I frown, tilting my head, thinking about the messages on the wall. The display in the case. Even the crying we heard. All this time and not once have I heard her speak a word. Maybe she can’t.
“Are you able to talk?” I ask.
No response. Wide eyes and more fear. I crouch down, and then half fall to my butt, my head thumping hard in protest. She flinches, and I smile.
“Sorry. I’m still a little wobbly.”
She swallows, and I can see her neck is rail thin and milk pale.
“Can you tell me your name?” I ask.
She rocks, fingers tight on her marker. And then she turns to the wall, but she doesn’t move.
“Can you tell me who you’re looking for?” I try.
She moves her head upright and uncoils one of her arms. She doesn’t meet my eyes, but she lifts her hand and I see a marker in her grip. She’s only half watching when she presses the tip at the wall. It’s like someone else is holding her hand when she writes.
Where is she?
It’s the same writing we saw on the wall. The same black smears left behind by her fingers. I swallow against my rising tears.
“Where is who?” I ask softly.
She begins to rock slowly, finally lifting her marker to the drywall again.
Sister.
I open my mouth to ask questions, but then the pieces fall into place. The woman who died in the library. Was that her sister? How long ago was that? She couldn’t have been alone in the dark all this time.
But a sickening knot in my gut whispers that she has. She has been waiting in the dark, staying hidden like she was told. Night after night, she searched for a sister who would never return. My chest aches.
Why didn’t she come out? Or call for help?
Car doors open and close, and she whimpers in a strange rhythm, her hands twisting back and forth. Twitching. She didn’t come out or call for help because she can’t. She can’t speak. The beautiful writing. The book display. That was her only way.
“It’s okay,” I say softly. “They’re loud, but they’re here to help. They won’t hurt you. You aren’t going to be alone anymore.”
She slaps her hand at the wall, gray-black smudges left around the word she’s emphasizing.
Sister.
She bangs it again and again, and I close my eyes. I want to tell her that’s okay, too, but I can’t, because her sister is gone. She rocks faster and faster, but I can’t think of a single thing to offer her. The truth is terrible, and a lie would be worse, so I stay silent. I pray for help to come faster because I’m powerless against this kind of pain.
Spencer
Wednesday, November 22, 2:48 p.m.
It feels like the police take forty-five minutes to get here. In reality, it’s four and a half minutes. Funny how time works when the world turns inside out. Sometimes it goes so fast, you’re afraid to blink. Other times, the seconds tick by like hours.
Mallory stops them at the door, both hands raised. “Please don’t scare her. I think she’s… I don’t think she can talk. She’s very upset.”
“Do you know this girl?”
Mallory shakes her head, then winces. “I think she’s been in here for a while. I think she came here with her sister.”
“Cooper,” the female officer says. The male officer checks Mallory’s head and calls for additional paramedics.
Officers hover outside the door, but only Cooper and his partner go in. They are patient. Gentle. They ask the girl to sit down and other officers lead Mallory and I down the hall. Maybe so we can keep things calm.
“Where is the girl’s sister now?”
My chest goes tight. “I think you were here for her almost two weeks ago.”
“She’s the woman we found in the stacks,” Mallory says softly.
Their faces cycle through awful emotions as they piece the story together. Yes, this little girl has been hiding in this library. Yes, her sister died of a heroin overdose, and she’s been waiting for her. And yes, there are reasons she didn’t come out like most girls would. She needed help desperately, but she’s clearly not capable of asking for it. Her messages were all she had.
I follow them to the top of the stairs, where several more officers and paramedics are waiting. In contrast to the quiet in the boardroom, there is a flurry of activity here. Flashlights blare and radios chirp.
The paramedics arrive, surrounding me with supplies and plenty of questions. They take my information and start an IV for Mallory, and I do not float away in a bubble. Here with the chaos and the fear and the smell of blood and ash around me, I feel the edges of something important forming. A purpose.
The world didn’t leave me dehydrated and mute in a chimney. And it didn’t leave me homeless with a shit stepdad and a mom who chose to let me go. If I walk out of this room, I’ll be in my cozy Fairview bed in ten minutes. I could pretend this was nothing more than a bad dream because for me it doesn’t have to be anything else.
But it is everything else. And it is changing me.
All of the shitty worries I had feel like fog under a hot sun. Just wisps of something that used to slow me down. A hand that doesn’t have the power to strangle me anymore.
I look at Mallory, my heart swelling. I slide down the wall next to her while the paramedics ask her to count fingers and tell them dates and times. A paramedic slips into the boardroom. He comes out for more supplies, holding a blue backpack.
“Is this yours?” he asks.
“It’s mine,” Mallory says.
The paramedics are looking at Mallory’s head, using gauze and cleaners to assess the situation. One sits back, shaking her head. “I think we need to get you in for some scans. We’ll need to contact a parent or guardian. Who should we call?”
“My mom. I’ll call,” Mallory says, digging through her bag for her phone. “I charged it. Sorry. It takes a minute to power on.”
