A tall police officer reclined at one of the desks in the bullpen, rolling aimlessly on the caster wheels of his office chair as he flipped through a case file. Once upon a time, his hair was thick and dark. Now, he kept it buzzed close to his skull to hide the impending widow’s peak. As the bell chimed over the door, he glanced up.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, setting aside the file. “The last time I saw you, you had burn marks on your arms and soot in your hair.”
“Why does everyone keep reminding me about that stupid barn?” I hovered over the station’s threshold, one foot propping the door open. “It was so long ago.”
“It’s also your legacy,” the cop said. He stood up, came around the main counter, and popped my foot out of place so that the door could shut. Then, to my surprise, he pulled me into a casual, one-armed hug. “Good to see ya, kid.”
“Officer Scott,” I replied. “I have to admit it’s a lot nicer to walk into the station on my own terms rather than getting dragged in.”
Officer Scott chortled. “What, you didn’t like the handcuffs? Come on in. Take a seat.” He led me into the bullpen, where he offered me a chair from his neighbor’s desk and a water bottle from a nearby mini fridge. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” I told him, sitting down. “I can’t believe you haven’t retired yet. How old are you?”
“Oh, good. You’re still quippy. I was hoping the world wouldn’t knock that out of you.”
“Never,” I said. “But I’m not here to catch up.”
Scott kicked his feet up to the desk and leaned back. His chair creaked in protest. “Yeah, I figured you weren’t dropping by to see me. I have a feeling I know what this is about.”
“Holly.”
His mustache bristled as he folded his hands in his lap. “I don’t know what to tell you, Bridget.”
“Well, what happened?” I asked. “No one seems to know anything. Not Autumn. Not Bill or Emily. And I don’t buy that she ran away, Scott. That’s not like her.”
“No, I didn’t mean that I don’t know anything,” Scott clarified. “I meant that I can’t tell you anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not Holly’s legal guardian.”
“Oh, come on.”
His boots came to rest on the linoleum. “Sorry, kid.”
“I’m her sister,” I protested. “Her blood relation. And I’m not allowed to know where she is? Do you understand how messed up that is?”
Scott’s tone remained calm but stern. “I do, and I wish that I could help you. Unfortunately, my hands are tied in this situation.”
I gestured to his hands, which rested lightly in his lap. “Your hands are not tied! Your hands are right there, next to your computer, which I’m sure has the details of Holly’s case somewhere on it.”
“I meant legally and metaphorically, Bridget.”
“I know you meant metaphorically,” I snapped. Officer Scott raised his eyebrows. I slumped in my chair. “Sorry. I just—you really can’t tell me anything?”
“Nothing that hasn’t already been on the news for a few days now.” He studied my fallen expression, twiddling his thumbs. “Listen, kid. I really wish I could help. You know me. I was always rooting for you, even when you were a pain in my ass.” He rested a warm hand on my knee. “I think your best bet is to talk to the Millers.”
“I already tried,” I said. “They’re not happy about me being here.”
“Well…”
“Yeah, yeah. I burned down their barn. Thanks a lot, broken record.”
“You burnt a lot of bridges too,” Scott said. “Maybe if you patched them up, you might get a little more information out of people.”
I stood up and returned my borrowed chair to its rightful place. “I’m working on it. I’ll see you later, Scott. Thanks for trying.”
He walked me out, holding the station’s door open for me. “Bridget, wait. I owe you an apology.”
I paused on the sidewalk outside, shielding my eyes as they watered in the sunlight. “For what?”
He towered over me but somehow managed to look small and sheepish. “Before you left, you asked me to look after Holly. I promised that I would. And now—”
“I don’t blame you, Scott. It was beyond your control.”
“I just want to make sure you know that I’m doing everything I can to find her,” he said, a tremble in his baritone.
“That’s all I can ask for.”
There was no bell over the door of Oak and Autumn. Instead, my entrance triggered a chain of wind chimes, which clacked together to create a grating chorus. I gritted my teeth. I hadn’t completely avoided a hangover, and my aching head needed gentler sounds.
