Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [596]
I found a tiny plastic chair and set it back behind the curtains on stage left. I closed my eyes and began to concentrate. I lost the awareness of my body as I shut out all stimuli and began to let my mind roam free.
It’s my fault, my fault, my fault! Why didn’t I notice he hadn’t come back out? Or did he slip by me? Could he have gotten into a car without my noticing?
Poor Halleigh. She was sitting by herself, and the mound of tissues by her showed how she’d been spending her waiting time. She was completely innocent of anything, so I resumed my probing.
Oh my God, thank you God that it’s not my son that’s missing. . . .
... go home and have some cookies . . .
Can’t go to the store and pick up some hamburger meat, maybe I can call Ralph and he can go by Sonic . . . but we ate fast food last night, not good . . .
His mom’s a barmaid, how many lowlifes does she know? Probably one of them.
It went on and on, a litany of harmless thoughts. The children were thinking about snacks and television, and they were also scared. The adults, for the most part, were very frightened for their own children and worried about the effect of Cody’s disappearance on their own families and their own class.
Andy Bellefleur said, “In just a minute Sheriff Dearborn will be in here, and then we’ll divide you into two groups.”
The teachers relaxed. These were familiar instructions, as they themselves had often given.
“We’ll ask questions of each of you in turn, and then you can go. I know you’re all worried, and we have patrol officers searching the area, but maybe we can get some information that will help us find Cody.”
Mrs. Garfield came in. I could feel her anxiety preceding her like a dark cloud, full of thunder. Miss Maddy was right behind her. I could hear the wheels of her cart, loaded with its lined garbage can and laden with cleaning supplies. All the scents surrounding her were familiar. Of course, she started cleaning right after school. She would have been in one of the classrooms, and she probably hadn’t seen anything. Mrs. Garfield might have been in her office. The principal in my day, Mr. Heffernan, had stood outside with the teacher on duty until all the children were gone, so that parents would have a chance to talk to him if they had questions about their child’s progress . . . or lack thereof.
I didn’t lean out from behind the dusty curtain to look, but I could follow the progress of the two easily. Mrs. Garfield was a ball of tension so dense it charged the air around her, and Miss Maddy was equally surrounded by the smell of all the cleaning products and the sounds of her cart. She was miserable, too, and above all she wanted to get back to her routine. Maddy Pepper might be a woman of limited intelligence, but she loved her job because she was good at it.
I learned a lot while I was sitting there. I learned that one of the teachers was a lesbian, though she was married and had three children. I learned that another teacher was pregnant but hadn’t told anyone yet. I learned that most of the women (there were no male teachers at the elementary school) were stressed out by multiple obligations to their families, their jobs, and their churches. Cody’s teacher was very unhappy, because she liked the little boy, though she thought his mother was weird. She did believe Holly was trying hard to be a good mother, and that offset her distaste for Holly’s goth trappings.
But nothing I learned helped me discover Cody’s whereabouts until I ventured into Maddy Pepper’s head.
When Kenya came up behind me, I was doubled over, my hand over my mouth, trying to cry silently. I was not capable of getting up to look for Andy