The Face on the Milk Carton Page 14

  “Wait a minute,” said Janie’s father. “I would take bets that the letter didn’t get mailed. The more logical assumption is that it’s in the trash at the high school. The janitors swept it up with candy wrappers and discarded quizzes. Which means no one in the world knows but us. We don’t have to take any action.”

  Janie’s mother raised a haggard face. “Oh, Frank,” she said. “If we don’t take any action, then we have kidnapped her. We have stolen her.” Her mother slumped, defeated and afraid.

  All I suffered since October, Janie thought, Mom’s getting slapped with tonight. “But you are my parents,” said Janie. “That’s why I didn’t do anything. I know who I am. Janie Johnson.”

  Her mother whispered, “It seemed so logical at the time. Oh, Frank! Frank! Do you think Hannah really did say this was her baby, our granddaughter? Or do you think we decided on that ourselves, because we needed her so much?” She began sobbing uncontrollably, stretching hands toward her husband. The thin fingers of her left hand glittered with her diamond engagement ring, her gold wedding band, the ruby twenty-fifth-anniversary ring. He took the hand with the rings and held it between both of his. He sank to one knee, and his wife, still holding his hands, bent over it. They looked as if they were proposing to each other.

  “I’m yours,” said Janie desperately. “Don’t cry.” She was excluded from their pain. She felt as if she had caused it, would always cause it; that while Frank and Miranda were a unit, she had no family now; neither here nor in New Jersey. “Mommy?” said Janie, as if calling her mother back.

  Together, dimly, her parents looked up; they were ten years away.

  They can remember it, thought Janie. I have found a few scraps of memory, but to them it is bright; the day Hannah brought a little girl to fill their lives.

  “Don’t be mad,” Janie mumbled. “Please don’t be mad.”

  Her mother pulled Janie down onto the chair with her; there was no room; Janie sat on her mother’s lap. She had to curl her spine to fit in the soft, safe spot above her mother’s breast. When she wept, she could not tell whose tears were on her cheek. “If I could have any wish,” whispered her mother, “it would be that no parent on this earth ever suffered a missing child. And I made it happen to another mother.”

  “Well, if I had any wish,” said her father, “it would be to keep Janie.”

  “You will,” said Janie. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “The courts and the Springs may have different ideas.”

  “You could run away again,” suggested Reeve. “After all, you know how it’s done.”

  “Reeve,” said Janie’s father, “you are getting tiresome.”

  “Sorry.”

  Janie was faintly surprised that Reeve and Lizzie were still there. It seemed to her that she and her mother and father had gone where no one else could go: some ghastly voyage of past and present, guilt and anger.

  “Maybe we should telephone them right now,” said her mother. She frowned uncertainly at the chair, as if unsure that any seat could be safe.

  “What would you say?” asked Janie. “Hi, this is your stolen daughter’s mother, who thought she was her grandmother, who didn’t mean this to happen, and please don’t get mad at the kidnapper, because she was a lost soul herself and only wanted company while she ran away from her kidnappers.” “They’ll think were insane,” said Janie’s mother. “The Springs are not going to believe that normal people could have gotten themselves into such a grotesque situation. They’ll never let you stay with us, Janie.”

  The discussion had acquired velocity. Janie felt as if she were hurtling, brakeless, toward yet another cliff. “Lizzie will handle it,” said Janie loudly. I just got away from the edge, she thought. Don’t shove me over again. “Lizzie will tell them to let it go. Stop worrying and let us be.”

  “Stop worrying?” repeated her mother. “Do you think I have ever stopped worrying about Hannah? Do you think there’s been a night in my life when I haven’t prayed for her safety? When I haven’t wondered if we did the wrong thing, letting her vanish forever? Janie, no mother ever lets go.”

  “You pray for Hannah?” said Janie, amazed. “You never said you believe in God.”

  “I have no beliefs,” said her mother. “Only hopes. They’ll have to meet you, Janie, these Springs. We’ll have to meet them.”