“We’ve got time. Kya has to walk all the way down for the stretcher. I’m Gail, by the way. You said your name is Melanie?”
“Mallory,” she says, but she looks at her phone and frowns. “I’m having trouble with this. My eyes aren’t quite working.”
“That’s why we need to get you checked out,” Gail says. “I can call if you like.”
“I don’t know why I don’t remember her number. Spencer,” Mallory says, handing me her phone. “Can you read it? It’s on speed dial.”
I take the phone and cringe at the message on the home screen. That can’t be right. She can’t have missed that many calls.
I look over at her. “It says you missed thirty-two calls. And you have fourteen text messages.”
“What? Who? No one calls me.” She tenses visibly.
I open the screen and see the list.
26 missed calls—Mom
5 missed calls—Lana
1 missed call—Charlie Wrightson
“Mostly your mom. A few from Lana.” And then I decide to tell her the rest of it because she’ll find out anyway. “One from Charlie.”
She flinches and asks me to dial her mother’s number for her. When it goes straight to voice mail, she presses the button to try again. The second time, worry flits over her features. I read her the text messages, which are nothing but a bunch of variations of “call me” from her mom. Except for one.
I don’t want to tell her about that one, but I do. “There’s one more message from your friend Lana.”
“Tell me.”
“It says you have to call her right away. Your mom had the baby.”
Mallory
Wednesday, November 22, 6:02 p.m.
After the scan confirms a concussion, they wheel me to a room to wait for an on-call neurologist and a treatment plan. The swelling is mostly minimal, whatever that means. And they aren’t inducing a coma or anything crazy, so it mu
st not be too bad.
I don’t know much about my mom or the baby. At first, I knew nothing, but when I started having a full-scale meltdown on the way to the ambulance, Gail took pity on me. Once we were on the road, she called the hospital where Mom had the baby and talked to a nurse she knows.
She told me as she dialed that she absolutely couldn’t tell me anything and that doing so would be a violation of some privacy law. But then as the ambulance bumped and jostled through the library’s parking lot, she held a loud, slow conversation that filled in the critical pieces.
So she delivered the baby without any incident?
Wonderful! A girl?
Okay, so she’s in NICU, but doing all right?
Well, they’re sending us to Mercy East with her daughter. They’ll need consent of course.
I think Gail threw that last bit in hoping it would get my mom released for a visit. No such luck. She had an emergency cesarean and is still recovering. It was a mess at first, my hospital calling Mom’s hospital. They needed consent to treat me. I thought that flurry of calls might result in me talking to her at least, but it didn’t. The staff here won’t even discuss letting me have a phone until the scans are done, though I have no idea why. I also don’t know what happened to my backpack.
The doctors want me to rest. They assure me everything is fine and my mom knows I’m safe. I guess that’s all they feel I need to know. So, I’m alone in this hospital room, miles away from my mom and the baby. My sister.
I close my eyes and the threat of tears heats my eyes. I am clean and dry and medicated with all kinds of painkillers. But the terrible screaming pain in my head isn’t gone. It’s moved, migrated south to the center of my chest.
I am a sister now.
It should feel better than this.
I hear a knock on the door. I’m expecting Ruth because I asked the hospital to call her when I found out Mom couldn’t be released. Still, expectation or not, some part of me is hoping that it’s Spencer’s dark head peeking around my bedside curtain.
It’s not Ruth, and it’s definitely not Spencer. It’s his mother. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her hair is limp.
“Mrs. Keller?”
“May I come in?”
I nod, completely confused by her presence.
“I admit I had to lie and say we are old family friends,” she says softly, approaching my bed. She places my bag gently on the chair and offers my cell phone. “Spencer wanted to come. He’s still at the library answering questions.”
I didn’t even tell him goodbye. Things got hazy after the message from Lana. My blood pressure went up. There was an oxygen mask. An IV. I got dizzy enough that I forgot about my phone. Where I was. Really, everything.
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“He’s fine. Concerned about you.”
“What about the girl? Did you see her?”
“They got her calmed down and brought her here too, I believe. Her name is Lily,” she says softly.
I sit up straighter, surprised. “She spoke?”
“No. I believe she’s nonverbal. She wrote her name down, but the police already suspected. There’s an endangered missing child report for a girl of her description and age. Lily receives art and music therapy through a government program, but she’s missed the last several weeks.”
Art therapy. I think of the book display.
“Can’t they find her parents?” I ask.
“The parents abandoned the apartment. Drugs were involved, I believe. Her sister took her to her appointments.”
Tears burn at my eyes again. I swallow hard. “And no one was looking for her? They were looking for Lily, but her sister died. Doesn’t anyone care about…”
“Keira. Her name was Keira, and she had just turned twenty,” Mrs. Keller says. Her voice catches on the last half of the word, and her eyes mist over. I bet Allison is twenty, so that can’t feel good. “She wasn’t a minor. She didn’t receive services. No one knew to look for her.”
