Lost At Sea

by Erica Boyce

  The letter had the agency’s phone line listed in the last paragraph. Annie pulled her cell from her coat pocket. She already knew what she was going to say.

  * * *

  Ten months later, Lacey Carson came to the clinic for residential treatment.

  “New clients in today,” one of her coworkers said, pausing in the doorway of Annie’s tiny office.

  “What’s their substance?” Annie said, not looking up from her computer screen.

  “Heroin and Percs. Wanna come meet ’em?”

  Annie sighed and pushed back from her desk.

  “Tell me about it,” her coworker said. “Never thought you’d see the day when you hoped for an alcoholic client, huh?”

  Her fellow caseworkers knew about her addiction, but they never treated Annie delicately. Annie liked that about them.

  The two new kids were waiting in the reception area, under that tone-deaf motivational poster. Annie reminded herself to see if she could find a cheap replacement to send her supervisor’s way. One of the kids was staring down at his feet and kicking the toe of one sneaker against the sole of the other. The second kid looked up, and Annie’s heart shuddered to a stop.

  It was her old boyfriend’s face staring right at her. A more feminine version, beautiful actually, with long eyelashes and a thinner nose. But his eyes, his mouth, his dark hair.

  Impossible. She didn’t know much about the adoptive mother, but she knew she was from out of state. No, her daughter was living a perfect, happy life somewhere far away. She wasn’t an addict.

  Annie’s fingers began to tingle. She was going to pass out if she didn’t take a breath soon. She smiled brightly. “Hi, I’m Ms. Bray,” she said, “one of the caseworkers here.” She held out her hand, and the girl took it.

  “Lacey,” she said.

  Annie glanced at her coworker, who was busy trying to extract a name out of the boy. “You from around here, Lacey?” It was a totally normal thing to ask, she told herself.

  “Thirty minutes or so away. Devil’s Purse,” Lacey said.

  The air released slowly through Annie’s nose. Of course. The town was so small, this was probably a niece or a third cousin of Simon’s. She was pretty sure he’d had a large extended family. She ignored the tremble in her knees. This could not be her daughter. Her daughter was from Minnesota.

  “No shit?” Annie said, trying to find her usual delight in the teen’s slackened jaw. New clients never pictured this as a place where swearing was allowed. You couldn’t even wear T-shirts with logos on them, but her supervisors never cared much about language. “That’s where I’m from, too. Come on, hon. Let’s get you settled in.” She hoisted one of the bags at Lacey’s feet—she’d have to inspect them, but that could wait a few more minutes—and led her down the hall.

  * * *

  Lacey wasn’t assigned to Annie. Annie had a full load of clients already, so she went to Calvin Cole, whom all the rest of the staff teased for having a name that sounded like an underwear designer. She did see Lacey around the halls, of course, and a shiver went down her neck every time they passed each other.

  Lacey was in one of the groups she ran as well. She leaned forward whenever the girl spoke, not taking notes, transfixed. She always had to correct herself and duck her head toward her notepad. Favoritism was obviously frowned upon here. Even though this wasn’t her daughter, maybe this was what her daughter looked like now. It was better than anything she’d dreamed up before.

  During one session, she asked the kids to go around the room and describe their families. It was a pretty standard prompt, really more of a venting session meant to bring them all together than anything else.

  A couple of kids passed, looking down at their hands. When it was Lacey’s turn, she shrugged and said, “It’s just my mom and me.” She grinned. “She’s pretty great, though. She used to be a dancer, but now she owns her own catering business.”

  Annie’s notepad tumbled to the floor. She bent to retrieve it.

  Lacey continued. “I’m adopted, so I don’t know much about my bio family.”

  She said it so easily. Annie’s ears began to ring.

  “We don’t see my extended adoptive family much since we moved out here, but they kind of sucked anyway. So that’s me.”

