To Trust a Stranger. Lynn Bulock

her. What must it be like to carry this kind of secret for over twenty years? “Take your time. Try to recall as much of the scene as you can. Close your eyes if it helps.”

      Jessie leaned back against the couch cushions. “I don’t remember any names. They were just big and scary looking.” She stopped for a moment. “Okay, there is one thing. When I just said the men were scary, something dawned on me. My mother wasn’t scared. Not the way I would expect somebody to be.”

      “Do you think she knew them?” It would explain her not being afraid, but it led to a dozen more questions.

      “I’m not sure if she knew them personally, but they were familiar to her, if that makes any sense. And now that I think of it, she definitely knew the man who was in charge. She didn’t talk to him the way you’d talk to a stranger. She felt free to argue with him some.”

      “Argue how?” Steve had started listening to this story figuring it might be the fantasy of a child. But so far most of what Jessie had told him sounded plausible. He could almost see the serious girl she’d been at six, stuck in this terrible situation.

      “I think he wanted to hurt us, maybe even kill us and put us back in the car with my father and the woman. I didn’t tell you about her, did I?”

      Steve shook his head, not wanting to interrupt at this point if he didn’t have to.

      “Two of the other men took a woman from one of the other cars and put her in the front seat where my mother usually sat. Again, once I grew up I knew that she was probably dead or at least incapacitated somehow. Then I didn’t understand why she let them put her in the car.”

      “Why didn’t anybody realize that the body in the car wasn’t your mother?”

      “It would have been hard to tell. At the time I remembered the men pushing our car down a hill. There was another loud noise and the car caught fire. Later when I found the newspaper articles they reported that the car had gone down a dangerous embankment and burned.”

      “How did anybody explain that you and your sister survived?”

      “I’m not sure. Nobody ever wanted to talk about the accident afterward. A few weeks later the social workers were telling us to forget what happened. Child counseling must have been so different then.”

      “No kidding.” There were a few things that just didn’t sound right about Jessie’s story, but Steve didn’t want to tell her that now. Especially when she trusted him enough to tell him what she’d hidden for so long. “So what happened after that?”

      Jessie sighed. “I don’t remember seeing any cars pass once the men put my mother in a car and they all drove away. Somebody must have seen or heard something, though, because after a while there were fire trucks and police cars there and they put us in the back of a police cruiser and took us to some kind of juvenile hall once they figured out we weren’t hurt.”

      “Physically, at least. What you saw had to be an incredible shock.”

      “It was. Laura didn’t say anything for about four days. And she was usually the chatterbox of the family. For a while I was afraid she wasn’t ever going to talk again. I stopped wanting to say anything more myself after the third or fourth time I told my story and an adult told me that it wasn’t true.”

      Steve couldn’t keep from wincing. It had always been part of his nature to be as honest as possible, even with kids. What had motivated these people to deny Jessie’s story? “Were there services for your parents anywhere? Did anybody try to comfort you or take care of you?”

      Jessie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t think there were any services. We weren’t ever religious, and there wasn’t any other close family. If there was anything at the college where my father taught, they didn’t take us there. Like I said before, they were already telling us to forget that it happened, as if that would ease the pain. We went into foster care, and fortunately we always stayed together. I think Laura could have been adopted if it wasn’t for me. She was still young and cute enough to be attractive.”