The Reservoir by Rosemarie Naramore Page A

out.  Dad told the guy what happened, and he called out the Marine Patrol.”  Thomas glanced off toward some unseen spot on the wall, and when he refocused, his voice broke.  “They couldn’t find her.”
    “What did they do then?” Holly asked softly, her heart tugging for this little boy who had lost his sister.
    He shrugged.  “They looked for her all night, shining search lights and calling to her.  She never answered,” he said tremulously.  “By morning, they called out Search and Rescue.”
    “But they didn’t find her either?” Zack asked.
    Thomas shook his head.  “No.  They found our jet ski at the end of the Siouxon, propped up against that big log that juts out across it.  You know—the one almost to the very end.”
    Holly nodded.  “I was just there the other day,” she said, and then shivered again.
    “But there was no sign of Cassie?” Daniel inquired.
    “No.”
    “Did Search and Rescue keep looking?”
    “For awhile,” Daniel told him.  “But as soon as the cops found out that Cassie and Mom had fought about that California trip, they decided she had run away with her friends.”
    Zack shook his head confusedly.  “Wait, you mean, they found her jet ski propped against a log, but not her, and thought she’d run away with her friends.  I’m confused.  How would that be possible?  Doesn’t that channel under the bridge, uh, the Siouxon, end in a waterfall?”
    “There’s a trailhead just above it,” Holly explained.  “They probably thought she’d made arrangements to hike the trail to the road and meet up with her friends there.”
    Thomas nodded.  “The problem with their stupid theory was that Cassie would never have done anything like that.”
    “But she was upset,” Niqui pointed out.
    “She would have never gone down the Siouxon at night.  She couldn’t have seen well enough to do it.  She loved the water but she wasn’t stupid.”
    Zack scrubbed a hand across his jaw and sought Thomas’s gaze.  “Did they talk to her friends?”
    “They tried to reach them, but had trouble getting a hold of anyone for days.  They were driving all over California, and didn’t have service a lot of the time.  When we did finally get a hold of them, they told my parents Cassie wasn’t with them, but the cops didn’t believe them.”
    “Why not?” Kendall asked.
    Thomas shrugged again.  “I don’t know.  They figured she was a runaway, but Cassie wasn’t like that.  Even though she was mad at Mom, she never would have worried her like that.”
    “But when Cassie never showed up…” Niqui said, speading her hands wide.
    “The days just kept going by and we never heard anything more,” Thomas said.  “And then we left and went home.”  Thomas’s voice was faint and tears began to fall onto his cheeks, but he squared his shoulders and took control of himself again.  “We came back the next summer…”
    “I don’t think I would have ever come back,” Niqui said with a shudder.
    “Me neither,” Kendall echoed.
    Thomas sighed.  “I think Dad came up here a lot of times me and Mom didn’t know about.  I think he hiked the hills above the old logging roads everyday for months.”
    “But why come back for a summer ‘vacation’?” Zack asked.
    “Because some shrink told my parents I needed to face Cassie’s loss head on, at the place where she went missing.”
    “Wait, I’m confused,” Holly said.  “But you hadn’t seen Cassie’s ghost at that point, right?  Wouldn’t that next summer have been your first trip back?”
    He nodded.  “I had a hard time with … everything.”
    Holly reached a hand toward him and squeezed his arm.  “Of course, you did.  You’re very brave.”
    He pushed her hand away.  “I’m not brave.  I’m not brave at all.”  With that declaration, he dropped his head to the table.  It was Zack who patted the boy’s back while he cried.  When he finally rose up, wiping his nose with the back