Called Home Page 4

  Footsteps sounded on the back porch and she turned in time to see Ed, the mail carrier, rapping on the kitchen door’s glass. She drained the glass, turned it upside down in the drying rack, and opened the door.

  “Everything okay?” Ed asked as he handed her a pile of mail. He shot her a quizzical look.

  “Sure. Why?” She gave him an equally curious glance in return.

  Ed typically left the mail in the box at the end of the long gravel driveway. He only came up to the house when he had an oversized box to deliver. And even then, he came to the front porch, not around to the back.

  “Well, your truck’s parked in your flowerbed, for starters.”

  Her cheeks grew hot. “Oh, that. I … I thought I should learn how to drive it. You know, with Joe gone.”

  “That’s not a half-bad idea.”

  “But, it turns out I’m not very good at it.” She laughed bleakly. “Obviously.”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s not hard. A truck’s a dumb animal. It only does what you tell it to do. Give it the gas, and it’ll go. Hit the brakes, and it’ll stop. Turn the wheel, and it’ll turn. That’s pretty much all there is to it.”

  “That sounds easy enough, but the two hours I’ve spent spinning the wheels on the driveway say otherwise.”

  “Well, there’s your problem. You have to get ’er out on the road.”

  The road. With other cars. And trucks. Four-way stops at intersections. Merging. Yielding. Her stomach lurched at the thought.

  “Huh. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself. But you’re gonna want to get that thing off your rosebushes sooner rather than later.” He tapped two fingers against the brim of his cap in a good-bye gesture and stepped back out onto the porch.

  She watched him leave and then turned a baleful eye toward the truck crushing the late summer roses. She flipped through the stack of envelopes. Junk, junk, bill, junk, condolence card, bill. She pitched the entire pile in the trash and returned Joe’s keys to the peg by the door.

  Then a pair of warblers fluttering around the oak tree out back caught her eye. She went to the window to watch.

  The phone rang. She watched the birds.

  The phone continued to ring. She continued to ignore it.

  The birds flew out of sight. After a moment, she picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  On the other end of the line, her mother-in-law’s voice was tentative. “Roo? Is this a good time to talk?”

  “It’s a fine time, Dottie.”

  “Okay, good. I … we … were wondering if Rufus could stay with us just a little bit longer? He seems to take Dad’s mind off … Joe. Walking him lifts our spirits. And he seems really happy out back, chasing the chickens and making friends with the barn cats.”

  The image of Rufus playing in the barnyard made a smile flicker across Aroostine’s lips. Her mouth curved upward rustily, as if she were the tin man in need of a good oiling.

  She and Joe had both always thought of Rufus as her dog. After all, she was the one who’d found him, covered in mud, by the side of the road and brought him home. But in the days since Joe’s death, Rufus had proved to be devoted to his master. He roamed the farmhouse in a nonstop circle, keening and howling, day and night, for hours at a time. As if he knew that Joe was gone forever.

  Finally, she’d begun to fear for the dog’s mental health and had called the vet. Dr. Rhoden had prescribed a change of scenery, so Rufus had gone off for a visit with his grandparents.

  “Aroostine? I’m sorry if I overreached.” Dottie’s worried tone jarred her back to the present.

  “What? Oh, no … I’m sorry. I was just picturing Rufus and your chickens. Please, keep him as long as you like—it sounds like he’s doing much better with you than he was here.”

  “Are you sure? Aren’t you lonely out there?”

  She was. She was achingly lonely. But Rufus was a golden retriever, not her therapist. And he deserved some happiness.

  “I’m positive.”

  “Thanks.” A pause. Then, “You know, you’re welcome to come stay with us, too, honey.”

  “I know, Dottie. And I appreciate the invitation. But I’m doing fine, really.”

  Dottie didn’t bother to call her on the obvious lie. Instead, she changed her tack. “Then why don’t you go to your parents’ place for a piece? Just until you get back on your feet. It’s not good for you to be all by yourself.”