  “No! They aren’t real right now. I don’t want them to be real. I want them to go away.”

  “They’ve waited long enough,” said Janie’s mother. “I know what it is to lie awake year after year, never knowing what happened to your little girl. I know what it is to cry out on her birthday, If only, if only!”

  Even Lizzie’s eyes were wet.

  “Lizzie could meet with them first,” said her mother. “We have to protect Hannah. I wonder if they would promise—no, we can’t ask that.”

  “Don’t ask, Lizzie. Tell. Tell them either they’re nice about it or I won’t see them,” said Janie.

  Lizzie was taking mental notes. “Then you will see them if they agree not to try to find Hannah or prosecute anybody?”

  Janie found herself pushing her parents together to make a shield against the enemy. This is how Hannah felt, she thought. The world caved in and she had no hiding place.

  “Maybe after Lizzie sees them, it’ll be over,” said Reeve.

  Lizzie’s voice was calm and factual. “It’ll never be over.”

  Never over, thought Janie. This isn’t a term paper; I won’t pass it in. This isn’t high school; I won’t graduate. This will never be over.

  Lizzie stood up, the tent of her skirt rearranging itself gracefully; she was lean and elegant and clever. “I’ll telephone the Springs. I will arrange Saturday or Sunday for a preliminary meeting. I will suggest to the Springs that the meeting with you, Janie, take place later in the month without your mother and father there.”

  “I suppose you’d be the best escort,” said Janie. She was crushing her mother. She stood up. Her mother stood with her. Her father moved closer. They were like children in a camp race: legs tied together, stumbling to the finish.

  “Of course,” said Lizzie, who had never had trouble being modest.

  “I want to go, too,” said Reeve.

  “Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “What do you think it is, a movie and popcorn? Its going to be very emotional.”

  Her mother let go and walked shakily to the cherry table where the library books and the Kleenex sat beside a bowl of yellow and blue dried flowers.

  “Then I’m not going,” said Janie. “I’ve had enough emotion. I just want this to end happily ever after.”

  “Not everything does, Janie,” said her father. “Hannah didn’t. I don’t see how this can.”

  He was so weary it terrified her. So old she was afraid for his life. “It has to!” cried Janie. “Tell the Springs, Lizzie. Tell them it has to end happily ever after.”

  Her plea echoed in the living room. The deep sofa was just furniture; the scarlet and blue just colors. The room felt no difference; it would be as lovely after Lizzie saw the Springs as before. Reeve was watching Janie sadly. Her father was unfolding a handkerchief to blot his tears. And her mother had not, after all, crossed the room to get a tissue. Slowly, hypnotically, she was dialing the telephone.

  “Mommy?” said Janie. She could not catch her breath. “Mommy, who are you calling?” She tried to see the spinning numbers.

  Her mother dialed another digit.

  “Mommy, are you calling for pizza?”

  Her mother dialed beyond seven digits. She was calling long distance. Out of state. New Jersey.

  “A mother,” said her own mother, “would need to hear her baby’s voice.” Her mother’s face was so soaked in tears it might have been raining.

  “I’m not Jennie, though,” whispered Janie. A split personality, she thought: I am truly two people. I have to choose. A good daughter or a bad one? But I have two sets of parents. How can I be good to both of them?
<
br />   The dialing ended.

  In the velvety silence of the room Janie, Lizzie, Reeve, her mother, and her father listened to the telephone ring in New Jersey.

  Was it ringing in the kitchen? Where the twins had sat in high chairs? Where a laughing father had said a homemade blessing? Where a little girl once spilled milk?

  The phone rang a second time. A third time.

  Happily ever after, thought Janie. Please be nice people.

  With numb fingers Janie took the phone from her mother. I should have had something to eat, she thought. I’m so hungry I’m dizzy.

  It rang once more.

  In New Jersey somebody picked up the phone. “Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

  Janie clung to her mother. She said, “Hi. It’s … your daughter. Me. Jennie.”

  TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT

  THE SUSPENSEFUL COMPANION TO

  “Readers left on the edge of their seats at the conclusion of the Face on the Milk Carton will race to get their hands on this equally gripping sequel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Excerpt copyright © 1993 by Caroline B. Cooney

  Published by Delacorte Press

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  CHAPTER

  1

  After their sister’s kidnapping, Dad not only took Stephen and Jodie to school every morning, he held their hands.

  Not once—not once in a hundred and eighty days a year, kindergarten through sixth grade— were the remaining Spring children allowed to take a school bus. Not once had Jodie been allowed to walk in or out of the elementary school without her father there.

  The children would get out of the car. Dad would take Jodie’s hand in his right hand and Stephen’s hand in his left. Then they would walk across the parking lot, into the building and down to Jodie’s classroom where he would transfer Jodie’s hand to the teacher’s. His eyes would scan the halls, as if kidnappers were lurking beside the winning poster from the science contest. When Jodie was safely in her teacher’s care, Dad would continue on with Stephen.

  For years, Jodie thought this pattern was normal.

  But when Stephen was in fourth grade, he said if anybody ever held his hand again, he would bite it. He said if anybody had planned to kidnap another Spring child, they had given up by now. Stephen said he would carry a knife, he would carry a submachine gun, he would carry a nuclear bomb, and he would blow away all would-be kidnappers, but never again would he let anybody hold his hand.

  From his fourth-grade heart had come the hidden rage they all felt and never dared say out loud.

  “I hate Jennie!” Stephen had screamed. “I hate my sister for ruining our lives! The least Jennie could have done was leave her body there for us to find. Then we could bury her and be done with her. I hate it that we have to worry every single day. I hate her!”

  Stephen was seventeen now. Jodie could remember that meal as if it were yesterday. Mom and Dad had sat as tight and silent as wind-up dolls. More vividly than anything else, Jodie remembered that nobody yelled at Stephen for saying such terrible things.

  Years of worry had torn the family’s guts apart, like a tornado peeling the house walls away. Worry had separated them from each other, so they were not six people knit close in tight, warm threads of family, but travelers accidentally in the same motel.

  There had been a long, long silence after Stephen’s outburst. Even the twins, who had been thick and annoying all their paired lives, knew better than to speak.

  At last Dad had extended his hands from his sides, straight out, like a Roman slave being crucified.

  The whole family held hands every evening to say grace before supper. That was what Dad intended, and yet the stiffness of his arms, the awful lines around his mouth, did not look like grace.

  Jodie had been scared, because she was between Dad and Stephen, and she would have to take Stephen’s hand, and she was pretty sure Stephen really would bite her.

  But he didn’t.

  He cried instead. Stephen had cried easily when he was little and the humiliation of that had left its mark; nothing would have made Stephen Spring cry now that he was seventeen. Where a ten-year-old had exhibited tears, the young man used fists.

  So they had held hands, and Dad had prayed. Not grace. He didn’t mention food. He didn’t mention shelter. He said, “Dear Lord, tonight we are going to bury Jennie. We love her, but she’s gone and now we’re going to say good-bye. Thank you for the time we had Jennie. The rest of us have to go on living. Thank you for making Stephen tell us.”

  Jodie was only nine. Only a third-grader. Jodie had needed to take her hands back from Stephen and Daddy so she could wipe away her tears, and Jodie never admitted to anybody that they were not tears of grief for her missing sister, but tears of relief that they were going to put Jennie on the shelf and be done with her.

  “Give Jennie a guardian angel,” said Dad softly to the Lord.

  Usually during grace, Jodie felt that Dad was talking to his children, ordering them to behave and be thankful. Not this prayer. Dad was talking to the Lord; Jodie thought if she looked up she would see God, and that was even scarier than having to hold Stephen’s hand, so she didn’t look up.

