The Beautiful Lost

by Luanne Rice

  “Just like we’re dogs,” her little brother said.

  “Well, you’re not, and the ice cream isn’t for him,” Billy said. “It’s for you.”

  “Thanks, man,” the tattooed kid said.

  “No problem,” Billy said. “What happened to your eye?”

  “A fight at school,” he said. “I guess you’d say I’m a problem.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Billy said.

  “It looks like you’re doing okay.”

  “Trying,” Billy said.

  “Yeah,” the boy said.

  They shook hands. The ice cream tubs were emptying quickly, and Old Whistler hadn’t even looked out the window by the time Billy and I drove away. Our hands were sticky. I couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Well, we may have to get jobs to pay for the rest of the trip,” Billy said. “We’re not totally broke yet, but that put a huge dent into what we have left.”

  “It was worth it.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. I mean, you must wish someone had done something like that for you at Stansfield.”

  Billy thought for a second then nodded. “Yeah. They take ‘care’ of us, but it stops there. No one treats us as if we’re special, as if we stand out or really matter in the long run. We’re just a bunch of kids on state aid.”

  “You’re more than that,” I said.

  We stopped at a red light.

  “I feel that right now,” Billy said. He turned to me, touching my cheek. “For the first time in … a while.”

  My skin tingled because I wondered if he was about to kiss me. I thought of the night before. My eyelids fluttered closed, waiting and hoping that he’d do it again, for real this time.

  “We’ll have to work if we want more ice cream,” he said, breaking the spell. The light changed and he drove on.

  “Or lobster rolls,” I said, hiding the fact that I was disappointed the moment had passed.

  “We’re going to have to find another place to sleep tonight.” He shot me a smiling glance. “And last night will be hard to beat.”

  I told Billy about my dad’s email and what Helen had told him. Billy was silent about that. But now that we knew my dad was onto us, at least suspecting we were heading toward my mother, we had to be even more careful. The fastest way to get to her would be to jump on the highway and zoom north.

  Instead, we stuck with Plan A and found the rugged back-way logging trail Darrah had told us about—the one that led to her family’s abandoned inn—that would eventually take us to the Saint Lawrence River.

  The trail was much rougher than the fire road, barely wide enough for the truck, and led through the most remote and mosquito-ridden area I’d ever been in. According to the atlas, there wouldn’t be any stores or lobster rolls or Tim Hortons. Not even a gas station. There were a few fishing and hunting lodges, and a couple of campgrounds, and that was all.

  We bumped along, over ruts so deep Billy had to hold the wheel with both hands and wrangle the truck to keep us from tilting into a ditch. We slapped at mosquitoes that had made their way into the car. We went through a deep mudhole, and it took the four-wheel drive to get us out. Clouds scudded through the sky, making the air feel heavy, as if it wanted to thunderstorm. The late afternoon turned muggy, and even though we were up in Canada, it felt as hot and still as midsummer.

  Rolling down the windows brought a welcome breeze but also a major flock of buzzing insects: the mosquitoes were joined by green flies and gigantic winged creatures that seemed more mythical than real.

  Aside from the insects, here are a few other things we saw:

  - Ten, yes, TEN moose, including a mother and calf

  - Too many bald eagles to count

  - Two men fishing in a boat on a wide lake

  - A woman fly-fishing at a narrow stream

  - Darkening clouds and spitting raindrops

  - A red fox

  - A boy and a girl hiking with enormous backpacks

  “Should we give them a ride?” I asked as we drove past and we all waved at each other.

  “Um, serial killers,” Billy said.

  “Of course. All serial killers have Merlin stickers on their backpacks.”

  “They did?”

  “Well, she did,” I said.

  Billy kept driving, and I have to admit, it was just as well: I didn’t really want to share the ride with anyone but him. I realized I was waiting for him to take a hand off the wheel and put his arm around me. I wanted him to pull over so we could take a break from driving, and my mind was going crazy remembering the almost kiss and imagining what might happen on this dark, romantic back road on our way to an old abandoned inn.