The store was empty. The midmorning lull had struck again, leaving me to shop in limbo. Autumn’s influence was evident in each rack of clothes. The clothes had a freeing bohemian vibe to them, light and airy compared to the southern clunk of Belle Dame. This was Autumn’s outlet, her way of escaping the confines of the tiny town. In my opinion, she didn’t belong here, but at the same time, I couldn’t picture her anywhere else.
“Bee!”
Autumn emerged from the storeroom. Today, she wore a floor-length summer dress. Her toes, the nails of which were painted bright pink, peeked out from beneath the flowery fabric. Her baby bump, again, was hardly noticeable. I was starting to wonder how many people actually knew that she was “going with the flow.”
She gasped. “What happened to your eye? Bill didn’t do that, did he?”
“No, the eye was an accident. Although my visit with the Millers didn’t go too well either.”
“Oh, crap. Did they try to murder you in your sleep?”
I shook my head. “I’m staying at the motel anyway.”
“The motel?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why? I told you that you could stay with me.”
I looked down at her belly. “It’s fine. I didn’t want to intrude.”
She ushered me farther into the store. “You’re not intruding, and you should at least come for dinner sometime. I want you to meet Christian.”
“Sure, sounds great.”
“So what happened with the Millers?”
I wandered over to a rack of distressed T-shirts, perusing my options. “Exactly what I expected to happen. Bill flipped his shit, and Emily had to do damage control. I’m going back this afternoon. In the meantime, I thought I’d pick up a few things. Are you still harboring the secret desire to give me a makeover?”
Autumn pressed both hands to her heart in an over-exaggerated swoon. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She shooed me aside, so I sat down in one of the kitschy sofas generally reserved for impatient boyfriends, rambunctious kids, or shoppers trying on shoes. Autumn bustled about, pulling jeans, shirts, and other clothing items off of various racks to fit together a few outfits for me.
“So other than the fiasco with the Millers, how’d your first day back go?” she asked.
“It was relatively uneventful,” I told her, kicking off my boots to try on a pair of flats. “I went by the old house, swung past The Pit, got drunk, kissed Emmett, he got into a fist fight, the cops broke it up. That’s what happened to my eye, by the way. I got caught in the crossfire. Anyway, it was a pretty standard night for Belle Dame.”
A linen top dropped to the floor as she turned to look at me. “Don’t tell me you’re causing trouble already.”
“I don’t cause trouble. It just tends to find me.”
“You kissed Emmett?”
“Yeah. Dimples. You know.”
Autumn draped an armful of clothes over the back of the sofa. The metal hangers clacked together as she sat down beside me. “Bridget, I don’t ever want to tell you what to do, but I really don’t think getting involved with Emmett again is a good idea.”
“Who said anything about getting involved? It was just a kiss.”
“Yeah, but I remember what the two of you were like after your pare
nts died,” she went on. “One day, you’re not even interested in the guy, and the next, you’re Bonnie and Clyde. Bee, you were unreachable. You dumped me on my ass for him and left town without saying goodbye. Do you know what that feels like?”
I scooted closer to her and draped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against me, and a tear splattered against my cargo shorts. “I suppose now isn’t the right time to joke about you being hormonal.”
She smacked my arm. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, how the tables have turned.”
“Bee!”
“Okay, okay.” I let her settle into my side. “All I can give you is an apology and an explanation. I’m sorry. Back then, all anyone ever wanted to talk about was my dead parents or my new parents. You trying to help me backfired. I pushed you away.” Autumn sniffled and wiped her cheeks. “Emmett was easy to be around. Getting into trouble with him distracted me from everything else. In all honesty, I used him. He wanted my attention, and I needed his brand of recklessness. It worked for me.”
“He was heartbroken when you left.”
“That was years ago,” I replied. “I’m sure he got over it. And as far as that kiss goes, it was reflex. Automatic. An old habit.”
