A Morning Like This (23 page)

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” But then they stood staring at each other, knowing how wrong those words were because,
yes, Samantha was going somewhere. She was going to Wyoming as a stowaway.

When the door shut, Samantha Roche waited alone, a deserter from camp, locked inside her best friend’s trailer. She looked
around for a place to get comfortable and decided on the corner of the bunk bed, propped in a corner with a pile of corduroy
pillows. She unzipped the front pocket of her Camp Plentycoos backpack and pulled out the letter, tattered and pressed flat,
with a Rock Springs, Wyoming postmark. She pulled the blue stationery out, unfolded it once more, and read the words her mother
might never have showed her.

“Even if she’s never wanted a father, do you think she might want one now?…I can give her good things.”

Samantha held the letter to her chest with both hands and squeezed her eyes shut. She held all of her uncertainty and all
of her fear and all of her hope in one small, bursting bosom.

“What do you think?” she whispered aloud to no one. “What do you think about this?”

And from somewhere, into her, the sureness came.

As the setting sun silhouetted the Tetons and scalloped the underbellies of the clouds with gold, Abby poured lemon oil on
a rag and began to polish the coffee table. Tonight, horror of horrors, it was the Treasures’ turn to host prayer meeting.
Tonight an onslaught of committed couples, including Nelson and Sarah Hull themselves, would arrive on their front doorstep
shortly after six-thirty p.m. After a fifteen-minute round of visiting, they would get down to business, petitioning the heavenly
Father for everything from new shelves in the church pantry to protection for the church missionaries in Benin and Somalia
and Uzbekistan. After that, they would lean in to the circle and get very personal, laying hands on the ones who requested
it—some of them weeping with joy or grief, some of them giving praise reports on what the Lord had done this week in their
lives.

And here we are, Abby thought. So many layers of damage and danger and deception in our lives, and people are starting to
know about it.

She made careful circles over the table with the cloth, smelling the sharp incense of the oil, watching the deepening richness
as it soaked into the pine, and thought of how even dead wood could be polished and refurbished with a loving hand, but hearts
sometimes got weather-beaten beyond repair.

She refolded the towels in the guest bathroom, put out a fresh box of tissue, and thought, Why had it been easy to discuss
David with some friends and be silent to the ones in church?

She lit a candle in a holder shaped like a moose and thought, How easy to light a flame in wick and wax, when the light has
gone completely from our lives. In came the prayer group at seven and there they sat, and the whole time they were holding
hands and singing—a part that Abby always loved—the questions wouldn’t stop sounding in her head.

What are we going to do if Samantha comes, Lord?

What are we going to do if she doesn’t?

Oh Lord Oh Lord Oh Lord
.

As their church family circled hands in their living room, she noticed that David sat as stoic and motionless on the sofa
as she did. When someone began reading Scripture, he didn’t follow along in his Bible; he stared at the gold wedding band
on his knuckle instead.

Several times she noticed Nelson watching David. Once during the evening, Betty Sailors said, “It’s such a shame David resigned
from the finance committee. That was such a nice letter he sent. We’re really going to miss his expertise.”

“He’s resigned?”

Betty nodded. “From the presbytery committee, too. From all of it. You didn’t know?”

Abby shook her head.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” Betty said. “You’re his wife.”

Well, he didn’t tell me
.

That night, they laid hands on Nelson and Sarah and prayed for the power of Nelson’s Sunday messages. They prayed for Sarah’s
sister who had been diagnosed with diabetes. They prayed for Joe Anderson who had gotten laid off from his job at Sunrise
Lumber. They prayed for Victor Martinez who was looking for a new place to live. They prayed for Hannah Saunders who was in
angst, listening for God’s instructions, trying to decide whether or not to move her mother into an assisted-living center.

From the reflection in the window, Abby could tell that the candle in the little holder in the bathroom was burning low. “Is
there anyone else who has needs?” Nelson asked, his Bible held clenched between two able hands. Abby saw her pastor glance
pointedly at her husband.

Nelson knows
.
David’s been talking just like I have.
Something caught in her throat.

But, has he been talking to be transparent with his sin? Or has he been talking to win others to his side?

They had both lost so much. She didn’t even know what David was thinking anymore.

There is nothing emptier than an empty profession of the mouth when the words spoken aren’t what is inside your heart. So
Abby sat in painful endurance, her ears roaring as she kept a stiff upper lip and said nothing.

Samantha Roche had checked her Fossil watch three times before she finally heard the family loading up and the slamming of
doors and the revving of the engine. The camping trailer jerked as they started off down the sloping driveway, and something
crashed onto the floor. Samantha pressed herself into the corner of the bunk, thinking she could burrow beneath pillows if
anyone came searching.

