Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Where is she now?”

  “On the run in a stolen car, with another couple of DOAs to her name.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Last name is Skaggs. First is . . .” He consults his notes. “Enid. But everyone called her Red.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Funny thing about wine.

  Amelia’s initial impression: bad.

  Then: good.

  Now, after they’ve polished off the last of the jug . . .

  Bad. Really bad. Blech.

  “Are you okay?” Jessie asks.

  “I’m really . . .” She frowns. Yawns. “I’m a little queasy. Maybe I shouldn’t have had two pieces of cake, but it was so good. Thank you so much for giving me a birthday.”

  “You’re welcome so much. Now you can’t say you never had one.”

  “No. Maybe this is the day I should celebrate it from now on. October . . . What is it?”

  “Twenty-fourth. But not for much longer.” Jessie yawns. “Time for bed. You can choose any bedroom you want. Al and Diane’s, or my sister’s, or even my brother’s, if you don’t mind sharing it with a pet lizard.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Or you can stay in my room. I have a futon.”

  “Me, too!” All this time, she’s been envying Jessie, thinking her life is a lot more perfect than she lets on. That if she had the kind of mother Jessie has—adoptive, or not; legal, or not—she’d never complain.

  But if Jessie sleeps on a futon, too, maybe they really do treat her like Cinderella.

  She opens her mouth to speak, but a hiccup falls out.

  Jessie laughs. Her dimples are so nice. Amelia wishes she had them. Dimples, and Jessie’s life. That would be good.

  “Come on, Mimi. Time to go upstairs. I’ll give you the bed, and I’ll take the futon.”

  “Wait . . . you have both?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In your bedroom? A bed and a futon?”

  “I had a lot of sleepovers when I was younger, and I don’t like sharing my bed, so Diane thought it would be a good idea to get a futon for when my friends were here.”

  A bed, and a futon, and a room, all to herself.

  And a mother.

  Thoughts swim in Amelia’s head against a marsala current and one spills from her lips. “Why are you even looking?”

  “What?”

  “For your mother who left you alone in the cold on a suicide bridge. I don’t get it. Why do you want to find her?”

  “Same reason you want to find yours. Because she’s my real mother.”

  “But you have a mother. Diane raised you, and she gave you—” She flops her hand around. “Everything.”

  “This isn’t everything, Mimi. Believe me. And you had a mother who raised you, too.”

  “She didn’t give me everything. Or anything. Not even close. And she’s gone, so . . .” She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “She didn’t choose to leave you, though. She got sick. You know that, right?”

  “Of course I know that! I was there! You weren’t.”

  “Okay, well, you weren’t here, either. You don’t know how I felt, growing up always knowing—”

  “It’s better than never knowing!”

  “Is it?”

  They stare at each other.

  Jessie scowls and sways toward the stairs. “Let’s go to bed. This is stupid. We’re tired and drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk.”

  “Yeah, you are. Come on.”

  “I’ll sleep here, on the couch.”

  “Fine. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Jessie goes upstairs and closes a door with finality.

  This is stupid. Amelia should leave. Yep, that’s what she’s going to do. She’s going to leave and go . . .

  Where?

  Even if it were a good idea to show up on Silas’s doorstep in the middle of the night in this condition, she’s so dizzy she can barely fumble her way across the room to the couch.

  The doll is in the way. She tosses it toward a wing chair. She misses, and the doll falls onto the rug.

  “Sorry,” Amelia tells her, as she pulls the afghan over her and sinks her head onto the heart-shaped pillow that reads Home Is Where the Heart Is.

  Chatty Cathy is silent, staring up at her with plastic eyes.

  Red was expecting to drive into a sleepy little village, but Ithaca is a college town, alive even at this hour. Driving past a minimarket, she spots a phone booth with the local directory in a black binder attached to the interior wall.

