Free All Roads Lead Home (Bellingwood) by Diane Greenwood Muir Page B

trailed off for a moment and Polly saw Lydia's lower
lip tremble. She reached out and put her hand on top of her friend's forearm.
    "I'm sorry, Lydia. Who was in the ceiling and how
do you know them?"
    "Goodness," Lydia said, "It's been over
forty years ago. You'd think I could manage better than this." She offered
the basket of tea to Polly, who took a bag, opened it and placed it in her cup.
Lydia took another and then poured hot water into both cups. She stirred hers
around a little and looked up again.
    "Forty-one years ago. It was the worst thing I'd
ever faced. We didn't know what happened to them. No one did. The police
questioned all of us trying to find out something, but no one knew anything at
all.
    "It was the summer after my freshman year in high
school, 1971. We didn't have a large class, there were only
sixty-two of us. I'd had a great year and was getting ready to have a great
summer. Mom and Dad had scheduled a big vacation to South Dakota and Wyoming
and I was going to go to a camp in Colorado before school started that fall. I
didn't have a care in the world. Dad had hooked me up with a great job at the
drug store and I was ready.
    "We left for vacation and had a glorious time. We
saw everything that year. We were driving back home and Dad decided he needed
to call his partner to make sure everything was alright. I think he wanted to
make sure the building still stood.
    "When he got back in the car, he just sat there. Then
he told us what he'd heard.
    "Do you remember meeting Linda and Sarah?"
Lydia asked Polly.
    "Sure, they are sisters, aren't they?" she
responded.
    "Yes, but they
had twin sisters who were my age . Jill and Kellie. We'd
been together since Kindergarten.
    "While we were gone on vacation, those two girls
disappeared. The police were there, the whole town turned out and searched the
fields and the woods; everywhere they might have gone. There were all sorts of
rumors. A poor drifter who was in town at the time was thrown into jail for a
while, but he didn't know anything. When they couldn't find any evidence to
hold him, they had to let him go and he left town.
    "People thought they saw the girls get
into someone's car, other people thought they saw them in Des Moines. We had
calls come in from Omaha and Minneapolis. Their parents never quit looking. They
were wonderful people, but I think it destroyed them in ways no one can ever
understand. Linda had already graduated from high school and was at the
University of Iowa. Sarah had just graduated. It nearly killed her to go away
to school, but her parents didn't want her to sit around moping and made her
start her life. She didn't go too far, though, just down to AIB in Des Moines. She
came back after a couple of years and started working for Dan Timmons. He had
an insurance business. When he retired, Sarah's husband bought the company and
they got married.
    "The girls' dad died about fifteen years after
this all happened and then their mother died maybe ten years ago. When she was
gone, the girls finally settled down and released all of the pain. They relaxed
for the first time since that summer and I know this is going to start all of
their pain up again."
    Lydia paused and said, "Aaron has to go tell them
now their sisters were in the old high school all this time. I wish he'd let me
go with him, but he told me I didn't need to go through this tonight. He called
Rev. Boehm and he'll meet Aaron at Linda's house. Oh, this is killing me! I
should be there!"
    "Do you want me to take you over there, Lydia?"
Polly asked quietly.
    "No, he's right. I'll let them deal with this
tonight and stop by tomorrow. Maybe I'll feel more like my normal self, and I
won't fall completely apart."
    Polly held on to Lydia's arm, and then moved her hand d own to clasp
Lydia's fingers.
    "Tell me about the girls when they were in
school," she said.
    "Kellie and Jillie ," Lydia
smiled. "That's who they were to us. They were horrid brats and we all
loved them. They were