“I worry about you falling into other old habits.”
I ruffled her wavy hair. “Have you no faith in me?”
“Very little.”
I maneuvered out from under her and rifled through the pile of clothes from the sofa. “Is this a shirt or a dress?”
“It’s a shirt,” Autumn replied. “Hey, have you talked to Ani?”
I stiffened, keeping my gaze on the blouses. “Uh, no. Why?”
“I think you should go see her. It might do the both of you some good.”
I held up a pair of jeans beneath an artfully destroyed T-shirt. “Why rip holes in a perfectly good shirt? Is that some kind of new aesthetic?”
“Bridget.”
I set down the outfit with a sigh. “I was going to go by there eventually. I just don’t know if I can take it.”
“She’s your aunt and the only living relative you have other than Holly.”
“She’s also an empty shell,” I reminded her. “And that assisted living home gives me the creeps. Hey!”
Autumn had snatched the outfits from the sofa, stood up, and dumped the load behind the counter. She dangled a single blouse from her index finger. “If you want the free clothes, you have to promise me that you’ll go see her.”
“What’s there to say?” I asked. “Hey, Aunt Ani, sorry you lost your mind when your sister died? I kind of did too?”
Autumn gave me a hard stare. “The nurses say she’s happier when Holly comes to visit.”
“How can they tell?” I muttered under my breath. Autumn threw the blouse at me. It landed on my head. “Okay, okay! I’ll go. But if she’s expecting Holly, she’s going to be mighty disappointed when she gets me instead.”
“Good. Now go change. I can’t look at those cargo shorts any longer.”
After Autumn was through with me, I was dressed, fed, and a little tipsy after a few Bellinis at her favorite brunch restaurant. She enjoyed them vicariously, ordering different flavors until I reminded her that I wasn’t in Belle Dame for spring break. I spent the rest of the afternoon helping her count inventory for the store. It was dull work, but I needed to blow some time, and I really missed Autumn. It was cathartic to hear her voice again, to see that she was satisfied with the way her life was turning out. Of all the people I’d left behind, I worried about Autumn the most. Ever since her parents’ divorce, her support system was lacking, and I had left her in the lurch. I felt a surge of relief as she spoke about her boyfriend, a few of the girls that she knew in town, and Holly.
At half past two, I excused myself from the store, promised Autumn that I would call her to set up a time and date for dinner, and headed to the Millers. Ryan met me at the driveway gate, balancing a trumpet case across the handlebars of his bike. As he unhooked the padlock, he looked me up and down.
“Did you shower?” he asked.
Autumn’s effect on my appearance hadn’t gone unnoticed. Not only had I traded my cargo shorts and sweat-wicking T-shirt for designer jeans and a linen button-up, but Autumn had arranged my hair in a long fishtail braid and brushed a layer of mascara onto my eyelashes.
“Yeah, this all happened in the shower,” I told the teenager.
“Girls are weird. Here, hold this.” He handed me his trumpet case so that he could devote his entire attention to the finicky padlock.
“I thought you didn’t have band practice today?”
“It’s for class. Go, go, go.”
As soon as the padlock was free, he shooed me up the driveway. He whizzed past, snatched the trumpet from me, and rode the rest of the way like a lopsided camel. When I caught up with him on the front porch, he was pumping an asthma inhaler at his lips.
“You okay?”
“Swell,” he gasped.
I glanced back toward the street. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”
He popped open the trumpet case and fished around a pile of crumpled music, valve oil, and slide grease until he extracted a single house key. “Nope. But you’re here now, right?” He unlocked the front door, but he stopped me before I could follow him inside. “What are you, some kind of savage? Take your shoes off.”
I gave him a look but kicked off the new slip-on sneakers that Autumn had gifted to me and left them next to the doormat. Ryan nodded his approval and let me in. The dog shot out from behind the couch, its booming barks echoing through the house. Ryan caught its snout.
“Shh.” He tapped the dog’s nose without fear. “Shut up, Doobs. You’ll blow our cover.”
