“It sounds to me as if the girls have run off,” the man said. “A night or two and they’ll be back.”
“But it’s already been two nights,” Patricia said. “This will be the third.”
“They wouldn’t run away like that,” I assured him. “Not our girls. They were terribly happy here.”
“And you’ve searched for them yourselves?”
“All day yesterday and most of the day before,” I answered. “Everywhere we could think.”
“Everywhere is quite a lot.”
“Wer ist dieser Man?” Father grunted.
The man went on. “I’m saying that two girls, two at once, that’s a rare thing. Either they ran off because they wanted to get away or someone did something to them, but I don’t think we should be guessing at any wrongdoing just yet.”
“They couldn’t have gone by themselves,” I said. “The window in their room is much too small and the house is locked at night, both inside and out.”
“Locked?”
“Father worries. ”
Father straightened. What could we say? That we were afraid of our neighbors? That the war had never left us? Father had insisted the locks kept us safe.
“Locking your family in. Is that wise?”
“They are young, those girls,” Father said. “Everywhere there are boys and other troubles. Doof! A man who locks his doors. His reasons should be evident.”
The deputy blanched at Father’s speech. Kraut, he must have thought, though surely he knew who Father was. Our family had lived in the same house for more than thirty years.
“If the question should be of anyone,” Father went on, “it should be the Elliots. That boy on their farm.”
“The one who married this summer?”
Father grunted again.
“You’ve had some difficulties with the Elliots, haven’t you? Something about the waterway between your properties?”
“Elliot is a sad old man,” Ray said.
“He was confused,” I added. “He’s been ill since he lost his wife. But that trouble with the river is finished. I talked to the Elliots myself the day before yesterday, the both of them.”
The deputy watched Father’s face. Father’s cheeks reddened, about to burst. “The girls’ mother?” the man went on. “She died a while back. Isn’t that right?”
“In the last month of the war,” I said.
Ray put a hand on Father’s shoulder. “I don’t see how this matters.”
“I’ve heard of families like yourselves,” the deputy said. “Very strict. And two girls who have lost their mother, who are isolated on a farm and locked inside a house for months on end, I should think it’s more than evident that a neighbor boy, a married man, isn’t your greatest concern.”
Father lunged at him. Ray tried to hold him back, but Father only stumbled into the bucket near the fire, and the room filled with ash. Patricia waved a hand in front of her face, and the rest of us took to our feet, everyone save the deputy, who covered his mouth with his handkerchief. Father stood breathing as if readying for another try. I pulled at his arm. He gave way, keeping his eye on the man as we walked out.
I settled Father in his room and sat myself at Mother’s desk while he lay in his bed, his anger fading. “Never would I have thought,” he mumbled. He touched his forehead as if it pained him. “Where are they, Nan? That man and his boy are at fault. I am sure of it. Elliot never forgave us.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Your mother and I, we believed we had found it. What is this word? Bliss.” The word sounded thick on his tongue. “We were supposed to have a place to live.” He snapped his fingers. “And it went.”
“It hasn’t gone anywhere.”
But already Father had closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell, sleeping now or pretending to. By strength of will, he could disappear from us in a blink whenever difficulties raised their head. I turned down the lamp. On the other side of the wall, the sound of Ray’s voice and the deputy’s questions. In the low light, the room seemed a sanctuary, Mother’s rosewater in its vial on her dressing table and her slippers beside the bed. Father rolled away from me and I reached for a blanket to cover him. Next to the headboard hung the hook where he kept his keys to the house, a set of four of which mine was only a copy. I dropped the blanket and reached for the hook instead. The ring seemed light as I turned through the keys, counting. I counted again. One of the keys was no longer there.
I closed my fingers and hurried to the parlor. The deputy sat with his hands folded in his lap. As if waking, he raised his eyes to mine. “Your brother explained that the youngest had been spending quite a lot of time in bed in recent months. He seemed to think she was sick or acting like it. Did you have the doctor come?”
“Ray, there’s something. ”
My brother put up his hand. “This is a working farm. We can’t always have a man out every time one of the girls gets uncomfortable.”
“She was sad over losing her mother,” Patricia said. “That’s what I think.”
“But you said the mother died more than a year ago. Just before the end of the war?”
“Myrle’s always been weakhearted,” Ray said. “Our mother treated her as if she might break. Nan, tell him.”
I gripped the keys. “They’d been upset about Mother’s death. Both of them, but Myrle especially. We thought she was getting over it. She was going to school again, sleeping through the night. But in the last few months. ”
“Was she too sick to run away?”
“They didn’t run away,” Ray snapped. “Something happened to them.”
“But you have no idea what that something was?”
“Ray.,” I started.
“You might not understand,” my brother went on, “but this town holds certain suspicions about us since the war, and they’ve acted them out.”
“The war is over.”
“It hasn’t been so long.”
I opened my hand. With a clatter, the ring of keys swung from my finger. “One of Father’s keys is gone.”
The room went quiet. My brother stopped his pacing, and Patricia stiffened, no longer kneading the skirt of her dress. Lee turned his head. “It’s gone,” I repeated.
“How can it be gone?” Patricia asked.
“What is this?” the deputy said. “What key?”
I reminded him about the locks, the keys on the hook, the copy I had myself. “The ring was on the hook as always,” I said, “but one of the keys was not.”
The deputy set his hat on his head. “That settles it. Your girls are runaways. They took the key when you weren’t looking. There’s little we can do about that except wait.”
“But you can send out a search,” Patricia said. “Can’t he, Ray? The girls could be hurt.”
“What about the chair?” I asked. “They couldn’t have barricaded themselves in their own room and gone out the door at the same time.”
“I still have doubts about that chair. It could have been just sitting there for all you know, already broken, and the door stuck.”
“But you haven’t seen the room,” I said.
“I’m done with my questions. You’ll get a letter from them in a week, maybe two, or they’ll simply show up, and then it’ll be settled. They’re nearly grown, those girls. Remember that.” With his final word, the deputy stood and worked his way between the chairs. I followed him. “I can let myself out,” he said.
In the parlor, the bucket Father had stepped in lay on its side, a circle of ash on the carpet. Patricia touched her lip as if to clear away a crumb, and Lee sat nodding. I thought to take the chair the deputy had left, but the cushion held the hollow of his frame.