Hazardous Homecoming. Dana Mentink

       ONE

      Something glittered, garish and out of place against the massive framework of sticks that comprised the abandoned eagle’s nest, a flash of metal, gold. Ruby Hudson shaded her eyes and peered through her binoculars at the aerie tucked high in the pine tree and moved to find out what the glittering object was. She estimated the structure to be a good two tons worth of tangled branches, no doubt added on to and reused by many generations of eagle pairs since her father purchased the land in the wilds of Oregon decades ago. It had been hemmed in by a tight clench of fir trees, recently removed due to borer beetle damage. The disease had taken hold throughout the area. Ruby had been distraught to watch the nearby trees cut down. So had Josephine Walker, who lived nearby.

      “You can’t cut them,” Josephine had wailed. “My Alice won’t be able to find her way home.”

      Alice won’t be coming home, Ruby’s heart had answered. Not after twenty years.

      Now the sharp scent of the felled trees mingled with a small pain wriggling through her stomach again. If her family had never come, she wondered for the millionth time, would the tragedy have still occurred?

      Stop it, Ruby. It isn’t healthy. She loved the property, the birds, the endless blue sky and the smell of life burgeoning all around her. The Hudson Raptor Sanctuary had saved countless birds, it was a haven...and also the place where she’d first learned what evil was. The memory of Alice Walker came to mind, hair so fine it blew in the breeze like downy feathers, and eyes of... Had they been blue? It bothered her that she could not remember.

      If the Hudson family—Ruby, her father and brother— had only remained in San Francisco it never would have happened, the one fleeting moment that changed them all forever. She slapped away a leaf that had become tangled in her auburn hair. Blue or green? She should know the color of Alice’s eyes.

      Her skin prickled as the leaves rattled out a hollow rasping chorus in the breeze. It had been a June day then, too. Ruby, desperate to play outside, had badgered her father until he acquiesced with strict orders—she was only to walk to the end of the graveled path and back with little Alice who had come to play.

      No straying, Ruby.

      The woods were dark and dangerous.

      More than dangerous, she’d learned.

      Deadly.

      The hair on the back of her neck stood up, along with the feeling that there were eyes on her that very moment. The same sensation she’d gotten the day before, and on and off for weeks since the tree removal had begun. She suspected it was Josephine again, following her, begging her not to cut the trees that somehow preserved the hope that her daughter would return.

      She listened. Nothing. There is no evil in these woods, she told herself firmly.

      Then what happened to Alice all those years ago? She’d seen Peter Stokes that day, a jovial fifteen-year-old who lived nearby with his mother and little brother, Cooper. Peter had become the main suspect for a while.

      He’d returned to the tiny town of Silver Peak four months ago, living in the rickety cabin just beyond the edge of sanctuary property. She wondered how she would feel if they came face-to-face. Was he a man she’d falsely accused? Or the person who hid the guilty truth from them all?

      Ruby shook the clinging past aside and climbed up the rough limbs.

      A drop of moisture fell from above and left a cold trail along her temple. She shimmied up, using the latticework of branches. She’d measured the nest before, adding to her study notes, a good nine feet in diameter, conical, wedged into the fork of the pine. The nest had been abandoned years before as the trees around grew taller. Eagles liked to have a clear, unobstructed view. The glimmer of gold was a few feet away and she had to take a precarious step out onto a lower branch to reach it. It creaked ominously under her feet. With straining fingers she stretched farther, past the bleached white bones of a rabbit and the glistening ribs of a long-dead trout. A few inches more.

      Sweat beaded her brow in spite of the cool. She could not reach it, not without stepping out onto a weaker branch that would deliver her fifteen feet straight to the ground. She remembered the pencil behind her ear and used it to hook the gold object. It was stuck on a dried conifer branch, one of many wedged into the aerie by the male during incubation for some reason known only to eagles. She dislodged it, sending a cascade of brittle bones to the forest floor.

      She scooted toward the trunk and stared at the object in her hands.

      A necklace, small and delicate. Her heart froze over, the beats crystallizing in horror as she contemplated the heart charm hanging from the chain with a letter inscribed on it. A tiny A.

      For Alice.

      The child who had vanished without a trace that long ago day in the dark and dangerous woods. It was as if all her memories flooded her mind in one horrifying rush. Alice, Alice, her mind cried out. What happened to you? Did Peter hurt you? Was it a stranger? What should I have done? The cold metal locket seemed to chill her palm.

      Somehow, her body guided her down from the tree until she dropped heavily onto the soft cushion of needles.

      She stared at the necklace dangling from her nerveless fingers.

      “My baby’s,” came a sibilant whisper that made Ruby cry out.

      She whirled to see a gaunt woman, gray eyes in a dead white face. Long silvered hair streamed over her shoulders. Her mouth was twisted in a horrified line. “That necklace. It belongs to my baby. I want it.”

      Ruby forced her mouth to work. “Mrs. Walker?” Ruby felt the hunger in Josephine’s eyes, a ferocious need to connect to Ruby because Ruby was there and her daughter was not.

      “It’s Alice’s. You took it. You took her. I see the truth now. It wasn’t a stranger. Or Peter. It was you.”

      “No,” Ruby started to say until anguish closed up her throat. She fought for breath. “Mrs. Walker, I don’t know what happened to Alice. I did not see the person who took her. Remember? I told you before.”

      She pointed a finger at Ruby, the nail broken and dirty. “You wanted her necklace. Give it to me.”

      Fear arced violently inside Ruby. “I found it in the nest, up there.”

      Mrs. Walker did not look up. Her red-rimmed gaze never left Ruby’s face.

      “You took her.”

      “No, I did not. Alice was my friend. I would never...” Ruby’s throat thickened as she fought tears. She moved back a step. “This is evidence. We can go to the police again. It might help them find her.” She felt cruel saying it. After two decades they would not find Alice, not alive anyway. Everyone knew this, yet a tiny flame of hope never died inside Ruby, and she knew that flame must be a roaring fire inside the mother whose daughter had vanished without a trace.

      Mrs. Walker cocked her head and for a moment, Ruby thought she understood. Then her eyes narrowed, mouth twisted. “I’ve been watching you. All these months, I’ve been watching you make your plans to hide your guilt. Did you think cutting down the forest would keep you safe?”

      Cold rippled through Ruby’s body. She could not reply.

      “You took my daughter, and you want to take her necklace now. That was from her father. You cut down the trees so she can’t find her way home.”

      “Mrs. Walker,” Ruby whispered. “Please listen to me.”

      Mrs. Walker pulled a knife from her pocket. She gripped the white handle, the blade winking in the dappled light. Ruby’s mouth went dry.

      “You took my Alice.”

      Ruby could only shake her head, the necklace vibrating in her trembling hand.

      “You took my baby,” Mrs.