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Authors: T. L. Schaefer
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union.
Someone as volatile as Sam would only wreak havoc in her carefully constructed life. And, she acknowledged to herself, there was always that quiet little voice in the back of her head that said that Sam was her sister and she wanted to see her succeed. She knew it was a foolish and naïve hope. People like Samantha never changed, they just used up people as fast as they could until family was all they had left.
Suddenly fidgety, Arden surged out of her seat, admiring the simple, clean lines of the décor, restlessly running her fingers along the nubby surface of the top of the fainting couch, across the pure softness of the down comforter, down the silky smooth finish of the intricate oak dresser. She’d always been a fan of Southwestern decorating, but she’d never seen it done so well, so elegantly. The colors and shapes and even the wallpaper flowed to soothe, to relax.
As much as she tried to embrace that feeling of comfort, to let it slide into her mind and ease away her worries, it did no good. Her mind kept returning to Samantha.
They had always been polar opposites. She’d been the good student, the good daughter, while Sam had run amok throughout her formative years. And run amok wasn’t even a good description of the terror Samantha had wrought in her late teens. Police visits to their nice suburban house had been frequent; the drugs found in her possession almost a weekly occurrence. Their parents had been puzzled. How could two girls raised in exactly the same loving, nurturing environment turn out so differently? Arden had her own take on the situation.
Sometimes shit just happened. God, or whoever was responsible for putting together the DNA that makes each person, sometimes just forgets to hit that one switch. The one switch that makes the middle-class, law-abiding suburbanite happy with their lot in life. That switch, which, when left ‘unflipped,’ seemed to absolve the concerned party of any moral or just obligation to the rest of the human race. And Samantha’s switch had obviously never been hit.
Arden balled her fists against the elegant needlework of the sitting room chair in unconscious anger. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d never been one to sit back, waiting for life to come to her, she’d always reached out and grabbed it by the throat. So why was she sitting in her pleasant prison, waiting for the cowboy sheriff to make an appearance, or grace her with a phone call? She knew why. It was Samantha.
Anytime she felt less than what she really was, Samantha was the root of it. She had always been the pretty one, the popular one, while Arden faded back into the shadows. Samantha’s short tenure on the cheerleading squad had totally eclipsed Arden’s four years of involvement in student council, her years of charity work in the community. Maybe not to their parents, no, but to each and every boy that attended their mid-size Oklahoma high school, Samantha had always been the first choice, Arden a distant second.
So now here she was fifteen years later and apparently not one whit smarter, at least when it came to her sister. Samantha was missing, for Christ’s sake, but she still felt like a pale shadow of the glory that was Sam. You would think basic training and Officer Training School would have washed away any and all indecision about who and what she was, she thought wryly. And it had, at least when it concerned anything other than her family life.
Shit , she cursed under her breath, no more sitting around like a lump . I’m going to go out and make something happen, one way or the other, and Sheriff Bill Ashton is going to be the man to help me.
* * * *
If the Sheriff had even begun to glimpse the wheels turning inside Arden Jones’ head, he would have started running for the hills and never stopped. As it was, he was going over every painful detail of this case with Special Agent Drebin, reliving each moment of the search, and reviewing every piece of evidence
Someone as volatile as Sam would only wreak havoc in her carefully constructed life. And, she acknowledged to herself, there was always that quiet little voice in the back of her head that said that Sam was her sister and she wanted to see her succeed. She knew it was a foolish and naïve hope. People like Samantha never changed, they just used up people as fast as they could until family was all they had left.
Suddenly fidgety, Arden surged out of her seat, admiring the simple, clean lines of the décor, restlessly running her fingers along the nubby surface of the top of the fainting couch, across the pure softness of the down comforter, down the silky smooth finish of the intricate oak dresser. She’d always been a fan of Southwestern decorating, but she’d never seen it done so well, so elegantly. The colors and shapes and even the wallpaper flowed to soothe, to relax.
As much as she tried to embrace that feeling of comfort, to let it slide into her mind and ease away her worries, it did no good. Her mind kept returning to Samantha.
They had always been polar opposites. She’d been the good student, the good daughter, while Sam had run amok throughout her formative years. And run amok wasn’t even a good description of the terror Samantha had wrought in her late teens. Police visits to their nice suburban house had been frequent; the drugs found in her possession almost a weekly occurrence. Their parents had been puzzled. How could two girls raised in exactly the same loving, nurturing environment turn out so differently? Arden had her own take on the situation.
Sometimes shit just happened. God, or whoever was responsible for putting together the DNA that makes each person, sometimes just forgets to hit that one switch. The one switch that makes the middle-class, law-abiding suburbanite happy with their lot in life. That switch, which, when left ‘unflipped,’ seemed to absolve the concerned party of any moral or just obligation to the rest of the human race. And Samantha’s switch had obviously never been hit.
Arden balled her fists against the elegant needlework of the sitting room chair in unconscious anger. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d never been one to sit back, waiting for life to come to her, she’d always reached out and grabbed it by the throat. So why was she sitting in her pleasant prison, waiting for the cowboy sheriff to make an appearance, or grace her with a phone call? She knew why. It was Samantha.
Anytime she felt less than what she really was, Samantha was the root of it. She had always been the pretty one, the popular one, while Arden faded back into the shadows. Samantha’s short tenure on the cheerleading squad had totally eclipsed Arden’s four years of involvement in student council, her years of charity work in the community. Maybe not to their parents, no, but to each and every boy that attended their mid-size Oklahoma high school, Samantha had always been the first choice, Arden a distant second.
So now here she was fifteen years later and apparently not one whit smarter, at least when it came to her sister. Samantha was missing, for Christ’s sake, but she still felt like a pale shadow of the glory that was Sam. You would think basic training and Officer Training School would have washed away any and all indecision about who and what she was, she thought wryly. And it had, at least when it concerned anything other than her family life.
Shit , she cursed under her breath, no more sitting around like a lump . I’m going to go out and make something happen, one way or the other, and Sheriff Bill Ashton is going to be the man to help me.
* * * *
If the Sheriff had even begun to glimpse the wheels turning inside Arden Jones’ head, he would have started running for the hills and never stopped. As it was, he was going over every painful detail of this case with Special Agent Drebin, reliving each moment of the search, and reviewing every piece of evidence
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