  She makes an impulsive U-turn and belatedly checks for cops. She’s in luck—this time. But the VW must have been reported stolen by now. She parks it outside the store, takes her stuff, and locks the car. She’ll have to figure out another mode of transportation from here.

  She throws away the keys and old newspaper clippings in a garbage can that smells like puke. After a furtive check to make sure no one is watching, she breaks a stick from a shrub and uses it to push the evidence deeper into the foul can than anyone would ever be willing to dig.

  Then she goes to the phone book, opens the directory, and scrolls through the M’s until she finds a name that matches the one in the article.

  McCall, Allen

  The door opens and a trio of young men emerge into the parking lot, laughing loudly and carrying a quarter keg.

  “Excuse me,” Red calls. “Where’s North Cayuga Street?”

  “That way.” Hands full, one of them gestures with his head. “Right up the hill.”

  It looks steep. Red is chilly, and exhausted. This is the homestretch. She’d better take another pill—two, for good measure.

  When this is over, she’ll find someplace to sleep for a while before she drives back to Rhode Island to tell White the good news.

  In silence, Barnes and Stef make the short, dark, wet walk to the Plantation restaurant, with its neon billboard advertising live televised sports, karaoke Tuesdays, and stuffed quahogs. The bar area is full of sports fans, as are all the booths with the best view of the TV, where sportscasters are analyzing the Twins’ win and the outlook for Game Seven tomorrow. There’s no sign of Wayland, nor of the promised local law enforcement.

  Stef isn’t surprised. “They weren’t in any rush. Let’s get something to eat while we wait. My treat. Anything you want.”

  “What is this, a night out on the town? We have to get back.”

  “So . . . what, you want to just forget about Wayland?”

  “Of course I don’t—”

  “Then sorry, kid, but we’re stuck while we’re stuck. If he’s out here, he’s not going anywhere tonight, and it looks like he didn’t kill anyone in Boston or New York, either. Disappearing with your mistress isn’t a crime.”

  “The cufflink—”

  “You said yourself it’s too obvious. This woman, whoever she is, must be framing him. God knows why. But we’re here. We have to wait for the locals. I’m hungry. You’re crabby. Might as well eat.”

  They sit in a back booth, where the sightline to the bar television is partially blocked by a life-sized, moth-eaten scarecrow tied to a pillar. Barnes takes in the other half-assed Halloween decorations, the butt-filled ashtray on the table, and, beside it, salt and pepper shakers that appear to have been licked by a toddler.

  “Hey, fellas. I’m Kim.” The waitress has a broad, freckled face and a friendly smile. “What can I get for you?”

  “Another spot for that scarecrow would be good,” Stef says. “We can’t see the sports highlights.”

  “Sorry, but the boss would kill me. His wife made it.”

  Barnes sees Stef open his mouth and curtails whatever he’s going to say by asking the waitress how the game played out. Not that he cares.

  “Twins were down by three runs going into the bottom of the fifth, but they scored four runs, and then Hrbek hit a grand slam in the bottom of the sixth, and—”

  “Re
ally? Hrbek can’t hit.”

  “That’s what everyone thought. Twins won, 11–5. Now, what do you want to eat?”

  Barnes orders a grilled cheese and fries. This isn’t the kind of place where you ask about the specials, much less the soup of the day. But Stef does, and orders it, even after Kim goes back to the kitchen to see if there’s any left. “It’s either beef vegetable, or lentil. I’m not sure which,” she reports.

  “Either is fine. I’ll have a bowl.”

  “There’s barely enough for a cup. I’ll make it on the house.”

  She disappears, and returns to drop off two fountain sodas and a cup of mushy brown liquid. Stef tastes it with a filmy spoon.

  “Well? Is it beef vegetable, or lentil?”

  “You got me.”

  “Is it edible?”

  “If you’re not the galloping gourmet.”

  Watching Kim head back to the kitchen, Barnes realizes they should have shown her the photos of Wayland and Gypsy Colt. He was too preoccupied with Tino to give it a thought.

