Long Lost, стр. 13
Charlie scrambled off.
With a coil of rope and an old rifle from the shed, Mr. Hobbes ran down the slope into the woods. Before long, Charlie came tearing after him, trailed by old Joseph Carlyle from across the street, the Morrisons’ hired man, and the grocer, who’d been stopped mid-route on his cart. The hired man carried a cudgel. The grocer had his horse whip.
The group rushed through the trees.
“We’ll check by the old mill first,” Mr. Hobbes told the others. “Then we’ll move downstream if—”
“Papa,” Charlie interrupted. “Listen.”
Everyone halted. From somewhere in the distance, across the river, there came the sound of a barking dog.
They raced across Parson’s Bridge. The barking continued, high-pitched and panicked and growing closer. As they circled a knot of pines, the dog itself came into view.
Pixie darted back and forth at the river’s edge. His curly fur was splattered with mud, his eyes fixed on something in the water. His barking didn’t cease as the men raced closer.
Mr. Hobbes scanned the scene. The water narrowed here, running fast and deep before twisting and widening in its course to the lake. A few fallen trees lay in the waves, the tips of their branches nearly reaching from one side to the other. On the bank, trammeled by the dog’s pacing paws, were multiple sets of shoe prints. Pixie’s frenzied tracks had erased any chance of reading those prints, deciphering how many feet had made them, or where those feet had gone.
“Papa,” Charlie murmured again. He nudged his father’s arm.
Mr. Hobbes turned to follow the boy’s gaze.
Nearly halfway across the water, caught in a cluster of branches, was something pale and soft. Something that rippled on the waves.
The group moved fast. The hired man stayed on the bank, holding one end of the rope. The rest pulled the rope into the waves, Charlie stopping where the water was ankle-deep, Mr. Carlyle and the grocer wading farther. Mr. Hobbes, with the rope’s far end tied around his waist, strode and then swam past them all, into the rain-swollen river.
The dog’s hoarse barks accelerated.
Mr. Hobbes reached the heap of fabric.
There was nothing inside of it.
It was only an empty dress: an empty, linen, lace-edged dress, which belonged, as Mr. Hobbes and Charlie recognized, not to Hazel, but to Pearl.
When Mr. Hobbes returned to the bank with the dripping dress over his arm, Pixie finally fell silent. The dog buried his nose in the dress. Then he turned, seemingly confused, to sniff along the bank once more.
“Pixie,” Charlie called, but the dog had resumed his frantic pacing, searching for something no one else could sense.
Before long, the woods were filled with sheriff’s deputies, neighbors, curious onlookers. They searched for hours, wading in the river, checking the ruined mill, examining each hole and hillside, until darkness settled over everything like a cold fog. At last, when even the brightest lanterns became useless, the whole company trudged back to town.
Mr. Hobbes carried Pearl’s sodden dress. Charlie led Pixie, whose collar was tied to the length of rope, and who whined and pulled backward the entire way.
Meanwhile, inside the grand house, Hazel’s father was telephoning important friends, gathering more help. Hazel’s mother was shut in her bedroom. Pearl sat, as still as a plaster mannequin, in a chair near the fire. When anyone questioned her, whether it was her father, the priest, or the sheriff himself, she would say nothing but what she had said before.
The Searcher took her sister.
And now she was gone.
Fiona didn’t even notice when her phone began to ring.
It had just buzzed for the eighth or ninth time, and Fiona was hoping that whatever was making that annoying sound would knock it off, when she realized the noise was coming from her own backpack.
“Fiona?” said her mom’s voice, when Fiona finally answered. “I’m on my way to the library right now. I’ll need you to meet me outside.”
“But—” Fiona glanced at the phone’s clock. “You’re not supposed to come for another hour!”
“I know. Arden’s evening dance class was cancelled without us getting notified, so she’s waiting outside the studio right now. She walked straight there from the rink, and the doors are locked. We can’t just leave her standing on the street.”
Fiona was pretty sure they could. “Can’t you go get Arden by yourself, and pick me up when you come back?”
“I have two errands to do on the way home. By the time we get back to Lost Lake, the library will be long closed. I’m sorry, ladybug.”
“Wait,” said Fiona. “You were supposed to come inside and help me get a library card!”
“I know.” Her mom’s voice was gentle. “We’ll just have to do it another time. I’ll see you in three minutes.”
The call cut off.
Fiona would have liked to throw something, or slam a heavy door, but she was in the last place where a person should do those things. Instead, fuming, she shoved The Lost One back into its spot at the end of the bottom row. Then she stalked down the steps, past the stares of the strangers in the reading room, and out the library doors.
Her mom craned around with an apologetic smile as Fiona threw herself into the back seat. “I am really sorry about the change of plans, ladybug. It wasn’t my idea, believe me.”
Fiona nodded but didn’t answer.
Her mom steered back onto the quiet street. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the library so much.”
“I’d enjoy it more if I had a library card,” Fiona mumbled, low enough that her mom might not hear.
They rolled along Old Mill Road and turned right onto Old Turnpike, leaving the library behind. Through her window, Fiona watched downtown Lost Lake slide past, its outlines blurring like a photograph dipped in water. There went another steepled white church. There went a row of cozy little cottages. There went a crooked street sign reading ROSE LANE.
Rose Lane. Fiona shifted