Before the Returned

by Jason Mott

  Heather sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. “I’m not very good at telling stories.” She cleared her throat.

  Tatiana eagerly perked up in the bed. “I could tell you one, but it’s not finished yet. My father and I still have to come up with the ending.”

  “Endings are the hardest part,” Heather said with a smile. “No one ever really wants a good story to end, so I think it’s actually okay that this one isn’t finished.” She stretched out across the bed at the child’s feet and waited expectantly. “I would love to hear it.”

  Tatiana folded her legs beneath her and began. “Once, when the world was very young, there was a girl who had no parents. She lived alone in the forest, very afraid and very sad. She did not even have a name because there was no one to speak with.”

  “That’s a sad beginning,” Heather interrupted.

  “My father says that good stories have to begin sadly,” Tatiana replied matter-of-factly. “Because if we have not been sad, then we cannot be happy.”

  “He sounds very wise,” Heather said after a pause.

  Tatiana continued with her story.

  “So when the girl was five years old, she learned to climb trees—”

  “Why did she have to climb trees?” Heather interrupted. She could see that Tatiana took delight in answering her questions.

  “To get away from the lions and leopards and wild dogs that were always coming through the forest to hunt.”

  “You’ve thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “And it was at the top of one of those trees,” Tatiana continued, “that she found a family of sparrows. They were gentle and kind to her. They were like you.”

  Tatiana’s story continued for nearly an hour, and when she was finished, she told Heather how she and her father had been working on the story almost every night for weeks. “The sparrows were Father’s idea,” Tatiana said at one point.

  “Why did he want sparrows?” Heather asked. “Why not some other bird?”

  “Because, when he was a boy, they were his favorite,” Tatiana said. “He said that his mother once told him that sparrows are how wishes are carried to God’s ear.”

  The child paused then, as if poring over some memory, and Heather could see the joy in her eyes as she spoke of her father. How could she not long to see the two of them united?

  * * *

  When Tatiana awoke the next morning, the time she had spent with her father the night before felt like it had all been a dream. Her father was gone, and from the way her mother was acting, he obviously had not visited her.

  The day was cold and foreboding. Halfway through preparing breakfast, Tatiana’s mother burned her hand on a skillet, and she crumpled to the floor, sobbing into her forearm. Tatiana crouched next to her mother and put her arms around her.

  “It will all be all right,” Tatiana said, trying to console her mother.

  “We need to leave,” her mother said.

  “But what about Father?” Tatiana asked, but her mother did not reply.

  Tatiana sat for a moment, processing what was happening, and then she quietly wept. She wanted to tell her mother that they could not leave, but she knew better. The news coming from the television was getting worse by the minute. There were more and more men with guns, and the sounds of the gunfire were getting closer every day.

  It was too late, and both Tatiana and her mother knew it.

  Tatiana’s mother placed her arm around the girl. She switched off the television and kissed Tatiana’s forehead. “Now,” she said, “I think it’s time we started a new story. Something different from anything either of us has ever created before.” She held her daughter to her chest. “Once,” she began, “when the world was very young...”

  Her mother’s words ran together in a stream the child only half heard and would not remember. Still, her voice was a comfort to Tatiana. It lessened the horrible sounds coming from the street in front of their house. It made Tatiana think of her father’s tale, and, briefly, she could believe that, somewhere in this world, there really was once a woman raised by sparrows, a woman who could fly away from all the things that might hurt her.

  It was then that Tatiana fell into a daydream of the two of them flying away, of escaping, of soaring over the earth to the place where her father was waiting. And then the three of them would hold one another and laugh and no harm would ever come to them.

  It was in the midst of this daydream that the door of the house opened and the men with the guns stormed in and squeezed their triggers.

  * * *

  Letting go of the girl was harder than she had imagined it would be. She had gotten used to having another pair of feet thumping around the house in the long hours of the evening. She’d gone out and stocked the refrigerator to capacity with healthy snack foods for children and with whatever treats of the unhealthy sort she thought Tatiana might like.

  But now, several weeks after the girl had come to live with them, Tatiana’s father had been found. He was a citizen of Canada, having fled there in 1994 after the death of his wife and daughter. He was a priest, operating a small church in Montreal. When Heather spoke with him on the phone, he had fallen into a fit of crying and apologizing, though she did not understand what he was sorry for. “Do not let her go,” he said at one point. “Please. Hold on to her until I can hold her myself.”

  Heather promised him she would, and she loved Tatiana all the more from that moment on, even though she knew the child would soon be leaving.

  When they arrived at the hotel on that final day, Heather felt a knot form in the center of her stomach. She was doing the right thing; that much was certain. But she couldn’t help worrying for Tatiana. What if her father had changed his mind? she wondered. What if he no longer wanted her? The Returned were still a question mark as far as the world was concerned. There was nothing natural about what was happening, and all a person had to do was turn on the television to see just how afraid everyone was.

