The Lost Girls

by Heather Young

  He didn’t try to stop her. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, from the shadows that filled the cab.

  As he drove away Justine’s claustrophobia melted into the wide, empty night, and she berated herself. She hadn’t ended it; he still thought he had a chance. Now she’d have to see him again to do it right. She walked to the house, trying to calm down. It was okay. Christmas was still four days away; she had plenty of time. And if she couldn’t do it, or if he wouldn’t take no for an answer, they were leaving anyway, and she wouldn’t let herself feel guilty about disappearing on him again. Leaving no trace this time.

  Maurie was waiting in the entryway, and Justine braced for her inquisition about what had happened in the truck. But Maurie didn’t ask. Instead she crossed her arms and said, “That man came out here to find you.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he know you were here? Did you call him?”

  “No. He came looking for us.”

  Maurie digested this. “Why did you leave him?”

  Justine took off her coat. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sure you had your reasons. I’m just wondering, what special brand of crazy is he?”

  Justine thought about the men who’d sat at the breakfast table in apartment after apartment when she was young. They’d been nothing but man-shaped cutouts to her smaller self, changing from short to tall, loud to quiet, Firefighter Paul to Songwriter Steven to Crazy Jerry. “Have you ever had someone who loved you too much?”

  Maurie gave a bitter laugh. “No one I’ve left has ever come looking for me, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That is what I mean. At least I think so.”

  “You think if someone cares enough about you to check your phone records, figure out where you are, and drive halfway across the country to get you back, then he loves you too much?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Let me tell you something. If even one of my men had done that for me, I’d still be with him.”

  Justine stared at her. All her talk about shaking the dust off her feet, and now this? Maurie’s index finger tapped a rapid staccato on her arm. She needed a cigarette, or a drink. Probably both. Justine made herself smile. “Even Crazy Jerry?”

  “Okay, not Crazy Jerry.” Maurie’s own smile faded, leaving her looking tired. “But just about anybody else.”

  Lucy

  I sat in the dark under the lodge with my arms wrapped around my knees. Despite the afternoon heat, I was shivering. Lilith’s face as Abe hunched over her hung before my eyes. The cry she’d made echoed in my ears.

  Father would be here by suppertime. Would he know, from looking at her? Was it written on her skin somehow? I didn’t know how I could look at her again, or talk to her, or share a bedroom with her. Everything was different now. I rested my face on my knees and sobbed into the filthy dress I’d worn for Matthew’s birthday party, which seemed so long ago it felt as if it had happened to someone else.

  I cried for a long time, and when I stopped I was tired straight down through my bones. The sweat on my arms had dried to a fine salt. My eyelashes felt cool and wet. To my left, the kittens rustled, undisturbed by my blundering entrance or my tears. In their nest were bits of cloth, some yarn, and a dish that had held milk. Beyond them I could see the lakeshore. It was crowded; everyone was getting the most out of summer’s last day. Mother was playing cards with Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Jones at a picnic table. Emily, in a blue swimming suit, sat on the beach alone. From my cave the scene was flat and bright, as though I were watching a movie in a dark theater.

  After a few minutes Emily stood, went to Mother, and asked a question. Mother nodded, and Emily walked toward the lodge. She could have been coming to get a pop or an ice cream, but I knew she was coming to play with the kittens. She’d told Mother about them, giving up the one secret she had in exchange for a bit of freedom. I thought about leaving before she got there, but I couldn’t face the sunshine, so I sat with my chin on my arms and waited.

  When she crawled under the lodge, she checked each of the kittens, stroking their heads, then picked up the sleeping Mimsy and sat cross-legged in the dust-covered sand beside me. In the slight bouncing of her knees I could tell she was glad I was there, and I was glad she was there, too. Her innocence soothed me.

  I wiped my tear-streaked face with my hands. “Has the mother gone for good?”

  Emily looked around, but the mother cat was nowhere to be seen. “She still brings them things to eat sometimes.” She gave a worried sigh. “But I found Mimsy outside yesterday, almost in the forest.”