  Annie could hear nothing more. She barely managed to pull herself back upright in her chair. She watched as the boy sitting next to Lacey began to talk, to take his turn. Lacey’s legs were crossed, and she bounced one foot up and down, over and over.

  It was no use. Annie stood. The boy stopped talking. A dozen pairs of eyes followed her. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I’ll be right back. Just take a quick break.”

  She hurried down the hall to her office. She imagined the kids all turning to Lacey and using their precious unsupervised time to ask her questions: had she tried to find her bio parents, did she know where they were from, did she feel like she belonged. The cheap rubber soles of Annie’s shoes squeaked against the linoleum. When she reached another office door, the caseworker was already looking up from his computer at the sound of Annie’s feet.

  “Hey,” Annie said apologetically. So many apologies. “Do you mind covering for me in the group in 12B? I’ve got a…thing.” She put her hand on her stomach.

  He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “I’m getting bored with this paperwork anyway.”

  “Thanks.” Annie didn’t explain what prompts she’d had planned or what they’d already talked about in the group. She shuffled down the hall to her own office, trying to look pained. Though she was tempted to lie down on the floor as soon as she got there, she made sure to walk all the way to her desk before sitting down. She scooted her chair in. She pushed herself so far into her desk that its edge dug into her ribs.

  And so. Her daughter was here. Here, in this place Annie’d worked so hard to keep her out of. It seemed like the most terrible coincidence, that her adoptive mother had chosen to move back, that she would fall prey to one of the deadliest drugs in an area where there was only one youth rehab facility. Annie’s facility.

  For a moment, Annie was furious with her daughter. Not with the eighteen-year-old who sat in that room but with the newborn whose bald, red scalp she’d glimpsed only briefly before turning away. Why had Annie gone through so much shit only to look back and find this girl, the one she’d tried to save, all mired in it?

  Annie shook her head firmly, dislodging the anger. She’d been trained over so many years to see this place as one of hope, not of failure or of shame. It wasn’t right to blame the client, no matter who she was. Addiction wasn’t anyone’s fault. There were so many factors involved: environment, mental illness. Genetics.

  She knew what she had to do. Ethically and professionally, she was required to disclose her connection to her supervisor. It was a conflict of interest. Annie would be removed from Lacey’s care. She pulled up a new email to her supervisor and started to draft her message. “I have recently learned…”

  But no. That was not what she had to do. Calvin Cole was known to be a bit of a hard-ass with his clients, maybe to make up for all the teasing he endured from the staff. His scared-straight bit would work with some kids but not with Lacey. Annie had seen it in Lacey’s eyes, the ones that reminded her so much of her ex. Of Lacey’s father.

  No, Lacey needed someone gentler, more empathetic. All that girl’s life, Annie had been utterly incapable of giving her what she needed. Even last year, when the only thing Lacey wanted was to know who’d given birth to her. Annie told herself it was for Lacey’s own good that she not find out, but it had to have been hard for Lacey to receive that no. Annie shuddered imagining what would happen now if Lacey somehow discovered who she was.

  It was a risk Annie’d have to take. Because here, finally, was something Annie could give her. She was a good caseworker, she knew it. She was everything she’d decided t
o be back in that last trip to rehab. She knew deep down that only she could help Lacey back onto the path she was supposed to be taking. Back to her adoptive mother. Away from all this.

  Annie clenched her hands. It was a terrible risk she was taking, but she had to do it. She had to help. She deleted her message, letter by letter. She typed up a request for a client transfer.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Saturday, November 11, 2017

  Rebecca sat on the bench for what felt like a very long time, trying to decide what to do. She knew Lacey had been adopted in this town and she was around the right age and had, according to rumor, never found her birth parents. But then, how many children were adopted each day, perhaps in that very hospital? And the woman seemed familiar with Lacey and her mother. It could be they each already knew who the other was to them and had somehow kept it hidden from the rest of the town.

