Whatever Happened to Janie? Read Online Free Page A

said Janie.
    Her mother seized her, hugging ferociously.
    They both kept from crying.
    Mrs. Johnson drew a shaky breath and said, one word stumbling slowly after another, “Be our good girl. Make us proud. Show them we were good parents to you.”
    Just drive away, thought Reeve. This is enough. Get going.
    Janie hugged her father one last time. Her father said nothing, just kissed his beloved daughter. A single tear came down his cheek, taking its time, finding every wrinkle and crack.
    Janie got in; the lawyer started the engine and reversed out the driveway. If Janie waved, you could not see through the dark glass.
    The lawyer shifted into Drive and accelerated down the road. Away to New Jersey.
    Mrs. Johnson started to fall.
    Her husband and Reeve caught her.
    “Don’t let Janie see,” she whispered.
    The black car disappeared. Janie had not seen.
    “You’ll love this casserole,” said Mrs. Shields. “Come on. It’s January and we’re standing around out here. Let’s go in.” She shepherded the Johnsons inside their house.
    Reeve stood in the driveway a long time. After a while he noticed that he had never given Janie the double-chocolate-chip cookies.
    Three months of silence, he thought. It’s good I have the cookies. I’m going to need chocolate to last that long.

CHAPTER
4
    S tephen was afraid of his own fury.
    If he felt like running, he could run off the rage that lived inside him. But he was not an athlete like his younger brothers. Sports annoyed and bored him. Sporadically he went out for a team and found it difficult to get through the season.
    Yet his rage settled to the bottom only when he was physically exhausted. Sophomore year he’d made swim team. They had been required to work out in the weight room five mornings a week and swim five afternoons a week. That season, there had been no anger.
    But he didn’t stay with the swim team. Stephen had never stayed with anything.
    Along with the rage was a restlessness.
    Stephen disliked being a teenager. He yearned to be gone, to be away from this confining house and these demanding parents.
    He never allowed himself to scream at his mother and father. All the self-discipline Stephen had was poured into allowing his parents to live the way they had to live: in fear.
    From the day that his sister Jennie disappeared, when Stephen was only six years old, the Spring household had been ruled by fear.
    His mother literally could not live through a child being late. If Stephen said he’d be home at five-fifteen and he got home at five-forty, he would find her white-faced and trembling, pacing the house, hyperventilating, her icy hands touching the telephone and then yanking back. She had a habit of jamming her fingertips fiercely down into the pockets of her jeans. If she ran to the door and her hands were still thrust into her pockets, it meant she was terrified; she was holding on to herself in some desperate way.
    She would greet Stephen with the peculiar combination of wrath and relief common to all frightened parents whose children come home at last.
    Except that Jennie had never come home at last.
    The family fear extended to many things. Having lost one child, Stephen’s mother and father were terrified of losing another. They fretted about traffic, hot oil in the frying pan, a chain saw, deep water.
    They taught their remaining four children to look both ways not only when crossing the street, but also at every other intersection of life:
be cautious, be careful think twice, reconsider, weigh the possibilities.
    Worry was like another person living in the house. A person who, unlike Jennie, never left.
    Stephen hated it. He could take care of himself. They lived in New Jersey, and Stephen’s daydreams were of the opposite coast: he usually dreamed ofCalifornia, occasionally of Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Wyoming. Distant realms, where they could not see him to worry about him. From which he would telephone once a week:
Hi, Mom, I’m