  “I’m really all right.” She drew herself up in reaction to the pity in her mother-in-law’s voice. Her eyes fell on the manila folder on the table. “In fact, I’m about to start a new project. It’s going to be keeping me pretty busy.”

  “Hmm. Is that so?”

  “Yep. So, I actually need to get going. Let me know if you need more food for Rufus and give him a belly rub from me.”

  “Oh, I sure will. And maybe Dad can pick you up on Sunday and bring you over for supper? You can give him those belly rubs in person.”

  “Maybe. Bye now.” She hurried to end the call before Dottie started talking again. She’d learned from Joe how to spot an opening in a conversation with his mom and convert it into a goodbye.

  She returned the phone to the table and glared down at the folder that held the information about Dahlia Truewind’s disappearance. Maybe she really did need a project. Even if she couldn’t find Dahlia, the hunt would take her mind off the hole that had been ripped into the fabric of her life.

  She huffed out a breath then flipped the folder open and took out the oversized envelope Carole had given her on her way out the door. She turned it over and shook its contents out onto the table. Then she stared down at them for what was easily the hundredth time.

  Her own face stared back at her from a driver’s license, allegedly issued by the State of Iowa to ‘Rue Jackman.’ A matching fake registration card from Iowa identified Rue Jackman as the owner of the pickup truck that had sat in the driveway—well, now the rosebushes—ever since Joe had died. An Iowa license plate rounded out her set of counterfeit documents.

  She reached up and rubbed the charm that dangled from her necklace. Then she squared her shoulders and crossed the room to retrieve the truck keys.

  It only does what you tell it to do, she reminded herself. She headed back outside to tell it to get out of her garden.

  8

  Thursday afternoon

  Vermillion, South Dakota

  Dahlia dug a crumpled ten-dollar bill out of the pocket of her jeans and paid her lunch tab. She was groggy—even a little bit dizzy—from tiredness. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise. She checked her watch.

  She’d been awake for almost thirty-two hours now, since Wednesday morning. Getting some food into her stomach had helped. But she needed to get some rest, and soon.

  She used the ladies’ room, splashed cold water on her face, then shouldered her bag and stepped out of the diner. She closed her eyes, turned her face up to the sun, and let the mid-afternoon brightness shine down on her while she filled her lungs with crisp, clean air.

  Then she started the short walk to the university.

  All the news segments had reported that Mercy’d been killed on the Vermillion University campus. But strictly speaking, that wasn’t true. She was killed in a park along the bank of the Vermillion River. A group of water protesters had set up camp there after they’d been forced out of their camp at Standing Rock last year.

  While most of the protesters had long since returned to their homes, a core group of true believers—many of them from the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota Nations (or as the news insisted on still calling them, the Sioux) had drifted toward the colleges and universities, trying to reignite interest in the pipeline and looking for the next cause to mobilize behind.

  Dahlia snapped to attention as a dusty VW bug slowed to a crawl beside her. Her heart ticked up a notch as the driver rolled down his window.

  “You need a ride?” The guy smiled easily.

  He was Native. Longis
h dark hair combed neatly behind his ears. Sparkling teeth. A gray t-shirt. Probably her age or a little younger. He looked harmless enough.

  She almost said yes. Then she remembered: she looked harmless enough, too.

  That was why Ms. Markham had sent her to Vermillion in the first place. But she hadn’t been harmless. And there was no reason to assume this guy wasn’t working for Bedrock Force. Or Delta Operational Tactics. Or Lion Team. Or any one of the amped-up, ready-to-rumble security teams that were crawling all over the state, doing the bidding of the energy companies and big manufacturers.

  She smiled back as warmly as she could manage. “Thanks, but I like walking.”

  He drew his eyebrows together and gave her a puzzled look. For a moment, she thought he was going to insist. She tensed her shoulders and kept walking. He smoothed his expression and shrugged.