  Stef reaches for the salt and pepper shakers and tries to sprinkle his soup. The tops appear to be clogged—with toddler spit, most likely. He knocks them both against the table and liberally douses his soup with some of each before asking, “You doing all right, kid?”

  “Not really.”

  “Sucks to lose a friend.”

  “Yeah.”

  Barnes slides the ashtray closer and reaches into his pocket for his cigarettes. As he pulls them out, something falls to the floor under the table. He starts to bend.

  “It hit my foot. I got it,” Stef says, and reaches down. When he lifts his hand, it’s holding a cigar.

  A Cuban.

  With a pink band that reads It’s a Girl.

  He looks at it, and then at Barnes. “What the hell? Where’d you get this?”

  It would be so easy to lie. Say he found it. A friend gave it to him. Anything but the truth.

  But when Barnes opens his mouth, that’s what falls out.

  Peering in a ground-floor window of the big Victorian house on North Cayuga Street, Red spots someone asleep on the couch. She can’t make out a face, just a lump under an afghan, but it has to be her. It has to be.

  Heart racing, she steals around the side of the house to see if anyone else is in there, awake. Lights are on, but the other rooms appear empty.

  Now she just has to figure out how to get in. There’s a mudroom, with windows on three sides and a back door with a Welcome mat. She tentatively turns the doorknob, certain it’s locked.

  It isn’t. Maybe because there’s nothing in here worth stealing—just a broom, a trash can, and some coats hanging on a hook. The inside door is locked, though.

  She lifts the mat.

  No key.

  But a quick search reveals a key ring hanging on a hook beside the door, half-buried in the folds of a black jacket. Certain none of the keys on it will open the back door, she tries one. No.

  Another. No.

  A third—

  The lock turns.

  Just like at Bernadette’s apartment.

  Red breaks into a grin.

  She opens the door quietly and creeps into a huge kitchen, lit by a light under the stove hood. In its glow, Red spots a gorgeous wicker basket heaped with freshly picked apples, waiting on the counter like a welcome gift.

  She isn’t hungry. She’s far too worked up to eat. Yet she can’t resist. It’s been so long . . . too long . . .

  She snatches a crisp red Cortland and takes an enormous bite.

  It’s good, so good, like the ones she ate every day when she was a kid.

  It brings back memories, though. Some are nice—before they found out Daddy was never coming home, and Mommy threw away the medicine that kept her “fits” at bay, and the hot iron left its indelible mark, and Georgy Girl stopped talking, like Zechariah in the Bible.

  Red had learned about him at Sunday school, and again many years later, in one of White’s so-called bedtime stories at the foster home. Back then, Red was allowed to call her by her real name, Gypsy. She was six years older, and she liked to treat Red like a little sister. Red liked that almost as much as she liked when they were alone in the dark, cuddled in one of the twin beds.

  “I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news,” Gypsy read from the book of Luke one night. “And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

  She looked up at Red. “Do you understand?”

  “I . . . I think so.”

  “And you believe it, right?”

  “With all my heart.”

  Now Gypsy’s prophecies have come true.

  Red finishes the apple and throws the core into the garbage, resisting the urge to take another. You can’t have too much of a certain food without someone thinking there’s something wrong with you.

  If your foster parents decide you’re eating too much of one thing, they’ll tell the social worker who will alert psychiatrists who will put you through all kinds of tests to see if you’re crazy.

  “Why do you eat so many apples?” they’ll ask, and when you shrug and say you just like them, and ask what’s wrong with that, they’ll say nothing’s wrong with liking something, as long as you’re not obsessed.

  “I’m not obsessed! I’m keeping the doctor away!”

  “What?”

  “An apple a day! An apple a day!”