  “Okay, we’ll pick them up if you want to,” Billy suddenly said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m trying to learn from you and, um, trust a little more,” he said.

  I had to smile at that. We pulled over on the side of the road and waited for them to jog over.

  “Hey,” the boy said, adjusting his backpack. “Thanks for stopping.”

  “Want a ride?” Billy asked. “Escape the mosquitoes?”

  “More like stinging helicopters,” the girl said, slapping her wrist.

  “Well, you have a choice,” Billy said. “Sit in the back, where they’ll get you anyway, or crowd inside with us. No air-conditioning, though, so they’re coming in the open windows.”

  “Inside,” the girl said, meeting my eyes. “If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t,” I said, a less-than-half-truth. She was tall and beautiful with long blond hair—that unfortunately reminded me of Helen—and bug bites all over her neck and arms. The boy was just as tall, and handsome, with dark brown skin; his curly hair poked out from beneath a red cap. They dropped their packs into the truck bed and climbed in. We were squeezed so tightly together, I was practically sitting on Billy’s lap.

  We introduced ourselves. The boy’s name was Richard Faguais and the girl was Morgane Beaudoin. They were students at a private school in Fredericton, doing their senior science project on gray tree frogs in western New Brunswick.

  “How about you guys?” Morgane asked. “What brings you from the States to our boonies?”

  “We’re doing a sophomore project on road trips,” Billy said. I glanced at him, surprised at how quickly he lied.

  “Seriously?” Morgane asked. “So cool!”

  “He’s kidding,” I said. “Sort of. We’re from Connecticut, heading up to the Saint Lawrence River. To, um, see whales.”

  “That’s awesome,” Richard said.

  “There’s massive feeding action right now,” Morgane said. “My family vacations there, and we’ve seen it. Whales are so freaking intuitive and clairvoyant, and they love the Saint Lawrence—a few bodies of water merge up there, and it gets all churned up, and you get this incredible gathering of whales to feed, especially in June—before summer—and September, immediately after. They sing to each other; they’re the selkies of the marine mammal world.” She shivered and smiled, as if getting a creepy thrill from it.

  Whales? Freaking intuitive and clairvoyant? Selkies of the marine mammal world?

  She was too cool for words, sleek and confident, and she made me feel insecure. Girls like her always did.

  “Where are you heading?” Billy asked them. “We don’t want to take you too far if you’ll be missing great frogs.”

  “Well, we just left Langley’s Pond, and we’re heading to the Granville Reserve, right here,” Richard said, showing me the map on his phone. He pointed at the next destination, at least twenty-five miles north. “We thought we’d have to camp along the way, but we might make it driving with you. Seriously, thanks.”

  “Seriously,” Morgane echoed. “To tell you the truth, we are on a discouraging quest. It’s sad. The gray tree frog is uncommon in New Brunswick. For a long time it seemed they only existed in a certain marsh near Fredericton. But that is being developed, and they a
re on the way to disappearing there.”

  I glanced over at her, softening toward her slightly. She was mourning something gone, or on the way out. I understood that. The sun glowed orange, inching down into dusk.

  Billy reached for the radio and spun the dial, but catching a station out here was a dream that would never come true. Morgane pulled out her iPhone and set it on the dashboard. She put on a playlist, and we listened to Mumford & Sons and didn’t talk for a while.

  We stayed on the dirt road, and we alternated between keeping the windows open and getting chewed alive by mosquitoes and closing them and wilting in the sauna of our sweat. In the distance, thunder rumbled and every so often the sky lit up with a quick, bright flash of heat lightning.

  Although we hadn’t yet come to the Granville Reserve, everything looked like a nature sanctuary to me: pine groves, oak groves, bogs, marshes, and the uneven, dusty road heading due north. I reached into my bag and pulled out the green book from Mystic. We were actually in Canada, getting closer to my mother. Holding the book made everything feel even more real. I wanted to turn on the overhead light and dive in, but I felt it would have seemed rude to read in front of these strangers.