  I didn’t tell her that soon all the kittens would be prowling the forest, where they would be both predators and prey. She must have heard something in my silence, though, because she said, “Who will protect them when we go back home?”

  I looked out at the beach, where Mother played cards with the other women, glancing frequently over at the space beneath the lodge. “Their mother will teach them what they need to know,” I told her. “And the rest will be instincts they were born with. It’ll be enough.”

  Emily touched the calico’s paw, feeling the tiny claws. “Do you think Mother would let me keep one?”

  Mimsy lay on her back. Still asleep, she stretched her paw toward Emily’s chin. Suddenly I wanted her to have that kitten so badly that my throat ached. “I bet she would.”

  We sat for a while. Emily talked to the kittens, calling them by name, scolding the one who would never share, praising the clever one. Her voice was high and young and pure, and as I listened my mind pushed the thing I’d seen in the woods into a corner where it paced but did not approach until Father’s car drove up the road and Mother called for Emily. Then, as we walked to the house, it came slithering back—Lilith in the leaves, Abe on top of her—and my skin felt hot again.

  Emily put her hand in mine. It was cool, and much smaller and softer than Matthew’s. She smiled at me. She was a serious child, but she had dimples when she smiled, and perfect baby teeth.

  Lilith was on the porch reading a magazine. She’d changed into a flowered dress, and her hair was smoothed back in a pink headband. My stomach felt shaky when I saw her. She looked at Emily’s and my hands, joined as hers and mine had been for so long, and though she tried to hide her surprise, I knew her too well. I felt her watching me as I went upstairs with Emily to change for supper. She was wondering if I would tell Father what I had seen. She should have known I would not, no matter whose hand I held.

  Mother had made a pot roast, which was the best thing she cooked. It was tender and full of flavor, the potatoes and carrots dissolving in your mouth. The smell filled the house, and it made me hungry even though I hadn’t thought I could eat. After Emily and I changed we went to the kitchen and sat at the table as Mother pulled the roast from the oven. Her cheeks were rosy from the sun, and she smiled at us. I felt a rare flash of pity for her. In Williamsburg she’d serve supper to three silent children and a husband who never told her how good the pot roast was. In the dark house that her husband’s grandfather had built, behind curtains her mother-in-law had hung forty years before, the sun-glow would fade from her skin in less than a month.

  Supper was quiet even for us. Father ate in his slow way and didn’t give any sign that he saw the stain Lilith bore. Though he must, I thought. Those eyes that saw everything, they had to see it.

  After supper, we gathered in the parlor and waited for Father to read. I hadn’t looked directly at Lilith since I’d come inside the house, and I couldn’t look at her now, knowing that Father’s voice would soon shake the air, lacerating her with righteousness. She sat with her ankles crossed and her hands folded, and I could feel the tension in her. Surely Father could sense it, too.

  But for the first time in my memory, he did not read. He pulled Emily onto his lap as usual, but his eyes were unfocused, rimmed with red, and his face was drawn, with lines at the corner of his mouth I’d never seen before. Mother watched him with w
orry that she tried to hide. My heart beat faster. Lilith didn’t move, and I followed her lead, though my hands and feet ached to fidget.

  Father wrapped his arms around Emily’s waist, drawing her closer. He bent his face to her neck and pressed his lips to her skin beneath her hair, his eyes closed. Emily, startled, squirmed away, and Mother reached for her. But Emily slid from Father’s lap and sat beside me on the davenport. Mother’s lips parted, then closed again. Father just sat, his brilliant eyes dull. Emily shifted closer to me, her arm almost touching mine. I could feel the slight tremble in it.

  Father sighed. He said, “I’m glad you’re all coming home soon.”

  I felt as though I’d swallowed a stone. I hadn’t known until that moment how much hope I’d placed in him. He was the only one who could bring Lilith back, the only one she might listen to, but he wasn’t even going to try. After another minute, Lilith dared to pull a magazine from the rack. She opened it and began to turn the pages. Mother picked up her needle and sampler. I, like Father and Emily, sat unmoving in the deepening light that seeped through the curtains. I listened to the laughter of the children outside, and I found myself wondering what the other families were doing. They were probably on their porches, watching their children run about. They weren’t sitting silently behind curtains that shut out the sun. For the first time I wanted to be out in the warm evening eating a chocolate ice cream from the lodge, like all the other children.