But no one did and eventually she must have fallen asleep because when she opened her eyes next everything had gotten dark.
Through the window, reflected off the walls and the windows of the camper, she could see arches of amber light as they passed
beside ramp exits and the beginnings of towns. In the clacking of the tires on the highway, something seemed to be whispering,
“Your father… your father… your father.” Wind buffeted them. It washed all the way over them each time another vehicle passed.

They must have turned off the highway at some point because she felt them slow and turn and stop. Sam lifted her head just
high enough to see the glaring hooded halogen tubes of a service station. She could hear the gas pump clicking. They’d parked
right beside a sign that read T
UMBLEWEED’S
T
HRIFTI
S
AVE AND
G
AS
! W
ELCOME TO
H
OPE
, I
DAHO
! R
ESTROOMS FOR
P
AYING
C
USTOMERS
O
NLY
!

The power of suggestion.
Oh, my
. If she did this, she would have to turn on that button. She’d promised. She waited until the car door shut and they pulled
away again and, when she punched the little button on the wall, she felt like she had performed a magical feat. She did what
she’d wanted to do. She was terrified to flush but she held her breath and did it anyway. She kept thinking of Jess Cavender’s
dog. She burrowed into the corner of the bunk again and had just touched her father’s letter, hidden beneath the folds of
her sweatshirt where she’d put it for safekeeping, when the horrible banging started, vibrating beneath her.

Blee lee lee lee lee
.

For long minutes she held her breath, waiting for the trailer to pull to the side of the road, waiting for something to be
wrong and for them to be stranded, waiting to be discovered and punished, waiting to be told she’d never get where she wanted
to go.

Oh what do I do what do I do what do I do?

Then she remembered. The button on the wall behind the sink! She’d never punched it, never turned it off.

Samantha scrambled down and hit the panel. The awful vibration stopped. Silence roared in her head. Someone had to have heard
that; she was sure of it.

But the twenty-seven-foot Jayco trailer didn’t stop. The miles kept rolling beneath them. For all the fear, this plan was
working! And Samantha Roche felt for the envelope still hidden inside her sweatshirt, warm and wrinkled and safe against her
breastbone.

When the telephone rang at nine p.m., David was staring at the Weather Channel on cable television. The meteorologist pointed
to a high-pressure system moving down from Canada that would hold rain at bay for at least another four days.

“David?” Susan’s voice. He recognized it now without having to grasp for it.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to phone so late.”

“It doesn’t matter. No one is sleeping here anyway.” He’d heard Abby turn off the shower only moments before.

“I just… needed to talk.”

For an inkling, David felt that flash of guilt again, that awful touch of a cheater’s unwarranted fear. But that disappeared
inside the vast worry that played inside him now, this thing that had consumed him since Abby had come to his office and told
him his daughter was missing.

Lord, You gave this child life through me and now You’ve got her where she might lose her life again. I don’t understand.
I don’t understand You!

He remembered a woman in the Bible who had grabbed the prophet Elisha’s feet and cried out to him because her son had died.

I didn’t even ask for this child, Lord, but my hopes are crushed. Why would You do something like this? Why?

Elisha had laid upon the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands, but nothing happened. Elisha had turned away in
disappointment and had paced back and forth in the room. Then he’d climbed on the deathbed a second time and stretched out
upon the boy and the child’s body had grown warm with life.

“Have you heard anything, David?”

“No. Have you heard anything there?”

“No.”

“If I find out something here, I’ll call you. I promise.”

“David, what if something awful has happened to her?”

“Don’t think that, Susan. Don’t think the worst. Neither of us can afford it.”

“I can’t help it, David. With everything else that’s happened, I can’t think anything else.”

“Susan.”

“There’s a whole Web site, did you know that? It tells you what to do next if you’re looking for a missing kid.”

“I don’t—”

“I made posters with her picture on them. The police will circulate some, but that site said they don’t get them out as fast
as they ought to. Every minute counts, that’s what the site says.”

“This camp ought to be helping you look,” he said.

“They’re afraid I’m going to sue them.”

“They ought to be. Losing a camper. Just like that.”

“There’s no courier service tomorrow because of the July 4 holiday. If I fly some to you tonight, would you put them up?”

“Of course. Tomorrow’s the day all the tourists are in town. Maybe someone has seen her.”

“Delta has a freight service. A hundred and sixty-nine dollars and they’ll have it to you at seven in the morning.”

“Did they tell you that on the site, too?”

“No,” she said. “I called Delta myself.” Then, with a softening of voice, “David, is Abigail nearby?”