  But now it was too late to do anything other than follow through.

  As they waited in the car in front of the hotel, Heather thought back on how her life had changed since Tatiana had arrived. Matt had been gone for a week now, their relationship irrevocably damaged. “I wish you could have believed,” was the last thing Heather told had him as he’d left. But since then it had been just her and the girl, and they had become something akin to family, she felt. Perhaps this was a taste of the family she had hoped to one day build with Matt. But that feeling of family had happened without him. In fact, it had only truly come after he had left. Perhaps Tatiana’s arrival had shown Heather something that she otherwise would have been forced to learn after years of unhappy marriage to a man that she shouldn’t have married.

  The child had saved her, in a way.

  The sky was gray and overcast. Heather turned in her seat and looked back at Tatiana. “Are you ready to do this?” she asked.

  Tatiana nodded. “He will still love me, won’t he?” she asked.

  Heather responded by climbing into the backseat and wrapping her arms around the girl. “You’re his daughter,” she said, smiling as she spoke. “Of course he will. But I want you to know that if he acts, well, funny when you see him, it’s not your fault, okay? You have to promise me that you won’t be upset.”

  Tatiana nodded. “He won’t be mad at me?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  She held the child close. “You’re a piece of magic, Tatiana. And I’m sure your father will recognize that. Any parent would. But if you’re ever afraid, I want you to know that I love you. I always want you to know that you’re loved, Tatiana.”

  Tatiana threw her arms around Heather’s neck. “It’s okay,” Heather said, and, for a moment, she wished the child were her own.

  Heather held
Tatiana’s hand as they entered the room, and when her father laid eyes on his daughter, Heather saw a swell of relief and joy consume the man. He was small and slim with dark skin and a crown of gray hair. He had deep-set wrinkles in his face, as if placed there by a lifetime of worry and regret, years of carrying the burden that he had been away when his wife and child were killed. Heather could only imagine what that must have done to him.

  Without hesitation, Heather let the child go.

  Tatiana and her father fell into a pile of weeping and laughing in the center of the room. He called her name over and over again as he clutched her in his arms. He stroked her hair with trembling hands. He tried not to take his eyes off her, tried not to blink, as though whatever magic had brought her back to him might suddenly take her away.

  “I cannot thank you enough,” Tatiana’s father told Heather, once he was finally able to speak. His voice was shaky, and he sniffled like a child with a cold.

  “It’s okay,” Heather replied, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I was glad to do it. She’s an angel.”

  “Yes,” the man said, keeping his eyes on his daughter. “Yes, she is.”

  Heather hesitated. She had another question she wanted to ask, a question that was lingering in her heart. She cleared her throat, preparing to speak, but said nothing.

  Tatiana’s father was still sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth, his daughter in his arms. She clung to him, as though he were the one who had returned from the dead.

  “You want to ask me something,” the man said to Heather.

  “It’s nothing,” Heather said, her voice cracking, her face flushed with tears.

  “The most important words are always the ones that are never spoken,” he said as he rose from the floor. He was older and more tired than he once was, and he strained as he lifted his daughter and held her the way he had done all those years ago. “There were things I never said to my wife. Things I never said to my daughter. Things that I did not even think I was keeping in. And then one day they were gone, and all the things I wanted to tell them, all the stories I wanted to create with them, they were gone, as well.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Heather said, and she instantly regretted her words.

  “Imagine all the loneliness in the world,” the man said, “and that is what it is like for a father to lose his family.” He kissed Tatiana’s brow. “In the end, all that matters is this moment. This feeling. I have my daughter again.”

  He turned to his daughter and smiled. “Now, child, tell your tired, old father a story. His heart has missed the magic of his daughter’s voice.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Returned by Jason Mott.

  THE CHOICE

  A Prequel to The Returned

  Jason Mott

  In this short story by Jason Mott, author of The Returned, a man is forced to choose between the life he has now, and the one he thought was gone forever.…

  Peter Galvin was just seventeen when Tracy Whitland—the love of his life—vanished without a trace. In the years after her death, he had finally moved on, gotten married, started a family. He is content with his life now—happy, even.… Until Tracy suddenly and inexplicably returns.

  For weeks, Peter and his wife, Samantha, have been watching mysterious reports of people’s loved ones returning from beyond, the world spinning into uncertainty and chaos. But they never imagined it would happen to them. With Tracy’s unusual homecoming, Peter and Samantha must decide where they can possibly go from here, and whether their family can survive.…

  Read more stories of the Returned in The First and The Sparrow. And don’t miss Jason Mott’s haunting debut novel, The Returned, a story of one family given an extraordinary second chance.

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Nathaniel and Evelyn Whitland stood in the waning sunlight, staring off to the west as the thin plume of dust rose up. Nathaniel placed his arm around his wife and, though she could not stop trembling, she did not take her eyes off the approaching car. “Is it really her?” she asked her husband. Nathaniel did not reply; he only squeezed her a little tighter and held his breath and watched and waited.

