Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
I let go of the last corner just as the flame reached my fingertips, letting it drop into the grass.
The black ashes of the photograph drifted into the dark grass.
By eight o’clock Tuesday morning, the dew was still heavy on the broken green ribs of the sunflower stalks.
Patrick stood at the edge of the patch with a heavy iron rake in his hands, his boots already dark with the moisture from the clover.
He did not look back toward the county road where the old pond lay hidden behind the wild brush.
“We should start from the back corner,” I said, pointing toward the fence line where the growth had been thickest.
He did not answer right away, but he stepped into the dirt and dragged the iron tines through the loose soil.
The rake made a low, scraping sound against the buried stones.
A clump of damp river mud clung to the metal, and I reached down to clear it with my bare fingers.
