Lynn Bulock - To Trust a Stranger

To Joe, always

And

To Cheryl, my friend and encourager

PROLOGUE

Chapter ONE

Chapter TWO

Chapter THREE

Chapter FOUR

Chapter FIVE

Chapter SIX

Chapter SEVEN

Chapter EIGHT

Chapter NINE

Chapter TEN

Chapter ELEVEN

Chapter TWELVE

Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter FOURTEEN

Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter SIXTEEN

Twenty-four years ago

Jessie Barker sat in the backseat of her parents’ car, staying as quiet as possible. Mouse quiet. Falling-leaf quiet. So quiet they wouldn’t hear her breathing and know she was awake while they had another argument.

As the station wagon rolled along the dark country road Mommy and Daddy were arguing in the front seat. In the backseat Jessie curled up against the door as much as she could with her seat belt still on and pretended to be anyplace else besides where she was. She looked through slitted eyes at her little sister, Laura, sitting next to her. Laura just looked down at the floor, but then Laura was brave, or maybe too young to understand.

Jessie wanted to yell back at Mommy and Daddy and tell them how to do their job. If she was a mom she would never yell at her kids and she’d let them watch cartoons on TV, and sometimes she would buy the good kinds of cereal from the store, the ones with marshmallows. Then Jessie and her kids would eat it straight out of the box. Mommy never bought the marshmallow kind of cereal because she didn’t like it.

They were still yelling in the front seat. It was the same thing again. This time it went on so long that Laura finally leaned over and whispered to Jessie. “Why doesn’t she just try it? They make us try at least three bites of everything at the dinner table, even gross, slimy asparagus.”

Jessie knew she looked at her sister as if she was stupid. Jessie felt bad when she did that, but she couldn’t help it. She looked at Laura a lot that way. “Try what?”

“The tea. The fackle tea. Daddy said if Mommy was the right kind of fackle tea wife we could stay here for ten years. That’s a long time.”

Jessie sighed. “There’s no tea, Laura. That is not what he means. You are so dumb.”

“It’s still a long time,” Laura said. She turned her face toward the other door so Jessie wouldn’t see her cry. Jessie ignored her as she spread her fingers out in front of her, looking at the little bit of Hot-Hot Pink nail polish she put on her right pointer finger yesterday before Mommy caught her and made her stop. Laura was right about one thing. Ten years was a long time. If they could stay in the nice apartment they had now for ten years, maybe Laura could go to Jessie’s school when she was old enough to start kindergarten in the fall.

“And I still don’t see why we had to take this route—” Jessie could hear Daddy mutter “—middle of nowhere.”

Did nowhere have a middle? If you were nowhere, how did you know when you got to the middle of it? Jessie wanted to ask somebody about that, but her parents were still fighting so she kept quiet. Jessie was still thinking about the middle of nowhere when she really drifted off to sleep.

That was when the bang came.

The loud noise startled Jessie awake. She felt hot and sweaty and didn’t know where she was. Rough hands pulled her out of the car, making her cry out because they didn’t unhook her seat belt first, only unfastening it when she yelled. Where were they? What was happening?

It was dark and scary and she couldn’t see anybody else at first, not even Laura. Once she was out in the night air she wasn’t hot for very long; she only had a sweater on instead of a coat and the wind was cold. Then Laura started to whimper. Jessie spied a patch of tall weeds and pulled Laura close to her into it, feeling the need to hide. “Be quiet,” Jessie whispered.

When her eyes got used to the dark Jessie could see some more things. A strange man was talking to Mommy. The man was big and loud and he looked mean. Laura shrank away from the noise and for once Jessie just hugged her and patted her. She couldn’t see Daddy anyplace, and nobody was paying any attention to two little kids, even the other man who had dumped her out of the car. Laura cried without a sound, shivering in Jessie’s arms.

After a while Laura struggled free and she called out softly, even though Jessie dragged her back even farther in the weeds. “Mommy? Daddy?” Nobody noticed either of them. Jessie couldn’t see much of what was going on.

The big man said something else and Mommy started screaming louder than she had been when she and Daddy were arguing in the front seat. “No. Not the babies. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go.” What babies? Did they mean her and Laura? Jessie was a first-grader and her sister was almost five. Neither of them were babies.

The big man standing with Mommy looked mad. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t take them. You want us to leave ’em on the side of the road?”

Mommy stopped screaming. “Yes. I do.” She looked at Jessie but something about the look on her mother’s face made her stand still where she was instead of running to Mommy the way she felt like doing. Jessie had let go of her sister but Laura wasn’t moving, either.

Why didn’t Daddy get out of the car and check on them? Daddy was always the one who checked when Laura had a fever or Jessie skinned her knee or anything. Mommy looked worried sometimes, but Daddy gave the hugs and said “It will be all right” when he was home.

Laura looked as though she could use a hug right now. She was crying harder, and her nose was running. Jessie was just trying to stay as quiet as she’d been in the car. Something told her that making noise would be a very bad thing right now. Jessie grabbed Laura’s hand again and she could feel her sister trembling.