“The dog’s name is Doobs?”
“Scooby Dooby Doo.”
“Ah. Of course.”
Without preamble, Ryan thundered up the steps to the second floor, his backpack bouncing heavily against his shoulders. “Are you coming up or what?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I climbed the set of old stairs, skipping the last step at the top. I knew from multiple thwarted sneak-out attempts that it creaked at an incriminating volume. Ryan poked his head into the hallway from the first room.
“This is my room,” he announced.
“No offense, Ryan, but I don’t really care about your room.”
“No offense, but I wasn’t inviting you to see it anyway.”
“Good. Where’s Holly’s?”
“Down the hall,” he replied, pointing. “Last door on the left.”
I looked down the hallway, a lump in my throat. Of course that was Holly’s room. It used to be mine too.
Chapter Seven - Blank Space
It was the smallest bedroom in the house. When I had lived here, Holly and I shared a bunk bed, a closet, and a writing desk. The bunk bed remained, though it had been refurbished to fit the desk beneath it rather than another mattress. Back then, Holly and I had been two of six of the Millers’ foster kids. Getting my own room wasn’t an option. The adjustment took time, and I never settled in. No matter how much I loved Holly, I was used to a certain modicum of privacy that was impossible to emulate at the Millers’. It was like living in a dormitory. All of a sudden, I shared everything. Nothing belonged solely to me, not even myself. The need to escape stemmed from that feeling. It was easier to sneak out and wreak havoc with Emmett than play nice with the Millers’ other foster kids.
From the looks of it, Holly had the room to herself. The other kids must’ve been paired off down the hall. It struck me how little I knew about Holly these days. I expected her room to be rife with sports paraphernalia, for the walls to be covered in the red, black, and yellow of Belle Dame’s school colors. Instead, there were books everywhere. The walls were lined with shelves, her novels stacked two or three volumes deep. She’d started her collection young, with the full Nancy Drew collection, and continued on with literary classics. Jane Austen preva
iled, as did Dorothy Parker. Her numerous trophies spotted the room, shoved like an afterthought into whatever nook or crevice they fit within. That year’s fastpitch team photo, however, proudly posed on the desk, free of dust. Behind that, Holly’s favorite pictures of her and her friends were pinned to a cork board. It was so loaded and layered that the cork was no longer visible. I tentatively lifted the edges of each picture for a glimpse of the ones beneath.
There she was, in all her glory, smiling from ear to ear in every photo. I wondered which one Bill and Emily had given to the police for reference. Hopefully, she had copies of it. I moved aside another picture of Holly and a girl from her softball team and let out a little gasp at the one beneath. It was taken the day before my sixteenth birthday, all those years ago. All four of us—Mom, Dad, Holly, and me—were in the frame. We sat on the front porch of the old house, enjoying the sunset. Dad had one arm around Mom, the other around me. Holly sat in my lap. None of us were looking at the camera. We were all mid-smile, as if sharing an inside joke. The fading light cast a pinkish light across our tanned, freckled faces.
I pulled the pushpin out of the cork board to free the photo from the rest. That day was the last full day of my childhood. Everything after that was shock, a rushed introduction to adult responsibilities, and a quick dismissal of said responsibilities. I pocketed the picture. I couldn’t look at it for more than a few moments, but I also couldn’t leave it unprotected at the Millers’ orphanage. It was a piece of history, a reminder that things weren’t always as unpredictable as they were now.
I combed through the rest of Holly’s desk. The drawers were full of past assignments, letters from universities that were interested in recruiting her for their athletics programs, and several notebook pages cramped with Holly’s neat but tiny handwriting. I squinted to decipher the lines. It appeared to be a series of short stories, proving that once again that I knew nothing but the surface stuff about my little sister. She’d never told me that she wrote creatively. I put the pages back where I found them. If she’d wanted to share them with me, she would have done so on her own.
Little Girl Lost: Book 0 Page 6