? Now I’m all she has. I just can’t let her go on thinking that no one has been looking for her.”
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