  The sun had gone below the tree line. It was almost evening, the light fading. Darrah had said we should get to the cabin before dark. Night creatures started calling: whip-poor-wills, owls, and …

  “Hear them?” Morgane asked.

  “Tree frogs?” I asked.

  “Yep, our guys or their close cousins. They have such a spiritual sound, don’t they? We should probably get out here.”

  “No, it’s too dark,” I said, worried to leave them even though I wasn’t crazy about her and she’d said whales were clairvoyant and frogs were spiritual.

  “They’re nocturnal—this is the best time. Besides, we have our tents,” Richard said. He had an accent I couldn’t quite place, but it was beautiful, melodic, and I wanted to hear him talk more.

  “Are you French?” I asked him. I was suddenly eager to practice my French; it was one of the few things I realized I missed about school.

  “I was born in Haiti,” Richard said. “But I was adopted and came to this country when I was ten.”

  “That must have been a big change,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Quebec City, where my parents live, is very cold compared to Port-au-Prince. It’s not much warmer here, at least in winter.”

  “You don’t live with your parents?” Billy asked.

  “I go home on vacations and some weekends,” Richard said. “But I’m at boarding school, the same as Morgane. École Sainte-Anne is very good, and it’s helped with getting into a good college.”

  “Are you from far away, too?” Billy asked Morgane.

  “No, I’ve always lived in this province. New Brunswick is my family’s home, so I get to see my family much more often than Richard and our other classmates do.”

  I half listened to her but found myself wondering what had happened to Richard at age ten that he had to leave Haiti and come to Canada. As we kept driving along, the sound of the tree frogs got louder, and Morgane and Richard leaned out the window to hear them better.

  “Hey,” Billy said to me, a couple of miles later. “Check that out.”

  “What?”

  “Birches!” he said, pointing at a grove of trees with thin white trunks.

  He pulled Darrah’s note from his jeans pocket and handed it to me. It was too dark to see in natural light, so he turned on the overhead cab light. I read:

  North on ENDLESS dirt road past beaver pond, eagles in dead oak tree, then look for granite pump house and lots of white birch trees. Take a right straight through the birches and brambles. Go half mile to the most gorgeous lake you have ever seen and find haunted house. Well, I mean family inn. The sign says Aurora Inn. Key is under stone flowerpot. How imaginative, right? Sleep in turret room but be careful of rotted-out floor. You will thank me later!

  Peering into the birches, I spotted the pump house and sign.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  “Hey, if you want to get out here, it’s fine,” Billy said, leaning around me to talk to Morgane and Richard. “But someone told us about an old family place, an inn on a lake. It’s down that road. We’ll probably cook some food and spend the night. Come if you want.”

  “Sure, as long as there are frogs,” Morgane said.

  “They’re really loud,” Richard said, his head out the window. “A good sign they are here, nearby.”

  The road narrowed, then practically disappeared into the overgrown brush. We felt branches swishing and smashing against the truck doors, and they nearly obscured the way ahead. The thicket enclosed us, but then the road widened slightly and we entered a clearing. At the far end was a tall, dark, imposing, and ramshackle Victorian house. Behind it, a lake shimmered in twilight and the chorus of tree frogs seemed louder than ever.

  “The Aurora Inn,” Richard said, reading the faded sign.

  “I’ve heard of this place,” Morgane said, gazing up at the ornate gingerbread work around the wide front porch. “I’m pretty sure my great-aunt used to come here.”

  We piled out of the truck, and Billy grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. The wind direction had changed, and not one mosquito struck between the truck and the time we’d walked to the front porch. The steps creaked. I tried to be surreptitious as Billy, Richard, and Morgane stood in the side yard—actually a field of tall grass leading to the vast lake, surrounded by pine and birch trees—and fumbled under the stone flowerpot on the top step to find the brass key.

  I stuck it in the old, rusty lock and opened the door. Last light slanted through tall windows, and Billy turned on his flashlight. The interior screamed fishing lodge. The dead-fish trophies were the first clue. There were deceased trout all over the walls. Rainbow trout, brown trout, speckled trout, and brook trout, all stuck on wooden boards with names of the fishermen and the day of the catch engraved on brass plates.

