Page 5 of Shimmering Emeralds
I searched my brain for the answer. I’d seen her this morning, but I hadn’t been paying attention to such minor details.
“Bright pink,” Harper filled in, sounding confident in her answer.
Growing impatient with standing around and talking, I set off along the edge of the ravine searching for the little girl. I couldn’t call and tell Claire that her daughter was lost. I simply couldn’t.
The wail of sirens in the distance was a relief. Help was finally on the way. They would have too much to triage to begin searching for Hannah right away, though. We needed to find her ourselves. Pointing across the road, I said to Levi, “You search over there. I’ll take this side.”
We yelled for the little girl and scanned the area around us as we walked on opposite sides of the pavement. After walking a good distance in both directions, I realized we weren’t going to find her on our own.
I flagged down one of the police officers that had arrived on the scene and gave him a description of the missing child. Once I had the authorities looking for her, I pulled my cell phone from my fleece jacket’s pocket. Blinking back tears, I punched the button to call my sister.
Her voice was filled with joy when she answered and started to tell me about her husband’s baby’s birth. Knowing I was getting ready to shatter the life she had just managed to piece back together, I took a deep breath and interrupted her.
I could tell my revelation shocked and confused her, so I repeated my words, trying my best to not wail in despair. “The school bus crashed, and we can’t find Hannah.”
“Mommy, I don’t feel very good.” Harper’s words were slurred and her head lolled to the side.
“Harper? What is it, sweetie?” I kneeled down with her cradled in my lap, the cell phone dropping away from my hand to the ground, forgotten. Shaking her lightly, I realized the little girl that was my entire life was completely unresponsive.
Panicked, I screeched, “I need help. My daughter is unconscious!”
4
Levi
Itook in the traumatic scene around me. This chaos was all my fault, but there were too many people that needed my help to wallow in guilt just yet. Parents were starting to arrive and frantically search for their children.
Looking down at the scared young man I was still carrying, I realized that I didn’t even know the boy’s name. “My name is Levi. What’s yours?”
The boy’s eyes lit up with excitement before he could answer. He pointed to a frantic woman wearing a threadbare light blue bathrobe. “Mommy! That’s my mommy!”
The woman made eye contact with her son in that moment. She faltered, appearing to nearly crumple to her knees with the relief of seeing her little boy. After catching herself, she ran forward and threw her arms around her child.
I gingerly handed him to her as he sobbed onto her shoulder. “I was so scared.”
“I know,” she cooed. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay, baby.”
“He has a hurt knee that needs to be checked out. He isn’t able to put any weight on it.”
She nodded her understanding before squeezing her eyes shut as she squeezed her son to her chest. I watched the first tear breach the bottom of her eyelid and blaze a trail down her cheek before I turned away to find someone else that needed my help.
There were plenty of options to choose from, but the first person to catch my attention was a frazzled, frantic man. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he was unusually pale, but I had no trouble recognizing Alex Biggs.
I’d been a couple of years behind Alex and Claire in high school, but everyone had known who they were. In fact, everyone had wanted tobethem. They were the perfect, popular, madly-in-love couple. I had tried to recreate their soul mate connection with Claire’s little sister, but things evidently weren’t meant to work out so splendidly for me and Meg.
Even though I’d been living in Nashville when Claire went missing, the heartbreaking news had quickly made its way down to me. I’d been unwilling to believe, as most of the locals did, that Alex had anything to do with her disappearance. Now, she was back, and I’d seen the two of them walking through town, hand-in-hand with Claire’s pregnant belly protruding out as evidence of their undying love for each other.
Alex’s eyes rolled around wildly as he frantically searched the faces of our group. I jogged over to him. Before I could speak, he clasped my arms too tightly and said, “I can’t find my daughter, Hannah.”
It all clicked into place in my mind then. The missing child that Meg had been searching for was her niece. I’d gotten distracted from the search by reuniting the boy I’d been carrying with his mother, but finding this little girl needed my full attention.
Looking Alex directly in the eyes and sounding more confident than I felt, I promised, “I’ll help you find her.”
Since the panicked father seemed at a loss for what to do, I said, “We know she isn’t up here on the road, and she wasn’t left on the bus. That means she’s somewhere in these hills along the road.” Pointing to one side, I said, “You search down there, and I’ll take this side.”
Alex nodded his understanding and darted off to begin his search. I did the same on the side of the road I had agreed to sweep.
The terrain was steep enough that I had to hold on to trees to keep from toppling down. I searched and searched, but didn’t see anything, other than miles of trees, fallen leaves, and snow-covered patches of ground.
