Before She Was Found. Heather Gudenkauf

His head pounds from lack of caffeine and the sharp ammonia fumes.

      He checks his watch. They need to be at the police station in fifteen minutes and he can still hear Jordyn banging around up in her bedroom. Thomas grabs a broom leaning against a corner and lifts it, soundly tapping it against the ceiling, and Jordyn stomps her foot two times in response. Normally, Tess would scold them both for this noisy mode of communication but over the years it has become a game between them. Today he finds no humor in it.

      Thomas pours a cup of coffee into a mug that Jordyn made for him when she was in second grade and takes a tentative sip. His stomach bubbles with nerves. When the boys were young, a visit from a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

      It shouldn’t have been a surprise given Donny’s and Randy’s lack of supervision. It was a catch-22, Thomas thought. If he and Tess kept the boys at the bar where they could keep an eye on them, the questionable clientele and their bad habits were sure to rub off on them. And if they let them run wild they were bound to go searching for trouble with no chance of Thomas or Tess being there to yank them out of harm’s way. It was no wonder that Donny and Randy found themselves in a number of scrapes with the law.

      There was many a night when Randy and Donny were deposited on their front step by Sheriff Tate after being caught drinking, carousing and trespassing on some poor farmer’s land while trying to tip a cow or two. It’s all harmless mischief, Thomas used to tell Tess after the boys, pale and hungover, were out of earshot.

      Yes, until someone gets hurt, Tess would shoot back until it became kind of a joke between them. They laughed halfheartedly at the time but it was with great relief when Randy finally graduated high school and went off to a nearby community college. Donny went his own direction and left Iowa for college in Oregon. Out of sight, out of mind, Thomas thought. And it worked, at least for a few years. Until Randy showed up on their doorstep with a round-faced spitfire of a four-year-old in tow and they found themselves worrying all over again. This time about Jordyn.

      Again Thomas pummels the ceiling with the broom handle. He’s discovered over the years that with girls, with Jordyn, anyway, it was different but much more complicated. The boys only had two moods: silly and sleepy. Jordyn, on the other hand, had too many moods to count. But how Thomas loved that girl.

      Thomas was sure that Tess felt the same way, though they never really talked about it. Maybe it was because they’d never had enough time with Betsy. Jordyn had the same round cheeks, the same widow’s peak, the same belly laugh as their daughter.

      Thomas knows that Jordyn is just on the edge of growing up. That there’s going to be a lot more sass than sweet in the years to come and it scares him to death that Tess might not be around to guide her, and him, through it. Jordyn needs her. He needs her. He tries not to think about life without Tess. It was just a fall, a bad fall, but Tess is tough. Hell, she put up with him all these years. She’ll be able to get through a pesky setback like a broken hip.

      With a sigh, Thomas gives up banging on the ceiling and makes the long trek up the stairs. He pushes open her bedroom door only to find it empty but in typical disarray. Jordyn must be in the bathroom.

      The book bag that Jordyn took with her to Cora Landry’s house for the overnight sits in the middle of the floor. Thomas bends over and pulls out the pair of sweatpants and a University of Grayling T-shirt that Jordyn wears as pajamas and adds them to the ever-growing pile of laundry to wash. His hand grazes something soft and Thomas finds Ella, the gray-and-pink stuffed elephant that Jordyn insists she has outgrown but that always seems to find its way into bed with her. He presses Ella to his nose and inhales Jordyn’s familiar scent. A combination of her shampoo and the Juicy Fruit gum that Jordyn chews incessantly.

      He digs more deeply into the book bag and pulls out a pair of socks and underwear, a hairbrush, a toothbrush sealed inside a plastic baggie. His hand lands on a social studies textbook. It’s heavier than he expects and it tumbles from his fingers and hits the ground hard, thrusting a folded sheet of paper from its pages. Thomas reaches for the paper. It is difficult to pick up but after several tries he is able to snag it with his thick, arthritic fingers. The paper is onion-skin thin and the color of weak tea.

      Thomas pushes aside a stack of books sitting on the foot of Jordyn’s bed and sits down to get a better look. Carefully he unfolds the paper and immediately recognizes Jordyn’s narrow feathery print. Pitch is written neatly across the top and below it is a remarkably detailed map of what looks like the train yard.

      Below a diamond-shaped compass in the upper right-hand corner is the boarded-up depot, the crisscross hatch marks of the railroad tracks and a half-dozen rectangular-shaped boxcars.

      Thomas wants to believe that the map is a geography assignment for Jordyn’s social studies class but the fact that his granddaughter and two friends snuck into the train yard the night before leads him to believe it’s no simple school assignment. Two girls, one with braids, the other with her hair in a high ponytail, are hiding behind one of the boxcars, mischievous grins slashed across their round faces. Jordyn and Violet. A third girl, smaller than the other two, is standing all alone in the middle of the tracks, her mouth opened in a round, black scream.

      He examines the drawing more closely and among the wispy pencil strokes meant to represent the winter wheat next to the train yard is a shadowy spot, more of a smudge, really. Thomas takes the paper to the window and holds it up to the light. Yes. There among the grasses is a vague, faceless shape of a person that inexplicably fills him with trepidation.

      Again he thinks of the bloodstain he just scrubbed from Jordyn’s jacket. Thomas folds the paper in half and then folds it again, and again until it’s the size of a thick postage stamp. He slides it into his pocket and steps into the hallway. “Jordyn,” he calls out gruffly. “We need to get going. Now.”

       Case #92-10945

      Excerpt from the journal of Cora E. Landry

       Nov. 9, 2017

       Violet and I have been eating lunch every day for the last few weeks. She’s quiet, like me, but we talk to each other. I even told her that I liked Gabe and I held my breath waiting for her to say that he was too cute or too popular for me, but she didn’t. She just nodded like it made sense.

       We don’t even have to talk all the time. Sometimes we just sit there and eat, not saying anything, and it doesn’t feel weird. Violet always gets hot lunch and I bring cold lunch from home. I think that maybe Violet gets free lunch. I think this because for the last three days the lunch lady only gave her a peanut butter sandwich, apple slices and a carton of milk. My sister says that’s what kids get who are behind on paying their lunch bill.

       My mom always packs me a sandwich, a clementine, a bag of chips and some kind of dessert. Today she put in a monster cookie. I broke it in half and tried to give Violet some but she said no thanks. I put it on her tray, anyway.

       The other night my mom dropped Violet and me off at the high school basketball game. I was excited because I hardly ever go to the basketball games. Gabe was already there and waved us over so we could sit next to him and his friends. Jordyn was sitting behind us and I could feel her glaring at me from three rows up.

       During the game, Gabe asked me for my cell phone number and I had to tell him that I didn’t have one. Violet jumped in and gave Gabe her cell phone number and said that we could text each other using her phone whenever I wanted. No one has ever done something that nice for me before.

       Violet decided to do our urban legend project on Pop Rocks candy and soda. Violet said she heard from her brother that this kid from an old cereal commercial died when his stomach exploded after drinking Coke mixed with Pop Rocks. I’ve never had Pop Rocks but Violet said that she’ll ask her mom to bring home a few packs from the gas station where she works and I can try them.

       At dinner I told my mom, dad