Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(55)

“It’s for when Randy’s here,” Kendall said. “He gets mad if we come out of our room when he’s here.”

Grandma set the jar down and turned back to the closet. This time she emerged holding the almost empty package of graham crackers along with the bag containing the remainder of the marshmallows. Kendall said nothing.

“Well?” Grandma pressed.

“It’s food, I guess,” Kendall mumbled, staring at the floor.

“Food should be kept in a kitchen cabinet, not in a bedroom closet where it might attract mice or bugs or all kinds of other vermin,” Grandma said. “What’s it doing here?”

“Because . . .” Kendall began. Grandma’s voice had sounded angry, and Kendall was sure she was in trouble.

“Well?” Grandma insisted.

“Because sometimes Mommy forgets about dinner,” Kendall admitted quietly.

“You mean she forgets to feed you?”

Kendall nodded again.

And then something totally unexpected happened. Grandma turned around and returned the marshmallows, graham crackers, and even the peanut butter jar to their original hiding places in the closet exactly as she’d found them. The next thing Kendall knew, Grandma Puckett had pulled her into a fierce hug, holding her so tightly that Kendall could barely breathe.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Grandma whispered in her ear. It sounded like maybe she was crying, but Kendall couldn’t be sure.

“I didn’t raise your mother to be like this, you know,” Grandma said. “I thought your daddy would be a good influence on her—that maybe he could fix her. But he didn’t—couldn’t. What are we going to do about this, Kendall? What on earth can we do?”

Kendall didn’t answer, because she had no idea.

Mommy came home a little while later. She was acting weird, staggering a bit and not exactly talking straight. Kendall had seen her like this before, but usually not in the middle of the day. It was the kind of thing that happened late at night, when the beer was flowing and people—mostly strangers—were out in the kitchen talking and laughing.

Kendall was on her way to the kitchen, but when Grandma and Mommy started arguing, she froze where she was and went no farther.

“How often do you forget to feed the kids dinner?” Grandma demanded.

“What makes you think I don’t feed my kids?” Mommy asked right back. “Who told you a story like that, tattletale Kendall?”

“It doesn’t matter who told me. What matters is whether it’s true. Do you forget to feed them or not?”

“It’s none of your business. You can’t show up at my house and call me a bad mother to my face. You may be my mother, but you’ve got no right to do that, none at all.”

That’s when the front door opened. Kendall held her breath. If it had been anyone else, the doorbell would have rung first, but Randy never used the bell or knocked. He always barged right in as though he owned the place.

He must have heard the sound of raised voices. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.

“It’s my mother,” Mommy said. “She has nerve enough to come into my household and accuse me of being a bad mother—of not taking care of my kids, of not feeding them.”

“You said that to her?” Randy demanded. “You said that to your own daughter?”

Kendall recognized the menace in his voice because she’d heard it before. She crept back into the room and cowered against Peter’s bunk.

“Yes I did,” Grandma said defiantly. “I not only said it, I meant it. Maddie may be my daughter, but she isn’t a fit mother.”

“Get out of here, you old cow!” Randy bellowed. “You get the hell out of here and don’t come back!”

“Believe me,” Grandma said. “I’m going.”

Huddled next to the bottom bunk, Kendall heard Grandma walk past on her way to the guest room. Minutes later she came back, dragging her Rollaboard. She slammed the door as she left the house, without having exchanged another word with either Mommy or Randy.

A few minutes later, a brokenhearted Kendall climbed onto the bottom bunk next to Peter. With Grandma Puckett also gone now, everything was lost. It would be just the two of them from here on—Kendall and Peter—against everyone else.

After a time, with Peter’s warm body snuggled against hers, Kendall fell asleep, too.





Chapter 23





By the time Beth awakened the next morning, Jenny was already gone, but for the first time in weeks Beth felt rested and ravenously hungry. She went straight to the food court and treated herself to a huge breakfast. She had two back-to-back finals that day. When the second one was over, she felt as though she’d done well, which—considering how miserable the weekend had been—was pretty much miraculous.

She was trudging back to Conover Hall when a text came in on her phone. The phone had been in her pocket with the ringer turned to silent during the exams. She knew that other kids sometimes used their phones to cheat during tests, but Beth didn’t. Feeling the familiar buzz in her pocket, she pulled the phone out—dreading that the incoming text might be from Ron while at the same time hoping that it would be. When she looked at the phone, however, she was surprised to see that the message was from Conrad Milton, a kid in her humanities class. In fact, he had waved at her a few minutes ago as she was leaving the room after finishing the test. She didn’t know Conrad all that well. During the course of the semester, they’d shared class notes a couple of times, and that was the only reason he was in her contacts list. But when she read his message, she was beyond stunned.