Free June Bug by Chris Fabry

few days later, at the senseless meaninglessness of the whole thing.
    He was right about the prayer chains. Every church in the tristate had Natalie on its list, but as time went on, she dropped off each list one by one. Either God was powerless to do something about the situation or he just didn’t care. And the people were just as powerless as he was.
    “I want to be as accurate as I can so our readers get the truth,” Bentley said. “That’s my goal.”
    “The truth,” Mae said, laughing through the pain. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it snuck up on you and bit you on the butt.”
    A photographer snapped a few shots of emergency personnel at the edge of the lake. Then an officer waved his arms and made the guy move back behind the yellow tape. Obediently the man did, snapping more pictures.
    Bentley nervously fiddled with his tie, smiling. “I’ll give you that one. But if the truth held on long enough, we’d probably get a good picture of it.”
    Leason, still staring at the scene, shook his head. “Vultures is what you are. Preying on people’s bad news. Just a bunch of vultures looking for carrion. Ought to be ashamed of making people’s loss your stock and trade.”
    “Did the sheriff come and get you?” Bentley said.
    “He sent one of his deputies. Said there was a scuba diving class early yesterday morning that spotted a car at the bottom. It didn’t hit him until later that it fit the description, and they hustled out here this morning.”
    “He wanted you to be here?”
    “Discouraged it, in fact,” Mae said. “Didn’t want us as part of a circus, but there are some things you just have to know.”
    Todd was scribbling as she talked, looking straight at her. “You’ve always maintained that your granddaughter was alive. Why have you thought that?”
    There it was. The fishing had begun on this side of the lake. Looking for a money quote before they even pulled the car out of the water. Natalie was probably just a skeleton now. The fish and crawdads and whatever else lived down there had probably been at her. Water could make a body disintegrate over time. Mae had been at the Ohio when they pulled her uncle’s body out after being in the water for only three days, and he was bloated and almost unrecognizable. Too much to drink and the water too swift and a man who never could swim. What would Natalie look like after seven years?
    “I still believe she’s alive,” Mae said. “Some people call it blind hope. I know how much life that little girl had in her. But my resolve is being sorely tested; I can tell you that.”
    “Where’s the mother? Where’s Dana?”
    Leason turned on the young man like a bull whose territory had been violated, but Mae held up a hand and he stopped, his face contorted.
    “Just leave it,” Mae said as if talking to an old dog that had dug through a double-ply trash bag for a chicken bone.
    Leason hobbled down the uneven slope to the water and walked precariously along the bank to the staging area for the recovery.
    “I’m not talking to you about her,” Mae said. “None of your business. Or anybody else’s.”
    “It just seems strange that the mother of the child wouldn’t be here. Has the sheriff contacted her? Or maybe she’s moved from the area?”
    “You can’t contact what you can’t find,” Mae said, her jaw set on the false teeth she’d had since she was in her twenties. “Can you imagine losing your only daughter like this? not knowing where she is? wondering every day if you’re going to get a call that says they found a body? people believing the worst about you? I don’t blame her for trying to move on with her life.”
    Bentley scribbled and nodded.
    Mae waved a hand at him like she was done and took a few steps.
    “Mrs. Edwards, is there anything you want to say to the community? the people who have stood with you?”
    Mae turned and looked hard at Bentley. “I’ve already thanked those people myself. The ones who prayed