  “Suit yourself.”

  He rolled up the window and accelerated. As he drove away, a cloud of fine dust rose from the dry street. It stung her eyes, which already burned from lack of sleep.

  As soon as she reached the makeshift camp, she’d have to find a place to sleep. She was fading fast. As if to prove her point to herself, she tripped over a piece of uneven pavement and stumbled.

  “Careful,” she muttered to herself as she regained her footing.

  She reached the corner and cut across the university’s expansive green lawn. Students tossed Frisbees, lazed under trees swiping at their phones, and walked along the brick pathways between buildings in twos and threes, laughing and talking.

  She felt a flicker of envy and pushed it away. The scene she’d stumbled into was exactly what she’d pictured hundreds of times as a girl growing up on the reservation. She’d held onto that image for years, seeing herself on a campus green with serious textbooks and interesting friends.

  She’d never had the chance to experience it during her brief stint at Sioux Falls College. Which was her own stupid fault. She realized now how short-sighted she’d been. Her cheeks burned at the memory of how she’d fallen for Bedrock Force’s recruiting pitch like a rube getting sucked into a casino by the lure of free chips.

  It had been the first week of classes. She was still buoyed by bursts of excitement, still pinching herself to confirm that it was real, she was really a college student—finally. And then her Government Studies professor had announced a guest lecturer: Roxanne Markham, a retired Army captain who ran the local division of a powerful private military contractor.

  Ms. Markham had talked to the class about how Bedrock Force supported the U.S. Government’s missions, both at home and abroad. She’d told stories about insurgents and counter-terrorism and serving the country as a civilian.

  And swept up by it all, Dahlia had asked question after question, eating up the answers as they came. When the class ended, Ms. Markham asked her to stay behind to continue their chat. She’d pressed a business card into Dahlia’s hand, talked about her promise, her insight, her patriotism.

  And just like that, Dahlia was filling out a job application. She’d hoped to work part-time, even without pay. An internship with Bedrock Force would burnish her resume.

  But she’d been offered a job. A real, full-time job with benefits and everything. It paid twenty-five dollars an hour. More than fifty thousand dollars a year. She couldn’t say no to that kind of money. She had to take the position.

  She’d promised herself once she had a few years at the company, she’d re-enroll in classes. She was going to tell her mother the truth when she went home for Thanksgiving. She’d understand. Nobody, but nobody, from the reservation would pass up a salary like that.

  But it didn’t take long to figure out why Ms. Markham had really hired her. It had nothing to do with promise, insight, or patriotism. Bedrock Force needed an Indian. Someone with dark skin and eyes like hers. Someone who could spy on the water activists without drawing attention to herself.

  By then, she was stuck. She’d already dropped out of classes, moved out of campus housing, and signed a lease for an apartment in a building near work. She couldn’t slink back home. So she stayed.

  And then Mercy Locklear was killed.

  9

  Friday morning

  Walnut Bottom, Pennsylvania

  Aroostine checked the list she’d scrawled on the chalkboard in the mudroom:

  Driving

  Archery

  Running

  Silence

  Foraging

  It seemed like a woefully incomplete skills inventory for the journey she was about to begin. But she was solid on all counts. With the possible exception of driving—although she was pretty sure she could now get the truck from Point A to Point B without endangering any gardens.

  She was ready. Ready enough, at least. She erased the words, unplugged the tea kettle and the toaster, and double-checked that the windows and doors were all latched.

  She’d already stopped the mail and said her goodbyes to her parents and the Jackmans, who were delighted to keep Rufus while she was off on her ‘getaway.’ Everyone was so thrilled that she was actually leaving the house that nobody pressed for details about her vacation plans. And that was a small blessing because she was a terrible liar.

  She had one last task to check off her list.

  She tapped Carole’s telephone number into her cell phone.

  “Good morning, this is Carole Orr.”