  Still. In all her time of candy striping, that was the only time she’d seen an adoption. It was why she remembered it so clearly now, though she was embarrassed to realize she hadn’t thought of that lonely, anguished mother in the hospital bed in years. If she were Maureen, she’d want to know if there were the slightest possibility. If she were Lacey, she’d want to know. She thought of Lacey’s eyes, so lost as the paramedics carried her out of the library.

  Decision made, Rebecca stood, straightened her sweater, and walked back toward Lacey’s room. Martha watched her curiously as she passed. Rebecca smiled quickly at her and said nothing.

  She paused outside the door and listened to the voice of that woman, the stranger who perhaps wasn’t a stranger. “I suspect she has generalized anxiety disorder, though she resisted talking about it with me,” it was saying. “That would’ve made it hard for her to manage difficult news like that without reverting to her old coping mechanisms.”

  When she stepped into the room, Ms. Bray and Maureen both turned. Rebecca stopped. Now that she was here, she had no idea how to ask the question tactfully. “Sorry,” she said for some reason. “I—”

  Ms. Bray raised her eyebrows.

  Rebecca drew another breath and tried again. “By any chance, were you at this hospital in 1998?” She glanced behind Ms. Bray at Maureen. She didn’t want to be too explicit in case she was wrong. There was no need to upset things further.

  Maureen looked back and forth between Rebecca and Ms. Bray, the picture of confusion.

  “As a patient, I mean?” Rebecca finished.

  She expected Ms. Bray to scoff and say she didn’t know what Rebecca was talking about. For a moment, she looked ready to do just that. Rebecca exhaled. She must be wrong after all.

  But then, Ms. Bray’s eyes darted toward Lacey in the bed. Ms. Bray’s face slackened, and she looked so tired. “Don’t,” she said softly. She looked back at Rebecca with a raw pain that made Rebecca fall back a step. “Please.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Diane led Ella through four separate waiting rooms before they finally figured out where Lacey was. In each one, people sat, young and old, staring at their hands, flipping listlessly through outdated magazines. Diane found herself viciously, perversely jealous of these people who could study an X-ray or look into a doctor’s eyes and know with some certainty what was taking their loved ones away. Ella squirmed out from under Diane’s hand when her fingers clamped more tightly around Ella’s shoulder. She smiled tentatively up at Diane and linked her arm with Diane’s. Diane smiled back.

  Admitting defeat, they stopped to ask a cranky-looking receptionist where they could find Lacey Carson. The woman directed them down a series of hallways to a room they’d already walked past.

  “You wait here,” Diane instructed, pointing to a molded-plastic chair stationed outside the door. She pulled one of Ella’s books from her purse, and Ella’s eyes lit up just like she knew they would, in spite of everything. “I’ll come get you when they’re ready. I promise.”

  She stepped into the room as Maureen said, “What do you mean?”

  There was a third woman standing there, and when Rebecca stepped aside and Diane saw her face, rage grabbed at her.

  “You,” Diane said.

  The woman’s mouth fell open. Annie Bray.

  “Diane.” Annie came one step closer, then another.

  Diane pinched her lips closed, distantly aware of Maureen on the other side of the bed looking confused and Lacey lying unconscious in the middle of it all.

  “What are you doing here?” Diane asked, but of course she knew. Annie was Lacey’s caseworker. Maureen probably hadn’t known where else to go.

  And Annie, she had the gall to ignore the question and say, “I was so sorry to hear about John. Really, so sorry.”

  “It was your fault, you know,” Diane hissed. It made her think of that first terrible morning with Ella, the accusations her daughter had thrown. This one, though, was true, and Annie knew it.

  Annie raised one hand, calming an animal. “Hold on,” she said. “I don’t think—”

  “Oh, you don’t think! You don’t think!” Diane’s voice was high, mocking, shrill. “I know you don’t, and that’s the problem, isn’t it?”

  “Wait a sec,” Maureen said. She nearly had to shout in order to be heard. “What’s going on? How do you two know each other? And what happened in 1998?”

