"Have you ever had a child, Harper?" Twyla asked.
"No, I've never been pregnant," I said. "But I know how you feel. My sister has been missing for eight years."
I didn't normally tell people that. Of course, some of them already knew it. It had made a big splash in the papers when it happened. But I was a high school student then, not a…whatever I was now.
"You have other family?"
I said, smiling brightly, "Well, I have Tolliver. I've got a half brother, Mark, and two half sisters, little ones, Mariella and Gracie. They live in Texas with our aunt and her husband." Mark wasn't my half brother any more than Tolliver was. He was simply Tolliver's older brother. But I wasn't in the mood to spell it out.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. Your parents already passed?"
"My mother has. My father is still living." In jail, but living. Tolliver's mother had died before his father met my mom, and Tolliver's father was out of jail and drifting…somewhere. Considering my mom and dad and Tolliver's father had all been attorneys, they'd had a long way to fall. They'd really thrown themselves into it.
Twyla looked a little shocked. "Well, how awful. I'm so sorry."
I shrugged. That was just the way it was. "Thanks," I said, but I knew I didn't sound sincere. Couldn't help it. When I heard that my mother had died, I was sorry, but not surprised, and not unrelieved.
We were quiet after that until we pulled up by the side of the road. Twyla glanced down at the list she'd taken down during a quick phone call with Sandra Rockwell. Sure enough, Sandra Rockwell had a prioritized list of places to check. This was place number one.
We were behind the high school at the football practice field, a stretch of barren level ground.