When she says "strange skulking characters" the first thought that pops into my mind is the cigarette man. That's how crazy and upset I am, because that turned out to be Ned, of course. We can eliminate him. And he's the only strange person I have seen in town. What am I saying? I was thinking of strange people we don't know but there is someone else. Someone strange we do know. I look toward the church and goose b.u.mps rise on my skin.

"Where was H.K. today?" I say. "Where was Caroline?"

"What does she mean?" Mrs. Cavenaugh asks my mother, gripping her forearm so hard she leaves nail marks.

"The poet H. K. Thomson has been missing church lately but he wouldn't kidnap anyone," says my mother.

"Not H.K.," I shout, but no one says to calm down, "Caroline!" And I relate what happened on the steps of the grocery store, leaving out the part about H.K. and my mother getting married and only telling about how Ginny wanted to go to H.K. and suggest he put Caroline away. "And Caroline wasn't in church either!"

"Let's not leap to conclusions," says my mother. "But we must certainly get the sheriff and go to Caroline's house to be sure."

Mrs. Cavenaugh is already on her feet and running to her car.

"Don't go to the house alone. Wait for the sheriff!" my mother calls, but it is useless, Mrs. Cavenaugh is already pointed in that direction. My mother lets go of Maya's hand and starts running for the sheriff's office, calling over her shoulder, "Stay with Maya and Max and Hershel, Jane!"

I go to the side of the church, where Hershel and Max are drawing with twigs in the sand, and I bring them over to Nellie, who is still blessing people.

"I can't deliver Bibles, Nellie," I begin, but she interrupts.

"I'm busy here. Go wait by the Sunday-school room. I have a special route for us picked out."

"I can't. This is an emergency. Ginny is missing. She may have been kidnapped!"

Everyone is staring at me now. Maya begins to cry. Hershel puts a thumb in his mouth. "Please just watch Maya and Hershel and Max for me. Please take them home with you. You can park them in front of the television. They won't be any trouble. I'll come for them later."

"Nonsense, child. There's nothing you can do about that girl. Come with me and let the grown-ups handle it."

"Please watch Maya and Hershel and Max," I say. "I'll be back in an hour!"

I am so sure that Nellie is just thinking too slowly for the moment and will understand any second, that I simply leave Maya and Max and Hershel with her and run after my mother to the sheriff's office.

When I get there my mother is climbing into his car.

"Quick!" she calls to me, and I hop in the back. "Who is watching the children?"

"Nellie," I say, panting, and she nods.

As we drive over to Caroline and H.K.'s house, the sheriff makes me tell him the whole story about what happened on the steps of the grocery store. But again I leave out the part where Ginny and I talked about my mother and H.K. getting married and moving to the beach house without Caroline so that he says finally, "It seems kind of thin to me. Why would Caroline think H.K. would listen to a couple of girls?"

"I don't know. It's just what happened," I say, and mention her crazy, angry eyes.

"Aren't you the same girls who claim you saw a man in a boat disappear just a couple of weeks ago?"

"That was me, not Ginny," I say in a low voice.

"And no body was ever found. And no boat remnants and no whale seen either. You girls aren't trying to scare up a little summer excitement for yourselves, are you? I'm not going to find Ginny hiding somewhere while we get the whole town stirred up, am I? Or off with some boy?"

My mother, who is riding in the front seat next to the sheriff, turns around and gives me a sympathetic look.

I burst into tears.

"Well, it's probably nothing," says the sheriff in a nicer tone. "Girls apt to go off and do silly things at your age, no offense, Jane. And as for H.K. and Caroline not coming to church, you-all don't have a phone down there on the beach so there's no way for them to let you know if they changed their plans. Simplest explanation is usually the right one. Ockham's razor."

I am not consoled by this because to me the simplest explanation is that Caroline has killed everyone with an axe.

When we get to Caroline's house, Ginny's mom is pounding on the door and shrieking for Caroline, H.K. and Ginny like a madwoman. But no one is answering. The sheriff looks into the open garage. H.K.'s car is gone.

"Looks like they went somewhere," he says.

Then we hear a crash inside the house.

"Someone's in there!" shouts Mrs. Cavenaugh. "GINNY! GINNY! I'm going in!" She puts a rock through the living room window.

