dinner we gathered back on the front porch by common consent. More beer was poured, but Jossie took discreet pity on me and implored me to help her drink a bottle of wine. As she was breastfeeding, she could only have one glass and she didn’t want to waste it.
Heather nursed while Jossie rocked, her head back so she could stare up at the ceiling fan, which was festooned with a cobweb that seemed to mesmerize her.
Murphy and I had the glider again and we sat thigh to thigh. Once in a while he’d look at me with that infatuated expression and, every time he did, I felt strange and giddy inside.
Vaughn slouched in his rocker, head tilted while perhaps he listened to the chorus of crickets outside in the shrubbery. We sat in near darkness save for several votive candles in stained glass containers hung from nails along the porch wall. The only electric light came from two spotlights on the barn, trained down on the cars parked in front.
“How long has Bethany been missing?” Murphy asked out of the comfortable, candlelit darkness. Everyone sat up a little straighter as the peaceful lassitude of the porch seeped away and frustration and mounting anxiety began to replace it.
Jossie stopped rocking. “Her mother said she saw her sleeping in bed on Wednesday night. She and her bond mate had a romantic dinner date planned for Thursday night, staying overnight at a hotel. They do that once or month or so. Bethany’s door was still shut Thursday morning when Gina and Ron had to leave for work, and Gina said Ron pounded on the door and told Bethany she’d better get her butt to school, but Bethany didn’t answer and he didn’t push it. They’re pretty sure she was there, though.
“Gina texted Bethany on her lunch hour to remind Bethany she and Ron were not going to be home that night. Bethany texted back that she remembered and to have a good time. Gina and Ron went to work on Friday straight from the hotel and got a phone call about eleven that morning from Nancy, the woman who home schools all the pack children. She has a son two years older than Bethany, the two are pretty close. Boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Councilor Manning told us how Cody and Bethany have been kept apart since they shifted together at the Regional,” I said. Both Jossie and Nate looked dismayed.
“No matter how many times you tell them, you can’t get some teenagers to understand about shifting together.” Jossie shook her head. She looked at my guilty expression and belatedly seemed to remember I had once been one of those teenagers. She flashed me an embarrassed grin and I smiled in response, and waited for her to go on and tell us everything.
“Nancy called because Bethany hadn’t shown up for class Thursday or Friday. She’d gotten a text from Bethany saying she was sick. She hadn’t thought anything of it until Cody told her that he hadn’t heard from Bethany since Thursday morning and he was worried. They were only supposed to be in supervised contact, but of course they got around that.
“Cody told her he’d driven past Bethany’s house on Thursday night but hadn’t been able to get anyone to answer the door. He’d held back on telling anyone because they weren’t supposed to be in contact, but he finally broke down and begged his mother to call Gina and Ron.
“Gina ran home from work. Bethany’s room was empty. The bed was unmade. Her pajamas from Wednesday were on the floor. It looked to them like Bethany had run away while they’d been at the hotel. But if she didn’t go to Cody, where?
“They came to us to ask us if we’d seen Bethany. We called the Regional Council after we made sure no one in our pack had seen her. By then it was Friday night. Councilor Manning called me back to tell me to keep her apprised of what was going on meanwhile to look for Bethany at bus stations and local motels and malls, which we’ve been doing. Nothing. Tomorrow we’re going to have a hunt and search the woods where we all usually shift because maybe...” Jossie’s voice faltered. Bethany knew the woods much too well to be lost. Perhaps she was hurt and couldn’t move, but that didn’t seem likely. But then neither did suicide.
“We’ll find her if she’s out there,” Murphy vowed after a moment of sympathetic silence.
“I don’t understand why she did this. She wouldn’t have left without telling Cody anything. Those two want to bond together when they’re old enough. That’s only three years from now. Not so long to wait. I don’t see why she would run away. There’s no reason for it.” Jossie bowed her head. Heather stopped nursing to stare. She reached out a chubby hand and patted her mother’s cheek as if to reassure her.
Jossie took Heather’s little hand in her own and brought it to her mouth to plant a kiss on her daughter’s palm. For the first time I saw the baby smile. When she did, she looked just like Jossie.
“Don’t give up hope, Jossie,” I whispered, sick to my stomach at the thought we might find Bethany’s dead body and have to bear witness to the death of all her dreams.
* * * *
The rain struck the windowpanes of the farmhouse bedroom in angry little spats. Lightning crackled in the sky around the barn. The air seemed to sizzle. I held the curtains back with one hand, the palm of my other pressed flat to the cool glass.
More than anything I wanted to shift and run the way my wolf used to. Only I knew she wouldn’t run if I shifted, she’d try to find the words for rain and lightning, and stand there in the wet darkness, fur soaked, as she tried to figure things out. Running and playing would be the last things on her mind.
I’d watched the storm for maybe fifteen minutes before Murphy stirred in the bed behind me and realized I wasn’t there anymore.
“Stanzie?” He whispered my name, and struggled to see me in the darkness. Lightning flashed and he saw me by the window. “What’s the matter, honey? Bad dream?”
“Yeah,” I admitted and watched the rain pound down on our Prelude parked in the yard below.
“About Callie?” He probed, but gently. His voice was soothing and encouraging. I hadn’t discussed Callie’s suicide with him. I’d avoided the topic altogether with him and he’d waited patiently for me to bring it up for three months now. Every once in a while he opened the door a little to get the discussion going, but I closed it. Every single time.
“No,” I told him.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Murphy?” I took a deep breath and held it for a moment before I released it. “Do I make my parents sound like monsters?”
“They do a good job of that all on their own. They don’t need your help,” he declared and I bit my lip.
“All you know about them is from me.”
“And from Vaughn and Jocelyn and from them themselves. Three months, Stanzie, we’ve been living in Boston, and them only a few miles down the road. Not a phone call, not a fucking postcard, not as much as a single acknowledgment that you’re around.”
“I was fifteenth generation. You don’t leave your birth pack when you’re fifteenth generation. At least not in New England you don’t.” I don’t know why I defended them but I did.
“You did.” He sounded proud of me. Because he didn’t understand.
“Come back to bed.” Murphy patted the empty space beside him on the mattress. “We’re going to shift in the morning and we need to be well rested for that.”
“It’s raining,” I protested. “All the scents will be washed away.”
“Not if she’s still out there somewhere. We may not be able to pick up a trail, but if we spread out across the woods, we could still find her.”
I didn’t answer or move.
“We have to do something, Stanzie. Her parents have looked two towns over, checking all the motels, bus stops and train stations and they haven’t had any luck. She hasn’t bought an airline ticket in her name. She didn’t bring clothes. All she has is what she was wearing and her purse, which had maybe ten dollars in it. She’s got to be