Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell
Also by Drusilla Campbell
The Edge of the Sky
Wildwood
blood orange
Drusilla Campbell
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by Title Page Dedication Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Copyright Page
For Margaret Ellen
Prologue
In the back of my garden a blood orange tree struggles for life. Its effort to be fruitful against the odds touches my heart. Valiant and struggling . . . maybe that’s me I’m describing: Dana Cabot struggling to be better. But there is nothing valiant in me. I have proved myself a liar and coward too many times to have illusions.
Does this explain why I take the time to fertilize and prune and mulch my little tree when everything else in the garden must hobble along as best it can? Having failed myself and others, I want and need to prove I can do better.
In its protected corner my gawky blood orange grows slowly. In a year or two, if all goes well, it may bear fruit. Perhaps then we will all have healed. I long for that day, for summertime, a girl’s voice, and the raspberry sweetness of the blood red fruit.
Chapter 1
September
Dana Cabot stood in the doorway to the undercroft holding a pastry box full of twenty-six dollars’ worth of still-warm croissants. How typically Episcopalian to use the medieval word undercroft to designate what was essentially a basement consisting of one large room and five smaller ones connected by a narrow hallway. The walls of the undercroft were covered with Sunday school bulletin boards and pictures of Jesus as infant, boy, and man. And photos of Bailey Cabot.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS LITTLE GIRL?
Seven-year-old Bailey Cabot was abducted from her home on May 29, 2004. At the time she wore a pink and lime green dotted Swiss dress. Bailey’s hair is light brown, her eyes are brown, and she’s four feet, one inch tall.
Red and green sticky circles dotted the maps of southern California and western Arizona that were stuck to the walls with strips of masking tape. Green meant the county had been leafleted; red indicated a Bailey task force had been started in one or more church congregations. Lutherans and Presbyterians, Methodists and Unitarians had all become involved. Yellow circles showed that thousands of ID photos of Bailey had been distributed all over California, Arizona, and Nevada. On a map of the United States blue circles indicated an e-mail campaign underway from San Diego to Vermont.
A three-page article had appeared in People magazine: “HAVE YOU SEEN BAILEY CABOT?”
There could be no one left in the United States who had not heard that Bailey Cabot had been stolen from behind her own front door. If it were propaganda, Dana thought, we’d have won the war by now.
Instead of circles on the maps, Dana wished the committee had used stars like those Bailey showed off on the work she brought home from Phillips Academy. The stars were a code that had been explained to the parents in a special letter mailed from the principal’s office: a single star meant good effort, and all the children got that, no matter what; two meant progress; three were cause for a celebration. No one celebrated circles; circles went nowhere, and