  “Take care of Jennie, Lord, wherever she is. Help us not mention Jennie again. Help us be a family of six and forget that we were ever a family of seven.” Dad squeezed Jodie’s hand.

  Jodie squeezed Stephen’s.

  The squeeze went around the circle, and the Lord must have been there, because the lump in Jodie’s throat dissolved, and the twins began to talk about sports—even when they were babies they talked about sports, they had been playing with basketballs and footballs and tennis balls from birth—and Stephen showed his B-plus geography paper; he had gotten forty-two of the fifty state capitals right.

  The family sealed up, like a perfect package. Things fit again. Everything from the number of chairs around the table to the toppling stacks of presents under the Christmas tree. The Spring family had six people in it now. The seventh was gone.

  Mom and Dad didn’t even telephone Mr. Mollison again. Mr. Mollison was the FBI agent who had been in charge of the case. For a while he had been as much a part of the family as Uncle Paul and Aunt Luellen.

  The next year, nobody talked about Jennie on her birthday. Nobody sobbed on the anniversary of the day Jennie went missing.

  Mr. and Mrs. Spring were still more careful than any other parents in the state of New Jersey, but the children were more careful, too. It was not because Jodie and her brothers were worried that they might be kidnapped, too. They were worried that their parents would be worried. The Spring children were always lined up at telephones to let Mom or Dad know where they were. They were never late. They were children who knew, too well, one of the horrors of the world.

  The thing Jodie could not get over, now that her sister Jennie turned out to be alive and coming home, was that there had never been a horror.

  They had imagined all of it.

  Jennie had not died.

  She had not been tortured.

  She had not been cold or lost or drowned or raped or even frightened!

  Jennie had been just fine all along.

  It was incredible, when Jodie thought of the lancing fear the rest of them had endured for eleven and a half years. In most ways, of course, worry and fear vanished. When she was small, it vanished because Jodie believed in Daddy’s deal with God. If Daddy and the Lord both said Stop Worrying, well then, who was Jodie to worry? But as Jodie moved into her teens, the reality of her sister’s kidnapping often surfaced. When she brought a library book home … and the heroine was a redhead named Jennie. When Stephen had his first date … and her name was Jennie. When the late movie on television was about a kidnapping. When Jodie went in the post office and saw those black-and-white photos—HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?

  She’d feel it again. The panic like
burning acid, making it impossible to think of anything else. And the rage: the terrible, terrible anger that their lives had been so brutally interfered with.

  Brian and Brendan were babies when it happened, still sitting in the double stroller, getting everything sticky. (Jodie’s relationship with her twin brothers began by steering around them lest they smear her with melting lollipop or contaminate her with Oreo-cookie crumbs. Somehow it had continued that way. Keeping clear was Jodie’s major activity with her little brothers.) But Jodie had been in kindergarten and Stephen in first grade, old enough to have memories, old enough to understand what had happened.

  Well, no.

  Not quite. Nobody had ever known what happened that day at the shopping mall. Nobody had ever known where Jennie was taken, or who took her, or for what purpose.

  But all too well Jodie understood what happened to her family because of it.

  It was so confusing and astonishing to find that all along, Jennie had been happy and healthy and warm and everything else that was good. The Springs had never needed to worry.

  Mom and Dad were weak with relief and joy.

  Jodie mentally laid her history of nightmares out on the bed, like laundry to be put away, and studied them, understanding less than ever.

  Stephen, of course, was angry. Stephen didn’t even have a fuse; he just continually exploded. Stephen yelled that Jennie ought to have suffered, since the rest of them had.

  “Don’t talk like that once she comes,” warned their father. Dad was wildly excited. He and Mom kept bursting into shouts of laughter and hugging each other and hyperventilating. That was Jodie’s new word—hyperventilate. Jodie did not want her family getting overly emotional, or too noisy. She felt it was time to drop the hand-holding at dinner and the saying of grace. Jennie would think they were weird. “Don’t hyperventilate,” Jodie begged constantly. But her family was the hyperventilating kind.