  When Mother and Emily went upstairs, Lilith rose to go to bed, and I followed. I dreaded being alone with her, but I wanted even more to get out of the parlor where this strange version of my father sat without reading or speaking. In our room I changed with my back to her. I climbed into bed, turned my face away, and closed my ears against the familiar sounds of her undressing. When she turned out the light I forced myself to lie still, as though I were already asleep.

  Then she got into my bed. My skin erupted in gooseflesh. She put her arm around my waist and pulled me close, my back against her stomach, as she’d done on Independence Day, but this time her embrace held no comfort. “What were you doing in the woods with Matthew?” she whispered in my ear.

  I screwed my eyes shut, still feigning sleep even though my entire body was rigid. She pressed her knee against the back of my leg. “Did you kiss him?”

  My jaw was stiff. “No.”

  “You should kiss him.” Her breath was warm on my neck, and I could feel her breasts against my back. “I bet he tastes good. His brother does.”

  I thrashed against her, kicking her legs. “Stop it!”

  She let me go. I pushed myself against the iron poles of the headboard. My voice echoed in the room, and for a wild moment I worried that Mother—or Father!—might come to see why I had shouted. But they didn’t.

  Lilith was on her knees in front of me. She looked at my face, at my nightgown hitched up around my thighs, at my shaking body. Then she brought her hand to her mouth and made a harsh sound, as though she were retching. “Oh, God, Lucy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She rocked back and forth, cupping her face in her hands. It took me a moment to realize that she was sobbing, soundlessly, as though her throat was squeezed shut. I touched her arm, light and tentative, and then flinched as she grabbed my hand and held it as fiercely as she had when she pulled me from the lake. Lucy, she was saying, over and over, I’m sorry, and I was crying, too, and I didn’t know when I’d started.

  At last she fell silent, and her grip on my hand eased, though she didn’t let go. “It’s all going to be different now,” she said. Her voice was so bleak it chilled the air.

  I nodded. I knew she was right. We knelt there like that, facing one another and holding hands, for a long time. Finally we lay on our backs, side by side in my small bed. I kept my eyes open on the ceiling. I rubbed my thumb along her fingers, back and forth, feeling her breathing ease until her hand lay limp in mine. Only then did I sleep.

  When I woke the next morning, I was alone. I heard birds, and the faint slap of water against the sand. Far away, the motor of a fishing boat—it was very early. I got dressed and went downstairs. Lilith was not in the house. I went out to the porch and looked up and down the road. I didn’t see her.

  I ate a bowl of cereal. I’d never eaten a meal alone before, and it was a surprisingly powerful thing to do, as if the kitchen were a foreign territory I’d conquered. I saw things I’d never noticed, like the way Mother stacked the graying dishcloths in careful squares on the counter and the way the floor was worn between the sink and the oven by my mother’s feet and my grandmother’s.

  As I finished, Lilith crept in the back door, careful not to let the hinges squeak. When she saw me, she smoothed her hair behind her ears. I asked where she’d been, and she said she’d woken when Father left to go fishing and gone for a walk. She sat at the table. She gave me a small smile that held the ghost of her hand in mine the night before, but an odd charge crackled about her. Our silence was edgy with it.

  Soon Mother came downstairs with Emily. When she saw my empty bowl she pressed her lips together. I’d known she would make a big breakfast for our last day, but I hadn’t cared. Now, looking at her narrow back as she made coffee, I felt guilty, and angry with her for making me feel that way. Emily tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t look at her. I just wanted this day to be over. For us to be on the road to Williamsburg.

  “As long as you’re up, you may as well start packing,” Mother said without turning around.