"Whoa! Whoa! For G.o.d's sake, try the door first, Katrina!" says the sheriff, grabbing Mrs. Cavenaugh's arm and pulling her back away from the house. "I guess we've got exigent circ.u.mstances. Now you let me. Let's go see if the back door is open."

We run around the back and sure enough the door opens when he turns the handle.

He calls, "Caroline!" and when no one answers, he frowns and tells us to stay outside, but Mrs. Cavenaugh ignores him. We wait, and then hear Mrs. Cavenaugh scream. My mother tells me to stay where I am and runs into the house.

A few minutes later the sheriff comes out with a sobbing, wild-eyed, hairless Caroline. He puts her in the car and speeds away.

My mother comes out with her arm around Mrs. Cavenaugh, who is stiff as a board. "Jane, we're going back to Ginny's house. Ginny isn't here. The sheriff is going to take Caroline to a hospital."

"Where's Ginny?" I ask stupidly.

"Shhh," says my mother. "I'll tell you about it when we get Ginny's mother home. The sheriff is going to meet us there in a bit."

When we get to Ginny's house her mom falls crying into the arms of her dad, who has been waiting by the phone in case Ginny or someone else calls. But no one has.

My mother takes me onto the front steps and explains that H.K. has eloped with one of his graduate students and left Caroline a note. Caroline has been living alone for days since it happened and they found her medication thrown all over the floor along with the hair she shaved off her head and two bags of spilled groceries, most of which were lemons. She had bought six dozen lemons.

"Caroline doesn't know anything about Ginny. She doesn't even seem to know who she is. She wouldn't really be too aware of much since she stopped taking her pills."

"But then where is Ginny?" I say.

"We don't know," says my mother.

We go back inside. She makes Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh tea and they thank her but they don't pick up the cups.

Eventually the sheriff comes and we all sit in the living room while Ginny's mom shreds Kleenex and I try to think where in the world Ginny could have gone or how someone could have gotten ahold of her. Mr. Cavenaugh gets up and paces. Then he sits back down close to the phone. The sheriff has called in help but for now his job is to wait with the Cavenaughs. Mrs. Cavenaugh's eyes look like gla.s.s. My hands have cold sweat on them. My mother keeps getting up and making more tea and throwing out the old. Then the phone rings. Everyone in the room jumps.

Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh both leap on the phone, grabbing it so violently that I think they are going to fight over it, but Mr. Cavenaugh lets Mrs. Cavenaugh answer.

"Oh thank G.o.d. Oh thank G.o.d," says Mrs. Cavenaugh over and over. "When did you get her? Is she okay? Yes. Yes. We'll be there soon."

My mother pulls my sleeve and we tiptoe outside to sit on the steps. Wherever Ginny is, she is obviously okay.

"This has been a terrible day," says my mother, finally dropping her head into her hands.

I wonder how much of it has to do with H.K. eloping or if she has even had time to digest this yet.

At last the sheriff comes out on the porch and tells us that Ginny used the money from her grandmother to buy a bus ticket to New York early this morning. When she got to the Port Authority terminal, she called her aunt Lucy, who lives there, to come get her. And as soon as her aunt had her safely in tow and found out she hadn't told her parents, she called them.

The sheriff shakes his head. "I don't know what she was thinking but I suppose I never will. That's one of the things I never get used to on this job, not finding out the ends of stories if they end well. Oh well, at least this one did end well. Just as I said, girls your age apt to do silly things. Can I give you folks a lift somewhere?"

Mr. and Mrs. Cavenaugh are off to New York City to pick up Ginny and bring her home.

"Could you give us a ride to Nellie Phipps's house?" asks my mother. "Is that where Nellie was taking the children, Jane?"

"I don't know," I say. "I just left them with her. She's probably there or still at the church."

But we go to both places and they aren't at either and Nellie's car is gone.

"Darn it all," I say. "She must have taken them with her to deliver Bibles. I told her I'd be back in an hour." I am unbelievably tired suddenly and just want everyone together and home before someone else disappears.

"Oh well, at least you know where they are and that they'll be safe with Nellie. She's no Caroline. What was Caroline thinking? My, my," clucks the sheriff. "If I were Mr. Thomson I'd be concerned about that woman."

"I'd be more concerned about Henry. What was he thinking, leaving Caroline there all alone with just a note?" says my mother.

