A Spark of Light(50)

—


LIL GODDARD HAD EITHER VANISHED off the face of the earth or had never existed. In spite of the pastor’s description of her, and George’s own comments about his daughter, no one had been able to turn up any information about the girl.

Hugh was multitasking—still trying to win George’s trust on the phone while scanning the notes and the reports that were being fed to him by detectives. Lil Goddard wasn’t at her home. She had never gotten a traffic ticket and didn’t have a vehicle registered to her name. The only hit a Google search retrieved was from ten years ago, when she played an angel in a Christmas pageant at her church and had a captioned photo in the local paper. It wasn’t uncommon for minors to leave very faint trails, but Lil had also never been enrolled in any public school in the state of Mississippi. Then again, many kids of evangelicals were home-schooled. And all Hugh really knew about Lil was that she had, at some point, had an abortion at this clinic—but the records were not accessible online, so it could have been yesterday or a month ago.

Hell, for all Hugh knew, George Goddard had killed Lil in a fit of rage and buried her in the backyard.

But if they could find her, maybe she could convince George to end this.

“I could get a message to your daughter.” Hugh hesitated. “I could be an intermediary. I’m sure you want to explain to her what’s happening.”

“I can’t,” George said, his voice cracking.

Because she wouldn’t listen? Hugh thought. Because she’s dead?

“Man, I hear you. Seems like me and my daughter can’t even agree that the sky is blue sometimes.”

Hugh had a sudden vision of him lying on his back on a field, with Wren’s nine-year-old head pillowed on his belly, as she pointed at the clouds in the sky. That one looks like a condom, she’d said. He had barely controlled himself from bolting upright. How do you know what a condom is? Wren had rolled her eyes. Dad. I’m not a baby.

“I could help you,” Hugh suggested. “Maybe I could even get her to come here and talk in person … if you were willing to give me something in return.”

“Like what?”

“I want all the hostages safe, George. But this isn’t about me. It’s about you. And your daughter. She’s the reason you came here, today. Clearly, she’s pretty special to you.”

“You ever wish you could turn back the clock?” George said softly. “It’s like yesterday, she was begging me to braid her hair. And now … now …”

“Now what?”

“She’s all grown up,” George whispered.

Hugh closed his eyes. Sometimes when he walked past Wren’s room and heard her FaceTiming with a friend and laughing, her voice sounded like Annabelle’s, like a woman instead of a girl. “Yeah,” Hugh said. “I know.”

—


WREN COULD HEAR HER FATHER. For whatever reason, the shooter had turned on the speakerphone.

Seems like me and my daughter can’t even agree that the sky is blue sometimes.

Did he really think that? Or was this part of the role he played as a negotiator? Wren used to tell him that he was basically just a really poorly paid actor, making up whatever he thought the person he was talking to wanted to hear. Yeah, her father said. But the best acting comes from some grain of truth.

Did her dad think they fought a lot?

There had been a point when her father had been the center of her universe, and she had followed him around like a shadow, helping him fix the dryer or mow the lawn, but mostly just getting in his way. He never told her to get out of his hair, though. Instead, he showed her how to check the dryer vent for lint and how to change the spark plugs on the mower. Then she went to school, and began to hang out at friends’ houses, and learned that there was a whole slice of life she had been missing—like messing around in your mother’s makeup drawer and trying on her heels and pretending to be a grand duchess; or watching soap operas instead of police procedurals. It was her friend Mina’s mother who bought her her first box of tampons, and stood outside the bathroom door coaching her on how to use them. Wren knew her father could and would do anything for her, but there were just some things that were not in his wheelhouse, and so Wren had found them elsewhere.

Now he thought they didn’t get along?

She tried to remember the last time they’d spent a good amount of time doing nothing but be together. It was a month and a half ago, mid-August. They had a standing date for the Perseid meteor shower; every year they would hike to the highest point in the Jackson area—her dad carrying the telescope and Wren lugging the tent. They’d pull an all-nighter, watching the show that the sky put on for them, and then have pancakes at a diner at sunrise, and sleep the rest of the day away. But this year Wren had been invited to the movies with Mina and they’d heard that Ryan was going to be there with a group of guys from school. She and Mina had made an elaborate plan about how to best get Wren to sit beside Ryan in the theater, and to share a bucket of popcorn. Maybe their hands would brush. Maybe he would put his arm around her.

Wren almost backed out of the meteor overnight. She in fact had gone to break the news to her dad when she found him in the basement, wrestling with an inflatable sleeping pad. “I figure after all these years we deserve some creature comfort,” he said. “No more stones underneath our sleeping bags.” He looked up at her. “What’s up?”