We should call the police, Dawn said. They might know something we don’t.
I already tried, Katie said. They haven’t had any accidents tonight. If she doesn’t turn up by morning, they said to come in and file a report.
Anthony walked to the center of the room and stood crouching over the table. Tell you what we need to do, he said. We need to get out there and search every back road and ditch within forty miles. If there was an accident in the country this time of night, the cops might not even know about it till morning. Beth could be lying hurt somewhere with no one around to help.
Logan and Will are already out looking, Katie said. They been gone nearly an hour.
Anthony shook his head. There’s too many places between here and the school, he said. One car ain’t enough to cover all of em. Tell you what. You all can stay here and wait for her to show up, but I’m going out and bringing her home myself. Don’t try to stop me.
I’m coming too, I said, and pulled my hand free of Mama’s grip.
We both started for the door at the same time. Claudia stood up from the table in such a rush that she lost her balance and almost knocked a chair over. Anthony, she said. We’ve already lost one child tonight. We don’t need two more out there to worry about.
I’ll go with them, Dawn said. He’s right. We need more than just one car looking.
Before any of us could make another move, Katie scooted her own chair out from the table and rose to her feet. Mama and Claudia edged in around her, like they were afraid she might fall. If you find Beth safe, she said, let her know that she can always come home. Tell her I love her, and no matter what the problem is, it’s nothing we can’t solve as a family.
The roads through the country seemed even darker somehow than when we were coming through the first time. Anthony sat hunched forward with both hands on the wheel, holding steady at forty-five as he scanned the roadsides for any gleam or shimmer from his headlights. I’d offered the front seat to Dawn, but she opted for the back instead. Even after all the time I’d spent taking care of Mama, it felt strange to me that, in a crisis where one young person was missing, it should fall on the other young people in the family to lead the charge.
Whose underwear is this? Dawn asked, holding the lace brassiere up to the rearview.
That’s Beth’s, I answered. She offered to let me borrow it for the dance. She said it would make me feel grown up and full of confidence.
That was sweet, Dawn said. She folded the brassiere in half and stowed it carefully on the empty seat beside her. Though I could only make out the broad details of her face through the mirror, it was clear that her face didn’t have much to show at the moment anyway. That worried me more than the notion that me and Anthony were in charge. Dawn was never without expression. Happy or sad, angry or fearful, she always wore her feelings more vividly than any of the makeup she’d brought with her from Merced. Now she reminded me of one of the homeless veterans camped out behind the ag bureau, staring a hundred yards ahead but seeing only inside herself. I checked the clock on the dashboard.
How’re we supposed to know she isn’t back at the house already?
Anthony breathed through his nose in a slow, deliberate way. I don’t really believe she was in a car accident, he said. I just framed it that way for Katie’s sake.
Then what do you think happened to her?
Come on. Girl like that, dressed how she was. One way or another, she got herself into some trouble.
I turned around in the seat to check on Dawn. You might’ve thought she was sleeping with her eyes open, the way she let her head hang back with her neck bent like a spring. I’d been afraid that Anthony’s assessment would shock and upset her, but in a way this was worse. What’re we doing out here, then, if she wasn’t in an accident?
Anthony took a right at the next intersection, the first turn he’d made since we got on the road. We’re looking for signs of suspicious behavior, he said. People driving with their lights off, idling in orchards with their windows fogged up. We’ll circle round the area moving inward like a spiral. If we don’t find anything, we’ll head back to the house and wait for the cops to wake up.
I looked at Anthony for a while with the shadows of the land moving over his face. Without realizing, I let my head sink back against the seat cushion until finally I’d assumed the same dejected posture as Dawn. I don’t know whether to be impressed by you or worried, I said. Either way, you’ve seen too many episodes of Peacemaker.
He said nothing. Just kept on driving as the early morning frost settled over the ground.
The first light of day was breaking out over the foothills when we arrived back at the farm. Logan’s car was parked out front by the bigger house. We could see it as we were heading up the drive, and by the time we got there Anthony was so anxious that he swerved onto the lawn and shut the engine off without bothering to shift into Park. We all piled out and headed for the door. Will came out onto the porch to meet us.
We found her, he said. She’s all right. She’s got some bruises on her face, but she’s more shook up than anything. So when you get inside, try to stay calm and keep your voices down. She’s been through a lot.
We followed Will into the kitchen and found Beth sitting at the table with Mama and the other women all crowded around her. I was relieved at first to see her alive and all in one piece, but then she turned her head and I got a full look at the damage. The whole left side of her face was swelled up to the point where she couldn’t even open her eye. All the tears she shed from that side seemed to trickle forth from the ends of her eyelashes. The other eye was unharmed, but so red and puffy from crying that it was hard to look at it directly either. I found myself looking at the floor, where I noticed the second skin of grime that had crept up over her ankles and calves all the way to the torn and soiled ruffles of her skirt hem. Katie knelt by her side with a dish cloth and a pot of warm water, readying to scrub the filth from her daughter’s scraped and blistered feet. She sniffled loudly and looked up at us where we stood.
She fought back, she said, her voice oddly proud through the convulsive panting. He tried to take advantage of her, and she fought back. My girl. She stood her own and didn’t give in.
I wanted to do something. Even now, it’s hard to fathom how, as hot-tempered and protective as I was, I could just stand there gawking while a girl barely older than me, who shared my blood no less, was forced to suffer through the pain of something so horrible even her mother could only speak of it in euphemism. I wanted to go up and comfort her any way I could, but as it happened Dawn, of all people, was the first of us to take action. She took small, shuffling steps across the linoleum floor, then bent down over Beth and softly touched the unbruised side of her face. From the state of numbness she was in moments before, she broke out into full unrestrained sorrow, cradling Beth’s sore and assaulted body in her arms, crying into the dust-stained fabric of her party dress. I watched her sink down and kneel on the floor beside Katie, take the damp cloth in her hand, and commence to bathing Beth’s legs with her own tears falling drop by drop into the water pot. I remember thinking at the time, Is this all we can do when one of our own gets wronged? To weep and wail together, and wash away the stains like the wrong never happened?
I don’t know how long it was before Beth had settled down enough to get some rest. After Dawn finished consoling her, we all did what we could in our own way to follow suit. Mama gave up her bed and even tucked her into the covers like she used to do for me and Jessie. We didn’t have any aspirin in the house, so Claudia gave her some white wine diluted with water and honey. Jennifer summoned Jewel from the second house and got her to take the little kids over there and fix them breakfast. I admit I was impressed by that. Jewel was snotty even by eleven-year-old standards, and in all these months had never looked at me or Beth or any of her half-sisters with anything but the most hateful and accusing eyes, like every breath we took was spent plotting ways to upstage and outshine her. But now, in this crisis, she did her part for the rest of the family, and didn’t even complain. That earned her my respect, for what it was worth. Actually, if there was anyone in the family who disappointed me, it was Anthony, who, faced with the reality that he had been right about Beth, seemed to close in on himself and shrink once more into the corner. That didn’t earn him any points in my book. He could sulk and stew and wear that scowl on his face all he wanted, but when all was said and done, he still hadn’t done squat to help Beth, or the situation in general.