Chapter Ten
Ten
The house was small and warm and smelled of garlic. Alma led her down a narrow hallway crowded with bicycles and strollers. In the kitchen, a young woman stood at the stove, stirring something in a soup pot as a baby in a high chair bounced and gurgled.
Alma ushered Leanne into a living room dominated by a worn beige sectional and a green recliner.
The carpet was littered with toys, and in the corner was a round adobe fireplace filled with candles and religious statues.
The mantel above had more candles and had been made into an altar of sorts with a woman’s photo at the center.
“My daughter. Marisol.”
Leanne looked at Alma and then approached the mantel.
On closer inspection, the person in the framed photograph wasn’t a woman—she looked barely sixteen. The girl had dark hair and luminous brown eyes, and she wore a purple sweater in what was clearly a school portrait taken in front of the usual blue backdrop.
Leanne’s stomach tensed as she studied the photo. The girl wore black eyeliner but no lipstick or jewelry, not even the arc of earrings that seemed to be a rite of passage for teenage girls. Her white smile was somehow more perfect because of a slightly crooked incisor.
Leanne looked at Alma, who was watching her. “Marisol is…?”
“Missing.”
Missing, not dead.
“Tell me what happened.”
Alma stepped closer, her brow furrowing as she gazed at her daughter’s face.
“She went to a party with her friends in Fort Stockton. One of those parking lot parties? This was behind a warehouse there, where no one could see the cars.” Alma paused, and Leanne knew what was coming.
“They were drinking, you know. Her friends came home, all in different cars. But Marisol didn’t. ”
Leanne watched her pinched expression. The deep creases in her face showed the extended agony of waiting.
Leanne cleared her throat. “How long ago?”
Alma pulled her gaze away from her daughter’s picture. “Six years.”