  “Hi. It’s Aroostine.”

  “Yes?” Carole didn’t sound surprised to hear from her.

  “I’m leaving now. I won’t be reachable until I find her.”

  “I understand.”

  “Is there any new information?”

  It’d been three days since Carole and Janice had shown up at her house. She figured she’d have heard from Carole if the authorities had found Dahlia. But maybe they had some leads.

  “No. Her mother offered a small reward for information but nobody’s come forward with any tips. Are you going there? To Sioux Falls?”

  Aroostine hesitated, unsure how much she should share with Carole. “Yes.”

  With no idea where the girl could be, her best—and really, only—shot at finding her was to start tracking from the spot where she’d last been seen.

  “Do you want me to arrange for you to talk to anyone?”

  “I figured you wouldn’t want to have any connection to what I’m doing—plausible deniability and all that.”

  She heard Carole exhale. “It really would be better if I didn’t. I’m still working the official channels. Folks won’t be happy to learn that we’ve also taken matters into our own hands.”

  “I got it.”

  “If you need a cover, you could say you’re an old Army buddy of Janice’s.”

  “Army buddy?”

  “Yeah, she enlisted after 9/11, did two tours in Afghanistan. She came home from her second tour in that wheelchair.”

  She did some quick math. “Dahlia would’ve been what—a year old, maybe two?”

  “Thereabouts. She stayed with her daddy’s people while Janice was overseas.”

  “Is Dad in the picture now?”

  “No.”

  “Any chance she—?”

  “He overdosed when Dahlia was twelve or thirteen, but he hadn’t been around for years before that. She’s not with her father, and his family still lives on the reservation.”

  So much for that theory.

  “Well, it was worth a shot. I’ll be in touch when I can.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Right.”

  “Wait—did you learn how to drive?”

  She laughed. “We’re about to find out.”

  She ended the call then powered down the mobile phone and tossed it in the drawer beside the sink. She took one long, final look at her bright, airy kitchen, and shrugged her hiking backpack onto her shoulders.

  As she tossed the bag in the back of the truck next to her camping gear and food, she realized she wasn’t nervous about driving a thousan
d miles and she wasn’t sad about leaving the farmhouse. Instead, for the first time since Joe died, she was looking forward to something. She couldn’t quite pin down her emotion—it wasn’t happiness, but it also wasn’t sorrow. Anticipation, maybe. Whatever it was, she felt … lighter, somehow.

  She walked around to the driver’s side of the cab. As she swung up and into the seat, a shiver raced along her spine. She froze, one foot on the running board, and turned her head to look out toward the creek.

  From the parking spot on the crest of the sloped driveway, she could just make out the boulders.

  She stared hard.

  Harder.

  Harder still.

  There was definitely someone, something there. As her eyes focused in on it, she could see the faint shadow of a man perched on the top of Joe’s boulder.

  The figure lifted a hand in greeting. Her pulse lodged in her throat. The way he moved was as familiar as her own skin. It left no doubt. She raised her own hand and waved.

  “Joe, I have to go away for a while. I’ll be back.” She whispered the words to herself.

  From across the field and behind the house, the figure on the rocks nodded as if he heard her.

  Her throat closed and she couldn’t quite manage to get out the rest of what she wanted to say. But Joe’s spirit must’ve heard her anyway.

  As she shut the door and put the key in the ignition, Joe’s voice filled her head, as clear and loud as if he were sitting next to her:

  I love you, too, Roo. Go get her.

  She turned the key to start the engine, and the truck lurched to life.

  ‘Rue Jackman’ looked up at the Ohio state trooper, doe-eyed and innocent, and blinked her brown eyes. “Is there a problem, officer?”

  She hoped he couldn’t hear her heart thumping in her chest. She reached for the charm that dangled from her necklace and rubbed her right thumb and finger over the smooth silver rhythmically. Then she caught herself and lowered both hands to her lap.