Mrs. Keller doesn’t say anything more, and I don’t ask. The truth in the silence is awful enough. Keira wasn’t chased or called or written up on a milk carton. She disappeared, and the world rolled on.
“The chief is a friend, so I know a bit, but all of this is confidential, of course.” Mrs. Keller clears her throat before speaking again. “The working theory is that Keira tried to leave with Lily to get her away from their parents and the drugs.”
“But Keira died from an overdose.”
“Breaking addiction is hard. I think she tried. I think she certainly wanted better for her little sister.”
“But she failed,” I say, swallowing. “I can’t believe he told you all that.”
“Oh, officially he was quite discreet,” she says, adding in a whisper, “but the police chief lives on our street. Since my son was involved, I was…insistent.”
“What do you think will happen to Lily?”
“Foster care. Good services. Probably a real shot at a good life.”
“Does anything good happen in that system?” I ask.
“Yes.” Her shoulders go back and her face cracks open. There is no more polished smile and studied poise. There is only love. “Spencer happened.”
I bite my lip, ashamed I didn’t think of it. I suppress the thought that Lily’s story might not turn out so well.
Maybe Mrs. Keller believes all surrendered children wind up in a world like Spencer’s. And maybe I’m too jaded, believing happily ever after is only for fairy tales. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
“I should go and let you rest.” Mrs. Keller smiles and shoulders her purse. “If you don’t have plans, you’re welcome to join us for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. We eat at four, but you can come any time.”
It’s a sweet and surprising offer after our first run-in, and my shock must be written all over my face. She lets out a slow breath at the door and turns back.
“I was harsh the night we met. I didn’t know—” She cuts herself off with a sigh. “Well, I suppose I didn’t know a lot of things, including how much my son cares about you.”
“Is he in a lot of trouble?”
“For doing everything in his power to help a girl he cares about and rescuing a troubled child in a terrible situation along the way?” We share a warm smile before she shakes her head. “No. He’s not in trouble.”
“Good.” She’s at the door when I call out to her. “Mrs. Keller? Thanks for the invitation tomorrow, but I don’t think I can make it. I’m hoping I’ll be meeting my little sister.”
• • •
Twenty minutes after Mrs. Keller leaves, Ruth arrives. She sits in the plastic chair, and we exchange all the little pleasantries about feeling well and getting rest. And then she takes my hand and just like that, I start to cry.
“I’m glad you called. I admit was surprised,” she says.
“I know. I know this isn’t your specialty or area or whatever.”
“It’s all right. Better to reach out to someone than no one at all.”
I blow my nose on a scratchy hospital tissue and pull myself together. I don’t want to say any of this while I’m blubbering away, so I don’t. When I’m calm, I clear my throat.
“I’m afraid of this because I know I might lose my mother and my baby sister forever. I’m afraid of a lot of things, honestly, but I know now I need help.”
Ruth nods. “Fear makes sense. Even help itself is scary. It changes things. Forces us to make hard choices. It opens our eyes to the truth.”
I roll to face her in my scratchy hospital gown and think on that. After so much wishful thinking, a life with choices and changes terrifies me. But what kind of life could I have without those things?
One where I never move forward.
I close my eyes, thinking of my mother and the baby. My litt
le sister. It hurts to think that she might grow up without the mom I knew before. The mom who folded laundry and hummed in the kitchen. The mom who would have chosen me over everything.
Mothers are like the rest of us, I guess. Our choices change us.
“I should tell you that I looked into Billie Reeves,” Ruth says. “She died in an automobile accident. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. It was not ruled suspicious. I shouldn’t tell you more, but I want you to know there were no reports on file for your stepfather.”
So that’s that. All that hard work, all that suspicion. It could really turn out to be nothing.
“Did you know that only thirty-four percent of domestic abuse victims receive medical treatment?” she says. It seems out of the blue until she holds my gaze, willing me to make a connection.
“It isn’t always reported,” I say softly.
“No,” Ruth says. “It’d be more accurate to say it isn’t usually reported. Calling us was a big step. A sign of strength.”
And now it’s time for my next step. Time to stop living on blind hope for someone else’s epiphany. The only rescue mission I should plan for is the one that sets me free.
“Ruth? Can you still call your friend at Mulberry Manor? You talked about early emancipation and a place to stay where I can be safe. I think I want those things.”
“I’ll get in touch with them now,” she says. “Do you have any questions before I call?”
A million, I’m sure, but they can all wait. I lie back, woozy from the painkillers and exhausted from all that’s happened. I don’t know where we go from here, but I’m not afraid.
Spencer
Thursday, November 23, 4:32 p.m.
“Library or social work?” Dad asks, putting down the bowl of stuffing with a thump.
“Public service. I’m pretty sure about that, but I want to leave my options open.” I turn to Allison. “Can you please pass the sweet potatoes?”
Allison bites back a smile and hands me the dish. Most of the table is staring like I’ve announced plans to lop off a couple of my fingers with the turkey knife. Dad stays strangely quiet, and Mom starts in with nervous laughter.
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