Strong Medicine Read Free Page A

me know where she’s going.
    I opened the drawer on my bedside table and dug through the old bills and dead batteries until I found the little pink telephone book. It was a gift from my mom two Christmases ago. Lindsey thought it was kinda lame , her words, but she’d filled it in to make my mother happy. I breathed a sigh of relief that she had. I thumbed the book open and dialed the first number. There weren’t many names in the book, this shouldn’t take long.
    If she had her own cell phone I could just call that, maybe it was time to get her one. I’d have to talk to her about it when she got home.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    The kitchen was full of the smell of burnt rice. The whole family crowded around the table. Even Petey was there in his high chair, wedged between the counter and the table. My ear ached where I’d had the phone pressed up against it for the past half hour.
    My fingers were white where they clutched the phone. If I squeezed any tighter, the plastic case might crack. I’d already phoned Lindsey’s best friends. Neither had seen her since the netball game.
    “I think it’s time to phone the cops,” Sue said, her green eyes darting between my face and Petey’s.
    I could see the panic in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking - what if it was her child who’d gone missing? How would she cope?
    In three years I’d never connected with Sue. She was an interloper, a woman barely out of high school who’d told my brother she was on the pill, then fallen pregnant the first time they had sex. Then she moved into our house, without a job, and sponged off what little resources we had. And she was a bitch.
    The circle of concerned faces nodded in unison and the kitchen table jounced along with them.
    My mother put a cup of tea onto the table in front of me. The steam curled up around my head, carrying the sweet tang of whiskey with it. Tea and whiskey, her two favorite solutions to any problem, neatly splashed into one cup. She must be as worried as I was.
    “Don’t you have to wait forty-eight hours to report a missing person?” Thomas asked. My brother’s face was taught, his forehead creased in worry and dark circles had formed under his eyes. A pile of broken toothpicks littered the table between his hands and he broke another one as he spoke.
    “Could you wait two days if Petey went missing?” Sue scooped a spoonful of stew into the toddler’s mouth. No one else was eating. Five bowls lay forgotten on the counter where my mother had dished them up.
    Sue was right, even though I hated having to agree with her. We’d hardly agreed on anything in the three years since she’d trapped Thomas by falling pregnant. Why did it have to be a missing child that finally put us on the same page?
    My stomach roiled, like a dozen snakes trying to squeeze their way up into my throat. It was time to phone the cops. Time to admit that my daughter was not just late home. She was missing.
    “Do you know the number for the station?” I asked.
    Blank stares and shaking heads returned the group consensus.
    “Isn’t it one-oh-triple-one?” Thomas said.
    “No, they changed it a few years ago,” I said. “Fuck!”
    “Okay.” My mom put a soft hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t we go down to the station? Johan and Tommy can drive around between here and the school looking for her, and Sue can stay here and call us if she comes home.”
    I nodded. Of course, someone should be out looking for her. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I couldn’t think of anything except the awful possibilities. I kept flashing back to the news on the radio this morning about the child’s body found in Soweto.
    Hot tea and whiskey scalded my throat.
    That couldn’t happen to Lindsey. God, please don’t let that happen to Lindsey.
    #
    “Park here outside, honey.” My mother pointed to an open space on the edge of the road, beside the brown brick wall of the police station. “Remember what happened to