"I guess she just snapped," says the sheriff.

"Or he did," says my mother as we drive back to the parking lot on the beach.

"There was some talk, you know, that you were his latest girlfriend," says the sheriff. I wonder if they have forgotten that I am in the backseat.

"I imagine he encouraged that so he could elope with this student without Caroline interfering," says my mother. "He certainly never let on to me that he was going to get married. But then we didn't really have such intimate conversations. We mostly just talked of this and that. This and that."

The sheriff stops the car by the beach and we get out and thank him.

"Come on," says my mother to me after he has pulled away. "We may as well go home and have some lunch and wait for Nellie to return the children."

But hours pa.s.s and by suppertime Maya and Max and Hershel still haven't shown up and my mother is getting antsy.

"Maybe she took them home with her and is waiting for us to collect them?" she says. "Did you iron out any plans when you asked her to watch them?"

"No, I just said I'd get them in an hour."

"Could you run to her house, Jane, and see if they're all back? It's getting late."

So I run across the sand and through town and when I get to Nellie's house her car is in the drive and I think, Thank goodness, let this day be over. I knock on the door and when she appears I hear she is watching television and I ask for Maya and Hershel and Max and she says, "Well, I don't have them, child."

"Where are they?" I ask.

"I gave them to Mrs. Martin as soon as you took off. She does babysitting. I don't. I don't know what you thought you were doing leaving them with me."

"Mrs. Martin?" I say.

"You know Mrs. Martin. She babysits. Your mother used to hire her when you were little."

I stand openmouthed. I had forgotten Mrs. Martin until I saw her name in Mr. Fordyce's book. Now here she is again. The way you learn a new word and then suddenly see it everywhere.

"Go on, child. They're probably at her house right now."

"Probably? Miss Phipps! And I don't even know where she lives," I say, exasperated. It is becoming twilight. I am exhausted. I don't want to have to go searching for someone's house.

Nellie looks up the address, writes it down, hands it to me and then closes the door.

I have to find Mulberry Street and when I do finally get to the right house and Mrs. Martin opens the door, there are Hershel and Max and Maya all looking very unhappy.

"Oh my goodness, little Jane Fielding. I used to sit with you when you were about Max's age and then with your brothers and sister too as they came along. I just love babies but my, they can be work. Your poor mother really needed to get out of the house in those days."

I just stare at her.

"That will be six hours at seven dollars an hour for forty-two dollars. Do you need a receipt?" asks Mrs. Martin.

I can't say anything but it doesn't seem to bother her.

"Did your mother forget to send money with you?" she asks, looking down at me understandingly. She seems like a nice woman but this is so much money.

"Yes," I say, answering her money question the easiest way.

"Look at how you've all grown. I bet you don't remember me, do you, dear?"

I want to snap, How could I remember, I was Max's age and asleep. I am becoming dangerously frayed.

"Never mind. I'll settle up with your mother when I see her next," she says, and I am so stunned that I don't even say thank you. I just take Maya and Hershel and Max and leave.

"I want to go home," says Max over and over.

"We are going home," I reply over and over. I don't mind repeating the same thing. I can do it automatically without paying them much attention because now that I finally have the children back, the enormity of what Nellie has done, or rather not done, hits me and I am seething.

I have been so willing to accept that everything Nellie does must be for good purpose because she is so obsessed with positive and negative energy. I wanted to believe that she knew more than me. That she was the way to find something. I want to think it's okay that she wouldn't babysit; that she has evolved reasons. But it isn't okay.

I have delivered Bibles with Nellie. I have walked around lakes looking for transparent poodles and encouraged her faith healing and dreamt up gathering places. I have looked up to her as knowing about moving energy and the working of the universe. I have encouraged her belief in her healing hands when others wouldn't. I have tried to take her word for it against my own good sense and judgment. I thought she was my friend.

But now I realize that Nellie has no interest in me. She is too busy chasing the divine. How can a person, if she is so evolved, ignore a simple request from someone really in need? How can she heal people with her hands if she can't even watch three children for an hour during a crisis? This isn't a friend, I think. This isn't a holy person. This isn't even someone who is very nice. This is just someone who wants some spiritual excitement and a warm body along to believe in her.

I know I will never deliver Bibles with Nellie again.

Everyone Reappears.

My Thirteenth Adventure.