Gretchen

by Shannon Kirk

  Mag swung her legs out of her tiny bed and, while wiping the tears from her face with her forearm, walked to the front of the camper. She sat in the driver’s seat, turned on the overhead light, and fingered an inspirational, maybe aspirational, picture she’d taped by the rearview mirror: an image of Sarah Connor from The Terminator. The one in which Sarah is holding a machine gun, wearing aviators, and dressed in military-style black pants and a tank top. Sarah Connor’s arms are cut and muscled. One time Mag found a rack of those same black pants at an army-surplus store in Salem, Massachusetts, and bought all five in her size.

  Still sitting in her driver’s seat, she pulled out a piece of bright-blue clay from a drawer in her driver’s console, one of several leftover rectangles of molding clay from the course she got caught up in in Colorado that delayed her from starting this summer’s Triple C shift.

  She ripped off a corner and squeezed the blue clay in her hand, pinching the square to warm and make it more pliable. She worked the blue piece into a palm-rolled ball while meditating on the hugeness of Cord’s beloved dog-grave hydrangea bush, smack-dab in view of her windshield. Sometimes resort brides asked to cut a blue bloom for their bouquets, and Cord always said, “Something borrowed and something Blue,” meaning Blue, his dog, and thus offering his reliable and coded sentimentality.

  Mag tried to go to sleep but couldn’t stop cycling, round and round, the same analysis of her life, the different views of it, the positive, the negative. Turn, turn, turn from one extreme to the other, good and bad, good and bad, like her life was merely binary, good or bad, positive or negative, only those two extremes blended together.

  Near the end of August, Mag sauntered over to Cord’s one-room log cabin and knocked. It was 6:00 a.m., right before she knew he’d be heading out and up to the resort concierge to collect the day’s itinerary.

  “Fine,” she said as soon as he opened the thick log door.

  Cord smiled. “Your passport in order?”

  “Of course.”

  “We leave next week, you know?”

  “No shit, old man. Who do you think’s been planning your retirement party?”

  The next week, on the day of Cord’s retirement breakfast—for Cord’s, and now Mag’s, flight was scheduled that evening—Mag readied her bags and called her detective. Of course he had nothing to report, and of course Mag thought he didn’t know his thumb from his dick. Find my baby, you idiot. She told her dick-thumb detective she’d call later with a local Italy phone number, because she wasn’t sure her cell phone would have service where they were going. As he always did, the detective said he’d scour the deepest ocean to find her if he ever had news to share. She hung up and finished packing.

  During the day, as she and Cord rolled fishing line, repaired flies for fly-fishing, restocked bird bingo cards at the base of the treetop course, picked up clay-pigeon shards in the range, and tightened arrows and hay bales, a sense of dread descended upon Mag. A deeper dread than the one managed by Ray’s song. Something she hadn’t felt so severe in many years, maybe not even since the day the monster took her baby girl. At one point, while walking to dump a bucket of orange pigeon shards in a dumpster, she had to drop and place her head between her knees because a wave of nausea struck so fast and deep. Wind cooled her neck, which allowed her to stand and tell herself, but not fully convince herself, she was simply suffering travel anxiety. She went about her day, coaching herself she was only going a plane ride away—well, actually, two or three plane rides away—from her beast camper in California (the resort had agreed she could park for a year), and just a phone call away from Dick-Thumb.

  Okay, okay, okay.

  She told herself the job in Italy wasn’t going to work out anyway, and that this was a way, a step, to allow herself to move to Costa Rica and be with Carly again. A testing of the waters on allowing herself forgiveness and to be able to settle down.

  The gun-range veteran, who everyone called D, the one who’d had his appendix removed, drove up to Mag’s camper and honked. Cord was already in the front passenger seat, so Mag threw her duffel into the back seat, sat down, and shut the door.

  “Don’t pack much, do you, Mag?” D asked.

  “Don’t need much, and whatever else I need, I’ll get in Italy,” she answered.

