The veteran dispatcher is busy talking to someone on her headset, and judging by the annoyed look on her face, she’s been stuck on the line for quite some time. She sees Gwendy approach and covers the microphone with her hand. “Go on back. It’s a shit-show here today.”
Gwendy waves thank you and walks down the narrow hallway. This time the door to Sheriff Ridgewick’s office is closed. She knocks three times for luck.
“Come in,” a muffled voice says.
She opens the door and steps inside. The sheriff is standing at the window, staring outside. “That reporter get you on the way in?”
She nods. “I didn’t have much to say.”
“I appreciate that,” he says, turning around and looking at her.
“He asked if there’d been any other attempted abductions in Castle Rock recently. I almost fainted, but I don’t think he noticed.”
“He’s just fishing,” the sheriff says, leaning back against his desk.
“I guess, but it was very unsettling after what I told you last night.”
“He doesn’t know anything about that. Nobody does. Yet.”
“You’ll tell the others today?”
He nods. “The State Police are sending additional detectives later this morning. We’re setting up a task force, so I’ll be sharing your story during the initial briefing.”
“Let me know if you need me to be there to face the music in person.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he says almost casually. “What I’ll say is, you thought the whole thing was a prank until you got to thinking about it later on. That’s when you realized that maybe the guy had been wearing a mask. So you told me all about it this morning. You didn’t see a vehicle and are unable to provide a physical description of the man other than dark clothes and shoes with some sort of a heel.”
She looks at him with gratitude. “Thank you, Norris.”
“Don’t mention it,” he says, waving her off. “No need for the whole damn world to discover how hard-headed you are.”
Gwendy laughs. “Now you sound like my mother.”
60
WHEN GWENDY WALKS INTO Room 233 on the second floor of Castle County General and sees the tears streaming down both her mother and father’s faces, her heart drops.
Mrs. Peterson is sitting on the edge of the hospital bed with her bare legs dangling over the side. She’s holding hands with her husband and leaning her head against his shoulder. She looks very much like a young girl. Doctor Celano stands at the foot of the bed, reading from an open chart. When he hears the door open, he turns to Gwendy with a big, toothy grin on his face.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Gwendy says, confused. “I got held up in a meeting.”
Her father looks up at her. His eyes are watery and dancing and he’s also wearing a broad smile.
“What’s going on?” Gwendy asks, feeling like she just stepped into the Twilight Zone.
“Oh, honey, it’s a miracle,” her mother says, holding out her arms.
Gwendy goes to her and gives her a hug. “What is? What’s happening?” Her mother only squeezes tighter.
Mr. Peterson nods to the doctor. “Tell her what you just told us.”
Doctor Celano raises his eyebrows. “All of the scans came back clean. No sign of a tumor anywhere.”
“What? That’s great news, right?” Gwendy asks, afraid to get her hopes up.
“I’d say so.”
“But what about the blood results?”
The doctor waves the medical chart at her. “The blood work we took yesterday morning also came back clean. Your mother’s numbers are squarely in the normal range.”
“How is that possible?” Gwendy asks in disbelief.
“I wondered the same thing myself,” Doctor Celano says, “so I put in a request right away for additional blood work and rushed the lab for the results.”
“I was curious what was going on,” Mrs. Peterson says, laughing. “They took three more tubes before breakfast, and I told the nurse she was turning into a vampire.”
“The new tests came back normal. Again,” the doctor says, closing the chart and holding it at his side.
Gwendy stares at him. “Could it be a mistake?”
“A mistake was made, but not yesterday or today. I’m positive these results are accurate.” The doctor sighs heavily and the smile disappears from his face. “With that said, I want to assure you that I’ll get to the bottom of what went wrong in regards to Mrs. Peterson’s initial blood work on the 22nd. It was a reprehensible error, and I will find out where it occurred.”
“But what about the stomach pain? The vomiting?”
“That’s a bit of a mystery, I’m afraid,” the doctor says. “My best guess is she ate something that didn’t agree with her and the force of the vomiting agitated scar tissue that was caused by the chemotherapy. It’s happened to patients of mine before.”
“So what… what does this all mean?” Gwendy asks.
“It means she’s not sick!” Mr. Peterson says, putting an arm around Gwendy’s shoulder and giving her a shake. “It means we can take her home!”
“Today?” Gwendy says, looking at the doctor. She still can’t believe this is happening. “Right now?”
“As soon as we’re finished with her discharge papers.”
Gwendy gazes at Doctor Celano for a moment, and then looks back at her parents. Their faces are alight with happiness. “I’m starting to think that feather of yours really is magic,” her father says.
And then all three of them are laughing again and holding on to each other for dear life.
61
IN MOST OF EASTERN Maine, news of an approaching nor’easter—still four or five days out but already gaining strength at a monstrous rate—fills the airwaves and front pages of newspapers over the next forty-eight hours. There’s very little panic in this part of the world, even when it comes to the bigger storms—but there is an underlying sense of dread. Blizzards mean accidents—both on the roads and closer to home. There will be broken bones and frostbite; overturned cars in ditches and downed power lines. Elderly folks will be rendered housebound, unable to venture out to grocery stores and pharmacies; meals and refills will be missed and illnesses will slither under drafty door cracks with insidious stealth and take hold. The youngsters won’t fare much better, as they gleefully abandon whatever common sense they possess in the first place to rush headlong outside into the storm to build forts and wage snowball wars and hurtle down tree-speckled hills at breakneck speeds on flimsy slivers of drugstore plastic. If town folks are lucky, no one will need a mortician. But then again nor’easters aren’t usually harbingers of anything even close to resembling good luck.
This time, in the western half of the state, it’s a different story altogether. The approaching blizzard is relegated to page two or even three, and only discussed in detail during the weather portion of most television newscasts. The three missing Castle County girls dominate local media coverage from early morning drive-time to the eleven o’clock nightly news. Family members and friends, schoolmates and even teachers are interviewed, all offering a slightly modified version of the same somber story: the three girls are kind and talented and have never been in any kind of trouble; they certainly didn’t run away from home. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and State Police Detective Frank Thome are also constant on-air presences. They continue to offer the same grim-faced reassurances that their respective departments are doing everything humanly possible to locate the missing girls and the same passionate requests for information from the public. Their singular message and lack of originality in delivering that message prompts one local reporter to write that both men “are reading from the same uninspired script.”