  The next hour passed in a somber mirror of our first day, as Lilith and I laid our clothes and shoes in our shared trunk. I watched Lilith from the side of my eye. The way she folded her things, with a care unusual for her, made me uneasy, though I couldn’t have said why. Then Father came back with two small walleyes, and Mother called us to the table, where I ate her eggs, bacon, and toast as though I hadn’t already eaten a bowl of cereal.

  It was a cloudy day, with rain certain, but it held off until Lilith and I were washing the lunch dishes. Then, as the first fat drops began to splat against the windows, Mother told me to get the towels that were hanging on the clothesline. I stepped outside with the wicker basket, glad for the excuse to leave the house. The air was thick and warm, tangy, not yet rain-cooled. I closed my eyes and drew it deep into my lungs. When I was younger, I was terrified of thunderstorms. Lilith tried everything—songs, games, stories about dogs rolling around in the sky—but nothing helped. Then one day she brought me into this very backyard as a storm was coming. Wait, she said as I trembled beside her, and we waited in the heavy stillness. Slowly, the top branches of the trees began to shift and shudder like a great beast shaking its harness. Wait, she said again, as the electricity in the air raised the hairs on our arms and the wind turned the leaves upside down. Then, in a crash of thunder, the rain poured down. I screamed, but Lilith laughed, flung her head back, opened her mouth wide to the rain, and shouted, See? See?

  I didn’t see, not the way she saw. But I was no longer afraid, and I’d even learned to enjoy the slow, pent-up gathering of the world before a summer storm. So I took my time taking the towels off the line as great, gloppy raindrops fell slow and rare, not yet enough to make me wet.

  When I put the last towel in the basket, the wind had begun to toss the high branches. I saw Matthew walking across the Williamses’ backyard. His white shirt was blotted with gray where raindrops had fallen on it. I wanted to go inside, but he was looking at me, so I shifted the basket from one hip to the other and waited.

  When he reached me we stood uncertainly. The memory of the day before lay like a stain on the ground between us. Then he said, “I wanted to give you something before you go. For your birthday.” He pulled from his pocket a piece of wood the size of a small plum, carved into a teardrop shape. In the center was an L, and in the top was a small hole through which he’d threaded a leather string. It was as smooth as a skipping stone, and it fit my palm exactly.

  “The wood’s from the Hundred Tree.” He smiled in that shy way h
e had, and suddenly I wanted to throw the pendant as far as I could. Because I couldn’t look at it, this gift from my only friend, without seeing Lilith and Abe grinding their bodies together. I couldn’t even look at Matthew without seeing them. Around us the wind gathered force. I shoved the pendant in my pocket and ran inside, the basket bouncing on my hip. I could feel his eyes on my back, hurt and confused, and all I could think was that tomorrow morning we would go, and this would all be over. All of it.

  When I got in the house, Lilith was drying the last of the dishes, and from the knowing look she gave me I knew she’d seen Matthew and me through the window over the sink. She wasn’t the only one.

  “What were you doing with that boy?” Mother said.

  I put the basket on the table. “Nothing.”

  “What did he give you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I saw him give you something.”

  “He gave her a present,” Lilith said. “So what?”

  Mother ignored her. “You stay away from him.”

  I opened my mouth to say I would, but Lilith spoke first. “Why does she have to stay away from him?”

  Mother’s eyes flicked to the hallway. “Keep your voice down.”

  Lilith spoke louder. “Why? Don’t you want Father to know Lucy has a boyfriend?”

  “Shut your mouth,” Mother hissed.

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a boyfriend. Didn’t you ever have a boyfriend, Mother?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, but neither of them heard me.

  Mother grabbed Lilith’s arm. She was taller, but she seemed smaller, and although she was gripping Lilith tightly, Lilith didn’t seem to feel it. “Stop it,” Mother said. “We’re going home tomorrow. Everything will be all right then.” It was so close an echo of my own thoughts that I had to look away for a moment. Mother was not my ally. Even though we both wanted the same thing.

  Lilith smiled without a hint of sympathy. “Do you promise?” The energy that had hummed around her all day sizzled and cracked. Outside, the skies opened and the rain roared down.