  If you shout at them and bury your head in your lap rocking and sobbing and trying, trying, trying not to remember the doctor, the doctor will barge in anyway—into your head, into the room. He won’t be the same doctor who tormented you while your mother—your insane, abusive mother—sat in the waiting room pretending she believed he was erasing the angry scar on your face. But you will shrink in terror when you see the white coat, because you know what men like him can do to you.

  This doctor will give you a shot and the screams and terror will go away for a while. You won’t return to the foster home, and Gypsy. You’ll be sent to a hospital, the kind where they don’t hurt you with their hands and tools and prods and probes, but with questions that make you remember all the things you want to forget, need to forget . . .

  “An apple a day.” That’s what Mother always said. “An apple a day . . .”

  You do what you have to do to keep the doctor away.

  Red tries to swallow, forcing the apple down into her gut with the white pills and the memories. It threatens to come churning back up. She rushes to the sink. She scoops cold water into her mouth with trembling hands.

  The girl on the couch must be a sound sleeper. Lucky her. She doesn’t have to cower in bed, listening for footsteps, and Mommy.

  Red pauses to steady herself, pressing a jittery hand against the refrigerator.

  There, she sees another sign.

  Like a treasure map X, a red apple-shaped magnet sits on top of Margaret Costello’s portrait, the one in the black drape and pearls. Only this one says PROOF across the front. Her hair isn’t teased high and flipped up at the ends. It’s shorter now, swooped across her forehead, hiding her widow’s peak.

  But that’s her smile for sure. The dimples are unmistakable.

  She’s here. I’ve found her.

  Red slips toward the front of the house, careful not to make a sound.

  In the living room, she moves toward the figure under the afghan. She’s almost there when she spots something lying on the floor in her path and a gasp escapes her.

  It can’t be!

  Georgy Girl.

  “Happy birthday, dear Mimi . . .” Jessie sings, and hands Amelia a gift-wrapped box.

  “I’m not Mimi.”

  “Yes, you are! Open your present! You’re going to love it! It’s the one thing you want. The thing you’ve been looking for!”

  “But it can’t be. The box is so small, and all I’m looking for is—”
<
br />   “Don’t you believe in magic, Mimi?” Silas asks, and poof! There’s Marceline, with the basket. There’s a baby in it, and she looks like Amelia, and she’s wearing a blue dress trimmed in white lace.

  Mimi . . .

  I’m not Mimi!

  I’m not me . . .

  Me.

  I’m looking for me. And there I am!

  She reaches for the baby, but it’s just a doll. Plastic. Fake. If you pull the ring in her back, she says, “I love y—”

  Amelia opens her eyes to see a stranger standing a few feet away.

  She’s holding the doll—and a gun.

  Georgy Girl—here. After all these years.

  Soaked in cold sweat, Red juggles the gun with a trembling hand, needing to hear the words at last. She fumbles for the plastic ring and pulls the cord. Not hard enough. The doll makes an odd little groan.

  “Stop that! Talk! Say ‘I love you’!”

  She yanks the cord.

  “Nice Mommy.”

  “No! She wasn’t! She hurt me! She didn’t love me. You did. Tell me. Tell me!”

  “Nice Mommy.”

  Red hurtles Georgy Girl across the room. She smashes into the wall behind the couch, and the couch . . .

  The girl is sitting up now with her feet on the floor as if she’d been poised to escape.

  She isn’t Margaret’s daughter, or Bernadette’s. Nor can she be Oran’s. There’s nothing pale about her. Nothing white. She’s black.

  Black.

  It’s a sign.

  Red aims the gun, hand shaking violently.

  If you take too much, you’re going to get antsy.

  The girl, too, is trembling.

  “Don’t move,” Red tells her. “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “The baby!”

  Something dawns in her eyes. She knows. She knows exactly what Red is talking about.

  “She isn’t here.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” Red moves toward her, chest aching. Her heart is broken. It broke twenty-two years ago when her father was killed in Vietnam and her mother turned into a scary monster and handed her over to an even more terrifying one.