The big man who was the boss, the one dressed in black with a leather jacket, was saying things to the other men. One of them walked over and shoved the girls roughly far away from the car and Laura sat down hard in the rocks and grass by the side of the road. The big man took Mommy by the arm and said, “Come on. Let’s go.” She didn’t even look back at the girls. Laura started to wail then. Jessie tried to cover her mouth, but it didn’t matter. Nobody paid attention to either of them.

The big man and Mommy got in another car, a big black one. They drove away. Where were they going? Did they really mean to leave them here all alone?

Jessie started to run toward Daddy’s car, hoping that he would help them. She stopped after taking only a few steps. A man was dragging a lady across the ground. She looked funny, all limp, and she wasn’t moving. He stuffed her in the front seat of the car where Mommy usually sat and slammed the door. Jessie could see Daddy still sitting behind the wheel but he didn’t look right, either. He wasn’t moving and he slumped over toward the middle of the car.

Then the other men did something to Daddy’s car and it rolled down a hill. There was a loud noise and fire and then the men got into the other car and it drove away. Daddy never came back. Laura cried so hard she threw up.

For a long time it was just the two of them out in the dark. Then the fire truck and the police cars came and there was a lot of noise. Nobody would believe Jessie about Mommy and the big man in the black car. And through it all, Laura just howled.

No matter how many times Jessie told the story in the coming days through the hospital and the offices and the foster homes, nobody ever believed her. The grown-ups in charge acted as if she was making stuff up. One of them even told her that she had to face the fact that Mommy and Daddy died in the car accident and act like a big girl about it.

It all made Jessie want to quit talking altogether, as Laura had done. After she quit howling in the dark, it was four days before Jessie heard her sister talk again. By the time she did, she wanted to talk to Jessie about what they’d seen and heard. By then all Jessie would tell her was “Forget it ever happened.” If nobody believed her, why should she keep telling the same story? Jessie was only six, but already she had learned that the world was a dark and scary place and there was nobody in it who wanted to help her.

“He’s late,” Jessie Barker said to her sister. “You said he was going to be here by eleven.”

“Well, he isn’t here, is he?” Laura rolled her eyes the same way she had when they were kids. “Not everybody can be as punctual as you. Maybe his car broke down, or the traffic is backed up on the bridge, or he overslept or something.”

Jessie sniffed. “Those are all excuses I don’t let my students get away with. Why should I take them from a Web site designer?”

“Because he’s willing to work cheap and give us a decent product. And stop shaking your head at me like that, unless you want to hear my opinion on your hair color.”

“I don’t. I like my brown just the way it is. And I don’t see why a beautician needs a Web site.”

Laura sighed in her dramatic way. “Esthetician, sweetie. I’m not a beautician. Leave it to you to look down your nose at my business and get things wrong at the same time.”

Her attitude made Jessie want to stick her tongue out at her sister. Why did they always argue like this? Probably because neither of them had anyone else to turn to. Laura wasn’t ready to let it go yet. “Having my own Web site would be a great help for my business. I could link it to the day spa’s site and get more clients. Besides, I figure I could interest some people with a few beauty hints. That would reach a lot more women on the Web than a newspaper ad.” Unable to sit still while she talked, Laura dusted the coffee table.

“So the print medium is worthless now?” Jessie looked over her glasses at Laura, who looked as though she could feel a headache coming on.

“Nuts, Jessie. Why do you always make me feel like I’ve said the wrong thing? I’m twenty-nine years old and around you I still feel like a kid. And not a very smart one, either.”

Jessie melted a little. She always did when Laura looked hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to growl at you, but you hit a nerve with that newspapers-are-worthless comment.”

Laura waved a hand. “Now I didn’t say they were worthless. You know I wouldn’t ever say that. In fact, I thought you’d want a Web site to promote your new book and link to online bookstores. It would sell a lot more copies that way, wouldn’t it?”

Jessie shrugged. Laura might not have been labeled the “smart one” when they were kids, but she’d always been creative. “If you think that many people would be interested in a history of urban legends published by a small university press.”

Her sister’s face lit up, showing how beautiful she was. “Of course I do. You could probably get a spot on the radio or even get interviewed by one of the TV features reporters just by promoting your book on the Web.”

It sounded good, but first things first, Jessie thought. “If you say so. But to do that I’d have to have a Web site. And to have a Web site your Web designer would have to show up, now wouldn’t he?”

Laura pressed one hand to her temple. “Couldn’t you be something other than logical and literal just once in your life?” Then she laughed. “No, probably not. You wouldn’t be Jessie then.”

Before Jessie could respond, Laura was grabbing her purse. “Look, if it’s such a big deal I’ll go looking for him, okay? Give him a break, anyway. He’s not a whole lot older than most of your students. He probably just overslept or something. Computer geeks keep odd hours.”