“No, ma’am.”
Faith shook the carton. It was still empty. She didn’t think Ginger would lie about something like that. She had offered both detectives anything in the kitchen. Judging by her depleted stash of Diet Rite sodas, they had taken her up on the offer.
The phone rang. Faith checked the clock on the stove. It was exactly seven in the morning. “This will probably be my boss,” she told Ginger. Still, he waited until she had answered the phone.
Amanda said, “No news.”
Faith waved away the detective. “Where are you?”
She didn’t answer the question. “How’s Jeremy holding up?”
“As well as can be expected.” Faith didn’t offer more. She checked to make sure Ginger was in the living room, then opened the silverware drawer. The spoons were turned in the wrong direction, the flat handles to the right rather than the left. The forks were upside down. The tines pointed toward the front of the drawer instead of the back. Faith blinked, not sure about what she was seeing.
Amanda said, “You know about Boyd?”
“Will told me last night. I’m sorry. I know he did some bad things, but he was …”
Amanda didn’t make her finish the sentence. “Yes, he was.”
Faith opened the junk drawer. All the pens were gone. She kept them bundled together with a red rubber band, tucked in the bottom right-hand corner. They were always in this drawer. She rifled through the coupons, scissors, and unidentified spare keys. No pens. “Did you know that Zeke was stateside?”
“Your mother was trying to protect you.”
Faith opened the other junk drawer. “Apparently, she tried to protect me from a lot of things.” She reached into the back and found the pens. The rubber band was yellow. Had she changed it out? Faith had a vague recollection of the band breaking a while back, but she would’ve sworn on a stack of Bibles that she’d used the red rubber band from the broccoli she’d bought at the store that same day.
“Faith?” Amanda’s tone was terse. “What’s going on with you? Has something happened?”
“I’m fine. It’s just …” She tried to think of an excuse. She was really doing this—she was locked into not telling Amanda that the kidnappers had been in touch. That they had left something of Evelyn’s under Faith’s pillow. That they knew far too much about Jeremy. That they had messed with her silverware. “It’s early. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“You need to take care of yourself. Eat the right foods. Sleep as much as you can. Drink lots of water. I know it’s hard, but you have to keep up your strength right now.”
Faith felt her temper flare. She didn’t know if she was talking to her boss or to Aunt Mandy right now, but either one of them could kiss her ass. “I know how to take care of myself.”
“I’m very glad to hear you think that, but from where I’m standing, it’s not the case.”
“Did she do something, Mandy? Is Mom in trouble because—”
“Do you need me to come by the house?”
“Aren’t you in Valdosta?”
Amanda went silent. Faith had obviously crossed a line. Or maybe it was a simple case of her boss being smart enough to remember that their conversation was being recorded. Right now, Faith didn’t care. She stared at the yellow rubber band, wondering if she was losing her mind. Her blood sugar was probably low. Faith’s vision was slightly blurry. Her mouth was dry. She opened the fridge again and reached for the orange juice carton. Still empty.
Amanda said, “Think of your mother. She would want you to be strong.”
If she only knew that Faith was about to lose her shit over a yellow rubber band. She mumbled, “I’m fine.”
“We’ll get her back, and we’ll make sure that whoever did this pays for what they’ve put us through. You can take that to the bank.”
Faith opened her mouth to say she didn’t give a damn about retribution, but Amanda had already ended the call.
She tossed the orange juice carton into the trash. There was a bag of emergency candy in the cabinet. Faith pulled it out, and Jolly Ranchers scattered onto the floor. She looked at the bag. The bottom had been ripped open.
Ginger was back. He leaned down to help her pick up the candy. “Everything all right?”
“Yes.” Faith tossed a handful of candy onto the counter and left the kitchen. She hit the light switch in the living room but nothing happened. Faith flipped the toggle down, then up again. Still nothing. She checked the bulb in the lamp. One turn made the light come on. She did the same to the bulb in the other lamp. She felt the heat singe her fingers as the light came on.
Faith fell heavily into the chair. Her temper kept revving up and down like scales on a piano. She knew that she needed to eat something, to test her blood and make the proper adjustments. Her brain wouldn’t work properly until she was leveled out. But now that she was sitting down, she didn’t have the strength to move.
The couch was across from her. Zeke had folded his sheets into a perfect square and placed them on top of his pillow. She could see the red stain on the beige cushion where Jeremy had spilled Kool-Aid fifteen years ago. She knew that if she flipped the cushion over, she would find a blue stain from a Maui punch Popsicle he had dropped two years later. If she turned over the cushion she was sitting on, there would be a tear where his soccer cleat had cut the material. The rug on the floor was worn from both their tracks back and forth to the kitchen. The walls were an eggshell they had painted during Jeremy’s spring break last year.
Faith considered the very real possibility that she was losing her mind. Jeremy was too old for these kinds of games, and Zeke had never been one for psychological warfare. He would rather beat her to death than unscrew a couple of light bulbs. Regardless, neither one of them was in the mood for pranks. This couldn’t just be Faith’s blood sugar. The pens, the silverware, the lamps—it was little things that only Faith would notice. The sort of stuff that would make someone else think you were crazy if you told them about it.
She looked up at the ceiling, then let her eyes travel down to the shelves mounted on the wall behind the couch. Bill Mitchell had been a collector of kitsch. He had hula girl salt and pepper shakers from Hawaii. He had Mount Rushmore sunglasses, a foam Lady Liberty crown, and an enameled silver spoon set depicting some of the more notable scenery of the Grand Canyon. His most prized collection had been his snow globes. Every road trip, every flight, every time he left the house, Bill Mitchell looked for a snow globe to mark the occasion.
When her father died, there was no question in the family that these would go to Faith. As a child, she had loved shaking the globes and watching the snow fall. Order into chaos. It was something Faith had shared with her father. In a rare splurge, she’d had custom shelves built for the globes and made Jeremy so scared of breaking one that for an entire month he took the long way to the kitchen just so he didn’t accidentally brush against the shelves.
As she sat in the living room that morning, Faith looked up at the shelves to find that all of thirty-six globes had been turned around to face the wall.
CHAPTER NINE
SARA WONDERED IF IT WAS A SOUTHERN PECULIARITY FOR little children to get sick in the half hour between Sunday school and church services. Most of her early patients that morning had fallen into that golden time period. Tummy aches, earaches, general malaise—nothing that could be pinned down by a blood test or an X-ray, but was easily cured by a set of coloring books or a cartoon on the television.