  * * *

  It had been a Wednesday. Diane remembered because John had come home with their weekly takeout—sushi that time—and Diane felt guilty throwing the plastic containers away. “Just chuck ’em,” John said as he passed her, paused over the garbage can with the stack. “You know you’ll never use ’em if you keep them.”

  “You’re right,” she sighed and stepped on the can’s foot pedal. Through the window, she saw a car idling in their driveway. Based on the amount of exhaust puddled behind it, the car had been there a while. She wiped a smear of soy sauce onto her jeans, unthinking. She’d have to fit a load of laundry in somewhere tomorrow. She was about to point the car out to John when it turned off and a woman stepped out of the driver’s seat. She squinted at their front door and tucked her hair back once, twice. She turned back to her car and opened the door. She stood for a moment in the glow of the interior lights before closing the door again and walking to the house, head down. Her waffling was almost comical.

  Finally, the doorbell rang. Diane opened the door. The woman looked to be around their age, with dark, shaggy bangs that made her appear much younger at first. Diane peered behind her at the car once more, but she saw no Mary Kay sticker in its window, nor did the woman launch into any sort of sales pitch. She just stood there, gawping.

  “Can I help you?” Diane prompted.

  The woman blinked. “Oh. Yes. Is this John Staybrook’s house?”

  “It is,” Diane said, angling her body to block the view inside. It was a little disturbing that this stranger knew her husband’s name, but then it was easy enough to find a home address online these days.

  “Is he home?”

  Diane looked her up and down and considered saying no when John came barreling down the stairs.

  “Confirmed, kid is asleep,” he said and sidled up to her. “We can watch that slasher movie you’ve been dying to—oh, shit. Annie Fitzpatrick.”

  The woman—Annie—looked unabashedly relieved. “John. It’s Annie Bray now actually. Can I come in?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, guiding Diane away from the door. “Sorry to make you wait out here.” He avoided Diane’s stare. “Had to make sure my daughter was all settled.”

  “You have a daughter?” Annie said, surprised.

  Diane racked her brain and tried to come up with the name of John’s only ex-girlfriend. She was almost certain it wasn’t Annie Fitzpatrick. She could’ve sworn it started with an N. Maybe there were others, though.

  But then Annie’s crow’s feet crinkled. “That’s awesome,” she said and
slipped out of her shoes. Her feet were bare, the toenails painted an electric blue. John’s boots had left puddles of brackish water on the tile floor. Annie picked her way around them as she followed John into the living room.

  “Can I get you anything? A snack?” Diane asked. It was an empty offer; the whole point of takeout night was that there was little food left in the house at this point in the week. On Thursdays, Diane went grocery shopping with Maureen during her lunch hour.

  “Oh, no, I’m fine,” Annie said. The three of them settled in, John and Annie on the couch, Diane on the armchair. Diane watched Annie pat Ella’s teddy bear, the one she claimed she was too old for, propped up in the corner of the sofa.

  “So what’ve you been up to all these years? You just passing through?” To Diane, John said, “Annie here was a year or two behind me at DP High, but there were so few students that we still had one class together. What was it, gym?”

  Annie smiled faintly and nodded. She seemed to be collecting something from within herself, gathering.

  “That’s nice,” Diane said to fill the silence.

  “And I dated your brother for a while there,” Annie said quietly.

  “That’s right!” John hooted. “Simon. What a wild man.”

  Diane nodded. She’d never met Simon. She and John had started dating shortly after he’d returned from Alaska, after they met at the Blockbuster between her college and his hometown. Simon was someone she’d pieced together with stories from John and from all the others in Devil’s Purse who had a thing or two to say about him.

  “I assume you know he passed,” Diane said and then wondered why she had. The boy probably didn’t mean much to Annie, and if she hadn’t already known he was gone, Diane might’ve ruined a sweet memory of hers.