  As they drove away from the Triple C, a dark, ominous dread descended again. Sweat broke out over Mag’s forehead and on the back of her neck. She rolled down her window for cool air; a car whizzed past going toward the Triple C. Mag swore the man driving was the same bearded man from a handful of years ago. The one she guided, him and his son, on an overnight camping trip. The one so close to being like a Ray LaMontagne.

  Mag shook her head, told herself she was inventing mirages, but something about the possible sight of her bearded man connected with the deep feeling of dread that had been haunting her all day. Some instinct told her this feeling, this instinct, had nothing to do with travel. She’d been on her own for thirteen years traveling all over everywhere. And it’s not like in these thirteen years she hadn’t taken international flights because the universe told her to check something out in London or France or Spain or Mexico, and one time a hike in Peru. And of course the time she tracked Paul in Ecuador and . . . well . . . handled her demon. No, no, she wasn’t experiencing mere anxiety over international travel.

  Then another thought sent a wave of panic through her. She grabbed her duffel, rip-zipped it open, dived her hands in, and riffled about.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Cord turned and looked over the front seat.

  “Dammit,” she said. “Forgot my passport.”

  D slowed, pulled a U-turn, and drove back to the Triple C.

  “Good thing you remembered so close to base, lady girl. We’re already in a hurry for this flight.”

  “I know. I know, I’m sorry,” she said in a disconnected whisper. She stared out the open window, not focusing on her passport or her words. Not focusing on the passing trees or the trip she was about to take. Rather, she grasped around in fractured, random thoughts. Like her mind was ahead of her, knew something she hadn’t accepted yet. Like her brain was in transition to entering a whole new reality.

  Instinct. Maternal instinct was screaming in her mind.

  D drove back to the Triple C Activity Center and up to Mag’s camper. Parked by Cord’s cabin, in front of Blue’s grave hydrangea, was her bearded man in an obvious rental, a black Mustang. This time he was alone, without his son.

  Mag got out of D’s car.

  “Ray?” she said to her bearded man.

  He shook his head confused. “My name’s not Ray. I’m Nathan. Nathan Vinet. Do you remember me?”

  “I took you on an overnight. You and your son. The doctor? You’re a doctor, right?”

  “Yes, right. Back in 2014 you took us camping. My son, Thomas, he was ten. He’s fifteen now. I know this is weird, but can we talk? I’m on a business trip to San Fran, from New Hampshire, and I drove here to find you. I couldn’t remember your name, and I had no number to call, and when I tried the resort, they had no idea who I was talking about.”

  “Idiots,” Mag said under her breath. Her heart was thumping loud as she wondered why someone who was in her life for just a short night would go to such lengths after so long to find her. Thinking, too, on how fractured her thoughts seemed, how transitional she felt, she found she was holding her breath. Her fingers tingled in some primal instinct, but she forced herself forward. “I’m Gretchen, but I go by Mag. They know who the hell I am. They know better.”

  “Gretchen, right, right. Thomas, my son, he said it was a G name.”

  “I didn’t tell you my name back then. I said to call me G. I say that to all the guests. That’s why you can’t remember. Why are you here?”

  “Mag, you all right?” Cord interrupted, now standing behind her and listening to the conversation.

  Big D stood in flank to the scene, arms crossed, legs A-framed, ready for battle.
“Mag, remember, five will get you ten, ten will get you killed. Tell him,” D said in her direction, loud enough for Nathan to hear.

  Without looking to Cord or D, Mag held up her index finger, indicating this situation did not threaten her, this was a Level 1. She did note, however, D’s reminder of an important self-defense move he’d trained her on. Five will get you ten, ten will get you killed was a twist on popular betting parlance, the meaning reconfigured to fit D’s invention of a rather specific use of the hands in combat. If she’d raised the ALL RED alarm of four fingers, this bearded Nathan Vinet would be tossed in the lake and swimming with the loons in four seconds flat.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” Nathan said. He seemed confident, strong, unwavering in what he needed to say, despite the very trained guards surrounding Mag. He stood eye to eye with her, matching Mag’s height and straight posture. “It’s just, you said you were looking for your daughter. And that, I did the math, she’d be fifteen by now, the same age as my boy. And she’d look just like you. You said she’d been taken, and if I ever saw someone like that, she’d likely live closeted up, or living on the run in multiple places. And Gretchen, Mag, I mean, I’ve had the strangest encounters with a girl who fits, I mean. Oh wow. Looking at you, I have no doubt. I know she has violet eyes. I know it. And violet eyes are so damn rare. She tries to hide her eyes. I believe she wears contacts.”