  The car was a long time coming, winding its way up the mountain, slowing now and again to navigate imperfections in the weathered road. It was a black sedan and Evelyn couldn’t help but think to herself how much it reminded her of the black sedans she saw in movies when people from the government went about whatever business governments go about.

  “Is it really her?” she asked again.

  “I suppose we’ll know shortly,” her husband replied.

  It was almost completely dark when the car finally came to a stop in the front yard. The chill of early evening had crept into the air and the old couple was weary from standing on the hardwood porch, but they were too excited to sit. Too full of questions.

  At last the dust settled and the Whitlands finally released one another when the back door of the car opened and there, somehow, was their daughter—who had died nearly twenty years ago. She looked not a day older than she had been the last time they had seen her.

  “It’s her,” Nathaniel said, his voice faltering slightly.

  Evelyn did not reply. Her body swayed a little, as if a hard wind had suddenly blown over her, but then she straightened herself and opened her arms wide and called her daughter’s name, reveling in the sound of her voice being answered back after all these years.

  * * *

  Lisa took her breakfast in front of the television while Peter and Samantha shuffled about in the kitchen. Whenever he could, Peter stole a peek into the living room to catch pieces of the news report.

  For the past few weeks, all over the world, the dead had been returning. They appeared without warning or explanation, oftentimes far away from wherever they had once lived or died. And all they seemed to want was to reenter their lives…. But despite the miracle of their return, the world was beginning to slip into fear and confusion. There was an unease that was slowly building into chaos.

  As the whole world was struggling to understand what was happening, a tension had begun creeping into Peter and Samantha’s lives. Each morning now they awoke and prepared for the day with only the basest of communication between them. They had become roommates, somehow. Roommates with a daughter caught in the middle.

  “Don’t forget—Lisa’s got soccer today,” Samantha said. She stood at the sink, running her finger under a stream of cold water. She had burned it on the skillet while making bacon. It was the third time in the past two weeks. All the little things were going wrong lately.

  “Do I ever forget?” Peter asked. He stood half in the kitchen and half in the living room, watching the television and watching Lisa all at once. The girl was entranced by the images of the Returned on the television.

  “Yes,” Samantha responded. “Point of fact you do forget.” She turned off the faucet and dried her hand. “Where’s the aloe?”

  “Wherever you put it,” Peter said, sipping his coffee.

  Samantha looked out the window above the sink, exhaling slowly in the hopes of easing the flash of anger growing inside her. Next door the Johnsons were piling into their van—a cluster of chaos and franticness; their twin seven-year-old boys were grappling with one another, yet, somehow, they all seemed happy. “Did you book the reservations for dinner Saturday night?”

  Peter grunted, but Samantha couldn’t be sure if it was an affirmation or if he was shrugging her off.

  In the living room, Lisa sat in front of the television sucking her thumb. She was six now and Peter and Samantha were always telling her to keep her thumb out of her mouth. “Lisa, do you know where Mommy put the aloe?” Samantha called.

  Her daughter did not reply.

  “Lisa, honey,” Samantha said. “The aloe?”

  “Mom, was the man on TV dead like Mr. Whiskers? Or was it a different kind of de
ad? Do people always come back? Will everybody come back?”

  “Dear Lord,” Samantha groaned.

  “You’re fighting a lost battle,” Peter replied. “She’s hypnotized by it. Try looking in her bedroom. That’s where everything ends up eventually.” He put his coffee down and patted himself, looking for something. “Have you seen my phone?”

  “No. Last time I saw it was in the car last night. Lisa was playing some kind of game on it.”

  Peter huffed and started for the garage.

  “Peter?” Samantha called. She turned to face him and folded her arms over her chest. She looked exhausted. “The anniversary dinner Saturday…did you book it?”

  “Yes,” he replied. He paused as if there was something more to say, but there was only silence and tension between them and nothing else came to fill the space, not even an explanation for how things had so suddenly come to this.

  * * *

  When he was outside in the wet morning air, Peter felt that he could finally breathe again. He walked with his hands behind his head and his face aimed up at the clouds, like a teenager taking stock of his place in the universe. He watched the Johnsons drive past, waving as they did. He waved back at them and listened to the sound of their two boys roughhousing in the backseat disappear down the block. One day those boys would probably wind up making eyes at his daughter.

  When he got into the car, the smell of rotting fruit hit him. He coughed and put his shirt over his nose. Likely as not, Lisa had left something somewhere beneath one of the seats. The entire car was cluttered with books and candy wrappers and pages from coloring books in various stages of completion.

  He sighed and, for a moment, stopped and marveled at the fact that he was now married, now a father. He saw himself from a distance, hunched over in a car that smelled of bad fruit and was littered with the flotsam of family life. He looked down at his hands. One of the fingernails on his left hand was colored a soft shade of purple. He stared at it for a moment, and then realized what it was: nail polish.