Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
My heart stalls, breath catching in my throat. Two seconds later, rational thought returns, along with the cautious, whispered voice. I’m almost certain it’s a child speaking. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? Please, please…”
I jam my thumb into the button. “Hi. I’m…
I’m here. Who is this?” My gaze goes to the window behind me.
We’re miles from the nearest house, aren’t we?
How far could the signal be carried? “Monty? Jett?” I prompt my nephews, wondering if they’ve somehow managed to get ahold of a radio in the main house. But what are the odds?
There’s a long pause, and then the voice returns. Soft. Cracking. “Can you…help me?”
This time I’m nearly positive the voice belongs to a young girl. The blood in my veins cools like a stream. The world shrinks, enveloping me until nothing else exists. “Where are you?” I beg. “Who are you? Are your parents there?”
This is madness. It’s a joke.
It has to be.
Silence stretches on between us, a single thread of a moment suspended in time as I try to piece together what’s happening and wrap it around my finger, my mind.
“Hello?” I say again after what feels like a lifetime with no response.
Nothing.
She says nothing.
I drop the mic and dart from the room, rushing out the front door and onto the porch. A second set of tire tracks marks the dirt path that leads to the house, telling me Simon must’ve driven down on one of the golf carts.
I whip my phone out of my pocket, momentarily remembering I never pressed play on my audiobook after a brief pause an hour ago, and dial his number.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Can you come back?”
It only takes three minutes for him to make it back to me, worry etching lines across his face. “What happened?” He steps off the golf cart and hurries over, eyes serious and searching.
“There’s a little girl…on the radio. A radio. She said she needs help.” I don’t wait for him to reach me to turn and rush back into the house, back to the radio. I drop to the ground and turn the volume up.
Simon is wary, standing back as he appraises me, then the radio, as if he thinks I’m joking.
I jam the button again. “Hi. Honey, can you hear me? Are you still there?”
We wait. In silence. In eager anticipation.
His eyes flick back and forth from me to the radio. “Are you sure you?—”
“Shhh!” I wave a hand in his direction, leaning closer to the speaker. I squeeze my eyes shut, silently begging her to speak again.
After several minutes of silence, I drop the microphone and shake my head. “She was there. Simon, she was…”
He looks toward the window. “You’re sure?”
I nod. “We have to do something. We have to look for her.”
Slowly, he takes a step back, then all at once moves toward the door. “I’ll call Dad. We’ll take a look around.”
Relief floods my chest, my head. I move too, rushing toward him as he makes the call. Within ten minutes, everyone except Polly and Vic—who are still inside with the kids—have joined us on the porch as Simon relays what I told him.
“Well, did she tell you where she is?” Warren asks. “Should we call the police?”
“No police,” Rachelle says quickly. “Not until we know if this is serious. How do we know it’s not a prank?”
“We have to look, don’t we?” Simon asks. “Just in case.”
Pierce’s face is stoic as he surveys the land around the guest house. “We’ll split up. I’ll head up around the house with Preston. Simon, you, Astrid, and your mother look around here. Marlie, Warren, and Duncan, take the land this way. We’ll all head east and meet up in the middle.”
With the plan in place, we set to work. I don’t think anyone is taking this seriously, but at least they’re willing to look. Simon, Rachelle, and I move around the guest house in a widening circle, calling out to the girl.
“Honey? Are you out here? Can you hear me?”
“Hello?” Simon shouts.
Rachelle is silent. Watching. Listening. In the distance, I can hear the faint shouts of the other Mornings carrying through the woods. We move through clearings and around one of the ponds, but the further into the woods we get, the more foolish I feel.
Where on earth could this little girl be? Maybe Rachelle is right. Maybe this is a prank after all.
We search for over an hour before I see Pierce up ahead, and soon after, the rest of the family congregates together, sweaty and out of breath.
“Anything?” Simon asks, but his father is already shaking his head.
“Us either,” Marlie says.
Soon, all eyes drift to me. “I’m sorry,” I say gently. “I just…”
Simon moves closer to me, hands folded together. “It’s…possible you misunderstood.”
“I…” How can I argue? I know I didn’t misunderstand, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t tricked. “Yeah, maybe.”
“We should all get back to work,” Pierce says, his tone soft but clipped.
“Great idea,” Preston says.
“Does anyone need anything?” Rachelle asks, pointing to each of us. She hesitates on me. “Astrid?”
I shake my head as Simon puts a hand on my shoulder, leading me back down the path toward the guest house. “Thanks,” he mutters to Duncan as we move past him.
Back at the guest house, once we’re alone, he shuts the door. “Feel better now?”
I swallow, his words stinging me. “No. I just feel…confused.”
He cocks his head to the side. “Like Mom said, it might’ve been someone pranking you. It might’ve sounded like one thing and been another.”
I meet his eyes, his tone concrete. It sinks into me, my chest filling with dread. “You don’t believe me.”
His jaw drops open, muscles tight. “It’s not that I don’t believe you.
I wouldn’t have asked them to look if I didn’t believe you.
I just…I mean, was it hard to believe? Of course.
It felt ridic—er, it just…you know. It was farfetched.
For some little girl to have gotten lost, found a radio, and called us on it because she somehow ended up on our land?
” He laughs dryly, and when I don’t join in, his face falls flat.
“Either way, whoever it was is gone now. They weren’t answering.
” He opens his mouth again like he wants to say something else, and I can see it dancing on his expression like electricity on a wire, though he just closes his mouth and says nothing.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.” He halfway turns away from me as if he’s deciding whether to leave. “I should get back to work.”
“You want to say something. I can see it.”
Finally, with a drop of his shoulders like he’s carrying the weight of the entire room, he turns back to me. “I just… It’s possible you’re letting what my idiot brothers said about this place get to your head.”
The words land in my brain like mud, not making sense, and he sees that on my features.
“Duncan told me he mentioned the…er, someone dying here.”
There it is. At once, the final piece of the puzzle clicks into place. I understand everything he’s not saying. Why he doesn’t believe me.
“So maybe,” he rushes to say, “you’re just a little freaked out down here by yourself, and it made you think you heard something you didn’t. I told Mom it was a bad idea to leave you down here alone.”
I swallow, my body hollow. He thinks I imagined it. That I wasted everyone’s time because I’m a little scared. “I’m not a child, and I’m not afraid. I know what I heard.”
It takes him several beats to respond, but eventually, he does with a sigh. “Okay. Well, maybe she’ll talk again then.”
“Maybe she will.”
He offers me a small smile and bumps my hand with his. “Here. How about I stay with you? We can get everything cleared out in half the time.”
Something squeezes my stomach. Pride? Rage? “No. It’s fine. I’ve got it. You should go back to the house.”
“Oh, don’t do that. Come on, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I say, forcing a believable smile. “Promise. Really, I’m not. I just…I’ve been listening to an audiobook, so I’m good working alone. Marlie needs us, right? I’ll be fine.”
He hesitates, casting a glance over his shoulder toward the door. “Are you sure?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll let you know if anything goes wrong.” Without waiting for him to start moving, I bend down and lift a box.
Moments later, he’s gone.