  Mag gasped. Took a step closer to Cord, reaching for him. He grabbed her arm, as if preparing to hold her up.

  Nathan continued, his intention like a steel bow slicing through icy waters. “It so happens, I had business in San Francisco this week, so I thought, maybe this is not crazy at all. Maybe there’s some connection. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to shake this feeling, keeps gnawing at me. I even felt nauseous for trying to ignore it. Anyway, something told me to drive here and find you. Maybe I’m all wrong, but what the hell. I don’t know. It’s like the universe demanded I come. So I listened to the universe.”

  Like any good father would, Cord stepped closer behind Mag in time to catch her as her legs failed and she crumpled to the ground. Cord’s role was simply to slow the fall, because nothing could stop her hard collapse. On the ground, Mag shook Cord away and held up a hand, telling all the men around her to stop, stop the fussing.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “Stop. Step back.”

  She dropped her head, breathed in hard, closed her eyes. She got to her knees, pressed on her thighs, and stood. Standing tall, dirt on the front of her black military pants and on her palms, she faced Nathan, himself standing in a bracing position, readying to help her but not daring to touch her.

  “Are you sure?” she demanded.

  Nathan flicked his fingers, a motion that told her to hold on. He fished in his pants pocket, pulled out his phone, clicked a few times, and turned the screen to her. “I took this picture in the store she works at. They didn’t know I took the picture. That’s her, the one who might be your girl. She goes by Lucy. And the woman is her mother, they say.”

  Mag made a choking sound. “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she said. Her throat full with an instant concrete. She brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. Laura. Laura.”

  Mag wandered off with Nathan’s phone, bent over her knees, and leaned against her camper. Her back heaved up and down. “Laura. Laura. My God. Laura.” She appeared like a wounded animal, taking dying breaths.

  Cord stepped to her, tried to place a hand on her back, but she winced and moved away along the side of her camper, still bent.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God,” she whispered. “Laura.”

  “Your girl, Laura. That’s Laura?” Cord tried.

  “Yes, my God. Yes. I’d know my own daughter if she were eighty.” Mag tilted her head up to Cord as if she were pleading to him from the bottom of a well. She remained bent over her knees. The phone and phone screen obscured and in her hands.

  “That’s Laura, my baby.” Her voice cracked. “The woman. That’s Laura Ingrace, Cord. Fucking Laura Ingrace from camp days. I named my girl after her. Oh my God. What? What? How can? Oh my God. Laura took my baby girl. What? What the fuck? What?”

  Mag shot up and walked fast to Nathan. Standing tall and one foot from him, she steeled her face and emotions. “She goes by Lucy? My girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “In New Hampshire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take me there now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  LUCY

  Everything in my life is the literal Upside Down like in Stranger Things, which “Mom” let me watch on her iPad and I binged. To sum up: tonight I figured out Mom is not my mother; I ran away down the country road wearing Gretchen’s white mini-nightgown; Gretchen ran through the frickin’ woods like a rabid beast to stop, or I don’t know what, me; and then Dali drove over the hill, and she fled—which is super sketch and confusing and ugh . . . I don’t want to think about it!

  Dali saved me, and nobody knows, and nobody’s gonna know, because I’m in triple hiding now: hiding from my real past and hiding from my fake kidnapped past and hiding from Gretchen Sabin, who—I don’t even know. I’m underground. Invisible. And Dali keeps secrets as if breaking even one would crush the whole world to smithereens. He’d weirdly forgotten his laptop and had to drive five hours from Princeton to get it, and since he was home, he said he felt he couldn’t leave things unsettled and things unsaid between us—he was worried. And, miracle of miracles, he came in the nickity-splits of time to save my almost-naked ass.

