Dream Country Read Online Free Page B

LaRosa took more notes.
    “She loves that spot,” Hathaway said thoughtfully, as if she was considering the possibility of Sage having run away to Maine. She had come to visit last summer, and the three of them had spent five wonderful days together.
    “It’s so far,” Daisy said. “She couldn’t get there by herself—”
    “Do you really mean that?” Hathaway asked kindly, and Daisy’s eyes filled with tears, to think of how resourceful her daughter was. Sage had been a Girl Scout for ten years. She could start a fire with two sticks, locate north without a compass, find her way home on an unmarked trail.
    “Mount Katahdin,” Detective LaRosa said. “What town’s that near?”
    “Millinocket.”
    “Tell me more about her.” The detective sounded like someone who really cared, who really wanted to know.
    “She worries about her weight,” Daisy said. “That she doesn’t look ‘perfect.’ She hated her braces when she had them. I made her a necklace when she was four, and she never takes it off. She has a birthmark on the top of her right thigh that her father said looks just like a mustang. She was thrilled. She used to say she wanted to be a cowgirl when she grew up.”
    “So did you,” Hathaway said, smiling. Then, to the detective: “Daisy won a Nestlé’s Quik contest when she was little—she got a red cowgirl outfit.”
    “What does her necklace look like?” the detective asked, ignoring the part about Daisy, writing down everything about Sage. Daisy liked that.
    “It’s long, down to here.” Daisy touched her own breastbone. “It’s a circle of bone set in white gold, with four gold nuggets dangling below on a white gold chain. I carved the bone on both sides, a two-sided face. The only one I’ve ever done.”
    “What’s it called?” the detective asked, looking up.
    “‘The Twins,’ ” Daisy answered.
    She could hear the detective’s pencil scratching on the paper, along with branches moving in the wind. The windows were open. The sun was down, and the birds had stopped calling. Daisy could picture Sage touching her necklace. She always kept the boy’s face, her brother, turned to face her heart.
    “Tell me about her boyfriend,” Detective LaRosa said.
    “His name is Ben Davis,” Daisy told her. “They’ve been friends since Sage got to high school. He’s a good kid—” Nothing like James, she was thinking. Not at all dangerous. Not a quiet cowboy with stormy eyes and a rock-hard stomach. Just a nice suburban kid who excels in science and plays the trumpet in band; no threat whatsoever to the future Daisy had in mind for Sage.
    “A good kid,” the detective repeated, writing.
    “They’re
both
good kids,” Daisy continued, starting to feel better as she talked about them. “They went canoeing last night and lost track of the time. They were having an adventure! I lost my temper, pushed her too far. It’s my fault. I’ve always been overprotective. That’s all—she’s . . .”
    But Detective LaRosa was staring into the jewelry box. She pushed some rings and the pine ghost bracelet aside, the gold and silver jingling lightly. Daisy felt like shouting at her. There were no drugs to be found in there. Frowning, the detective removed something from under Sage’s jewelry that looked like a white plastic Popsicle stick. At one end was a small square window, colored blue.
    “Oh, no,” Hathaway said.
    Daisy’s hand went to her mouth. She stared at the white stick. It was a home pregnancy test. She remembered as if it were yesterday. Daisy had used one herself, over sixteen years ago. Way out on that Tucker ranch, in the privacy of her bathroom, she had used the stick she’d bought at a drugstore in Dubois. Not wanting to get James’s hopes up, she had been positive her missed period was a false alarm, just wishful thinking—but she had taken the test anyway.
    “She’s pregnant,” Hathaway whispered.
    “I can’t think of that now.” Daisy sobbed.