When the Stars Go Dark

by Paula McLain

In thirty-five years, I’ve never left the state or lived anywhere south of Oakland, and yet the beauty still guts me.

For seventeen years, I’ve stayed away from Mendocino, locking up the place inside myself like something too precious to even look at.

If you think about it, most of us have very little choice about what we’re going to become or who we’re going to love, or what place on earth chooses us, becoming home. All we can do is go when we’re called, and pray we’ll still be taken in.

Anna.

HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Cameron Curtis Age: 15 Last seen: 9/21 Red flannel shirt, black jeans 5'4" 105 lbs Long black hair, dark brown eyes Tips: 724-555-9641 Substantial reward offered

September 21 was yesterday, the day Brendan had finally had enough and asked me to go.

The place is seven miles out of town and four hundred dollars a month. When I call the owner, Kirk, he explains that there’s no TV service, phone line, or central heat. “It’s what you’d call bare bones,” he says. “A nice getaway, though, if you like things quiet.” “I do.”

Hap and Eden’s

They’d fostered a lot, but never had children of their own.

I’d just come from Fort Bragg,

“You can see you have everything you need here,” Kirk said.

All those years, from the time I was ten and Will was fourteen, we were part of each other’s story. His father, Ellis Flood, was Hap’s closest friend, and so we were often thrown together. But even if that hadn’t been the case, in a small town like Mendocino, the kids ran in packs, building driftwood forts on Portuguese Beach, wandering through the woods behind Jackson Street, or playing flashlight tag out on the bluffs on moonless nights. Two more in our gang were Caleb and Jenny Ford, twins who had been living alone with their dad since their mother ran off years before for a man, wanting a life that had nothing to do with them.

I was fifteen when Jenny Ford disappeared, in August of 1973.

Will is sitting at the far end of the bar when I finally come through the door of Patterson’s a little after eight-thirty, a nearly empty cup of coffee in front of him.

“She’s adopted. Maybe that means something?”

Cameron could be struggling with classic adoption issues, testing her parents’ love by acting out.

He’s talking about Jenny Ford. We’ve both been talking about her without mentioning her name.

“What? Caleb’s here?” “He came back almost a year ago, after his dad passed on. A stroke. Caleb inherited everything, sold all the paintings, too. That old bastard had millions.”

Five days after Jenny went missing, two fly fishermen found her body in the Navarro River, so waterlogged and disfigured, the coroner’s office had to confirm her identity through dental records.

She hadn’t drowned, either. She’d been strangled.

“Hello?” I call out once, leaning in for a response, but only the quiet presses back.

Jack Ford was a natural early suspect. He was an odd man and always had been, and everyone knew he drank too much.

wife, who had left him suddenly when Caleb and Jenny were six,

The pages were primarily filled with cryptic poems and song lyrics, but there were a number of entries in the months before her death about wanting to leave home the way her mother had, by vanishing without a word.

The night she wanted to run away, she met up with her killer instead

“Caleb?” I call out. His head jerks up, eyes unfocused for a moment. “It’s Anna. Anna Hart.”

“Actually I’m hoping you’ll let me help you with the case.”

A lot to process? I came here ready to do whatever I can to find one girl, and here is another.

These were three twelve-year-old girls in the middle of a slumber party.

“Okay, but Cameron Curtis has been my nightmare for more than a week now. I’m over my head here, Anna.” His voice catches and rings with strain. “I’ve had no help, no leads. The family is coming unhinged. And what do I tell them? Christ.”

But at seven the next morning, when she went to wake Cameron for breakfast, Emily found her room empty and the alarm deactivated. She didn’t have time to think about why, if somehow it had malfunctioned or if she’d forgotten to turn it on. Her daughter was gone.

Cameron was surrendered to the state just before her fourth birthday, a particularly tender age, though in my experience they all are.

Since looking at her file is like seeing a version of my own story, I know that even if Cameron felt lucky to have landed with the Curtises, as I had with Hap and Eden, she wouldn’t necessarily be free of ghosts.

That Christmas when I was eight, my mom stayed gone.

“Steve Gonzales,” Emily says from the base of the floating staircase. “Her English teacher.”

Does she have a boyfriend?” “No,” Emily says quickly. “Never.” That surprises me. “A beautiful girl like Cameron? No interest from boys at all? Or men?”

“We’ve been having some problems. As a family.” “That’s no one’s business,” Troy bursts in.

“What are all these questions about? You’re not suggesting Drew could have hurt Cameron?”

“I tried not to pry. I have all these books that say teenagers need their space. Was that a mistake?” “Teenagers are tricky.”

Anna never answers any of the family's questions. Annoying.

When I press my thumb against the screen frame, it gives instantly, popping forward.

Of course Emily’s confused. She’s been mostly blind to her daughter’s pain, but also doesn’t seem to understand her own.

“I don’t think your daughter was abducted,” I say.

My mother died on Christmas,

I eventually learned that she’d gone out on Christmas Eve after the kids and I were in bed, borrowing fifty dollars from a friend to get us presents. Instead she’d bought heroin and overdosed.

“The nurse told her she had scarring.” His face freezes and then crumples. It takes a minute before he can go on. “Like, inside her body.”

The experience of being violated is often so overwhelming and annihilating, particularly for children, that the only way to survive it is for victims to leave their bodies.

The world needs an army of Wandas—strong, sarcastic, unafraid women who say what they think and act straightforwardly, without apology or permission. Women who roar instead of flinch.

“Just because the girl’s led a troubled life doesn’t mean she’s not worth our time.

“Cameron Curtis. I’m sure you’ve heard. Now there’s another missing report filed in Gualala. Shannan Russo, age seventeen, last seen early June. Just trying to see if any dots connect.”

In 1991, in the small mountain town of Meyers, California, near Lake Tahoe, a car approached eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard as she walked to her bus stop.

“But apparently he told the girls, ‘I’m just doing it for the money.’