  Dali’s hiding me in his bedroom above his parents’ garage. We’ve been talking all night about my situation, and I’ve told him about Gretchen’s house and interactions with Gretchen. I’m just giving facts, facts, facts, because I need to cut through all the cockeyed, crazy emotions, which are flying around me in a clockwise tornado mixed with a counterclockwise tornado. When I’m reciting facts to Dali, I’m able to avoid flares of stress hives.

  It’s 3:00 a.m. now, according to the red digital numbers projected on Dali’s wall.

  “Hold on,” Dali says. Since he’s standing, he runs his hand up the slanted ceiling of his above-garage bedroom. Having changed into Dali’s gray T-shirt and big-ass boy jeans, I’m sitting crisscross on top of his platform bed. “Jerry Sabin told you he broke his leg in a hole filled with a rock pyramid that teenagers built, and then he put up all the fences and traps? And the teenagers did this rock-pyramid hole to trap his dead wife’s and kid’s ghosts? That’s what he said? That’s the timeline?”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he was real clear about that.”

  “Can’t be true.”

  “What?”

  “Gretchen and Jerry Sabin said that?”

  “Yes, well, Jerry Sabin did. Gretchen . . .” I shoot him a confused look as he interrupts.

  “Yeah, no way. So if Gretchen was at least four when her mother was shot, and then Jerry broke his leg, that means I was at least seven. And let me tell you, yeah. No. I’m certain about this. From the time I came to live here, I know, I know for sure, my fosters, parents—hell, all the parents in town—used to yell at us constantly to never trespass on the Sabin property because it was rigged with traps and an electrical fence. Rigged for decades, Lucy.”

  “Why would they lie, though? They must have known I’d find out, right?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t know. I have no clue.” He bit his lip, closed his eyes in thought, knuckled the slanted ceiling a few times. “Yeah, I’m not sure. Tell me more.”

  “I mean, looking back on it and knowing Gretchen better now, I think Gretchen was pissed Jerry told us how he broke his leg. And then last week, right before I left for work, she very creepily told me Jerry did not break his leg in holes with rocks and she wanted to show me where and how he broke his leg in the forest. I thought she was messing with me. And tonight, her urging me to go in the woods . . .”

  “Uh-uh, uh-uh. Okay, tell me more.”

  So I give Dali more facts. Just whatever ot
her facts I had in living by Gretchen. And I gave facts about Mom, about all the places we’ve lived. About the metal box. About Gretchen’s halls. Her puzzles. About Gretchen’s and my unstated, but definite-for-sure, who-flinches-first game. About the creep-ass cult Death March puzzle she gifted me and how a painted boy in the painting’s serpentine line had an old man’s face. About the crème-de-la-crème Jenny in Indiana who I left behind in my tenth state. About anything I can talk about that is pure-grade, verifiable fact. No emotions. No organization on my ramblings.

  We trail off talking and both fall asleep, me on his bed still fully dressed, and Dali half on his beanbag on the floor, because he’s not a creeper who takes advantage of a girl in distress—he’s a Jenny. A solid Jenny.

  Now some ringing is waking us both up. Dali answers his iPhone, and his face goes white. He’s bulging his eyes on me. He’s stammering, saying things like, “No, sir. No. I don’t. Uh, uh, I’m not sure,” and staring at me. Whatever this call is, is about me.

  And then he breaks his rule about holding secrets. He gives whoever’s called my rental ranch’s address. He hangs up. I jump off the bed and run to his door, but he pops in front of it, stopping me. I can’t believe he betrayed me.

  “Stop. I had to. That was a cop. They were going to come here. I didn’t say you were here. I couldn’t deny I knew your address. They thought I might have taken you or hidden you because, whatever, because they did. Sandra saw how we were friends at the store, and I shouldn’t be home from Princeton. I mean, I did drive home the night you disappeared. If I didn’t give your address, they were going to come here. We need to go. Let’s go. I know where we can hide you.”