  Cobwebs stretched from the ceiling beams to the white-sheet-covered furniture. I had a quick memory of Billy’s grandparents’ cottage, as humble as this was grand, but the chairs similarly protected. A single couch by the fireplace had been uncovered. I wondered if Darrah and Cleo had sat there when this had been their hideaway. On the table beside the couch was a matchbox and a tall candle in a tarnished brass holder. I lit the candle and carried it around the room to light others on the mantel, sideboard, and top of the bookcase.

  Richard and Morgane were exploring outside so Billy carried in a couple of our bags, including the cans from his grandparents’ cottage. I knew I should help, but I was slightly frozen. Something deep inside was giving me twinges. It couldn’t be going off the medication—I’d only missed a day’s worth so far. I sat on the uncovered sofa and had the weirdest feeling.

  What was I doing here, in this spooky inn? A swoon of doubt and depression came over me. I wanted to grab Billy and tell him we should leave. Suddenly the trip was closing in on me. I wanted to get to my mother.

  Before I could move, Richard came in carrying some dry logs and a bundle of kindling.

  “There’s a wood stack out back,” he said as he placed the logs by the wide stone hearth. “It’s odd. This inn looks perfect inside, and they had all those logs ready for fires, and what happened? Everyone just left.”

  “My friend said people found other places to go,” I said.

  “Like Haiti,” Richard said with a smile.

  We piled twigs in the fireplace and built a pyramid of three logs on top. I jiggled the iron handle to check the damper. Richard knelt on the hearth and peered up into the chimney to make sure the flue was open. He found a jar of dry matches on the mantel and lit the kindling. The fire began to crackle.

  “You’re good at building a fire,” I said.

  “It was one of the first things I learned when I came to Canada,” he said. “My parents had a woodstove, and I liked to sit by it. Anything to get warm.�
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  He crouched by the fire, stirring the logs with an iron poker, and I watched and listened to him. He moved with quiet grace, economy of movement. I loved the way his voice lilted.

  I leaned forward, to feel the heat of the flames, just as Billy walked in from the kitchen. He frowned, and I realized it looked as if I had moved closer to Richard. The idea that he might be slightly jealous zinged through me.

  Then Morgane came through the door with a flourish.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Definitely.”

  “Definitely what?” I asked.

  She began to pace the room, head turning from side to side as if searching for something she’d lost. Tall and thin, she was built almost like a boy, but that long blond hair flowed like gold, swishing all around. Her dark brown eyes held steady and serious. She wore a white T-shirt that hugged her incredibly thin body but stopped just above her bug-bitten hip bones, jutting out over slouchy jeans. I knew I could never feel as cool, dress as cool, or be as cool as her.

  “She’s here,” Morgane said.

  “Who?” Billy asked.

  “Morgane sees spirits,” Richard said. “The dead, who haven’t been released from this world.”

  I gave him a look of pure skepticism, but at the same time I felt a chill in my chest. What spirits, what dead? It had to be a joke, or a game. I shook off the sensation and carried one of the candles to light my way into the kitchen.

  The counters were polished wood, the stove the biggest I’d ever seen, and there must have been a hundred cupboards. I eventually found pans, plates, and utensils, and wiped the dust from them. Billy came in and opened a can of vegetable beef soup, dumped the contents into a copper pot, and stirred.

  “What were you and Richard talking about?” he asked.

  I gave him a quick glance. He was jealous! “Just the fire,” I said.

  “That’s a fascinating subject,” he said dryly.

  I couldn’t hold back a smile.

  I set out plates on the round oak table by the fire, folding cloth napkins, loving the idea that Darrah and Cleo had eaten here. The fire crackled as a log exploded. Sparks shot into the chimney like fireworks, drifted down, and fizzled out. The four of us sat down and devoured the entire pot of soup, a can of brown bread, and a box of cranberry-nut bars.