The Lost Girls

by Heather Young

  I turned. Emily was standing there. Like me, she was in her nightgown, but hers was smudged with dirt, and I knew where she’d been. She had slipped from Mother’s smothering, saving embrace to spend one last night with her calico, not caring what the punishment might be. She’d seen us, one after the other, glide past under the moonlit sky, and she’d followed. Now she stood with her hands clasped, her nightgown paler than the moon, her hair blacker than the night. Unlike Lilith, who looked so grown-up, she looked younger than her years. She was such a small, fragile thing, then and always.

  “Come here,” Lilith said. Her voice was hard. Emily came, slowly, her blue slippers scuffing in the dirt. Lilith bent so her face was just inches from hers. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go back to bed right now, and you’re not going to tell anyone you saw me.”

  Don’t do it, I begged her in silent desperation. Go home. Tell Mother Lilith is leaving. We can stop all this. We can stop it right now. I caught her eye and shook my head. She shifted from one foot to the other. She didn’t understand me.

  Then she saw Lilith’s bag. She looked up at Lilith, and her voice was small. “Are you running away?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow, I don’t care who knows. Tonight, you can’t tell anyone.”

  Emily picked at her nightgown. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  “Well, I am.”

  Emily cut her eyes to me, the barest glance, then back to Lilith. “What about Father? He’ll be so sad.”

  The inside of my mouth went dry. She knew. She knew what I had never guessed. But she thought it was love. Lilith was right; she would go to him so willingly. As willingly as I had gone fishing with him. In the rush of water below I heard a voice whisper, create in me a clean heart, and he was beside me, talking about the unnoticed who hear the entire liturgy. He traced his fingers along my arm. The fish were dying in the bottom of the boat, terrified of the sky. His face was in my neck and the buttons of his shirt were sharp in the cold halo of light.

  Lilith gave a bitter laugh. “No he won’t. He has Lucy now.”

  Something inside me shattered. With a howl I ran at her, my hands clawing at her face, at her hair. I couldn’t see her, a blackness hung before my eyes, but I felt her fall back and I felt her skin beneath my nails, her bones beneath my fingers, my beloved sister, my enemy, my protector, my betrayer—you sent him to me!—and then she was hitting me, shoving me to the ground, kicking my stomach, my side, my ribs, my head. She was screaming I saved you, all those years it was me, I saved you, I was the only one who saved you, nobody but me and above it Emily was wailing, stop it! stop it! you’re hurting her! Then her small body was between Lilith and me, pushing Lilith away, but Lilith’s hands were on her throat, not you, you got none of it, ever, you were safe, safe, safe, SAFE and I couldn’t get up, my ribs were in agony, the world was spinning, but I got to my knees and I shouted, “Let her go!” because Lilith was shaking Emily back and forth so that her hair whipped and flew—and she did stop, for just an instant, Emily’s pale, fragile throat in her hands, and the whole dark earth held its breath. Then she shoved Emily backward, and Emily fell over the bridge.

  We froze. Lilith with her arms outstretched, I on my knees. The only sound was water, crashing over rocks.

  I pushed myself up and ran, stumbling, holding my side, past Lilith, who still stood unmoving, her face stunned, to the end of the bridge, where the bank was slick with mud and the creek was so high it ran fifteen feet across in a massive, swollen distortion of the timid brook it had been the day before. I didn’t see Emily, in the water or out. I screamed her name again and again, scrambling along the bank, following the water, looking for a dark head, pulling my way with the roots of trees that stuck out into the creek bed, my ribs jagged, an eternity of falling, slipping, grabbing, and sliding, branches tearing at my nightgown and my hair. But the stream was loud, and my voice such a weak, high bleat that not even I could hear it.

  Finally, two hundred yards below the bridge, in a last torrent, the water spilled over a fallen tree into the lily patch where Father and I had fished. It was there that I found her. She floated beyond the push of the creek water, facedown in a knot of sticks and grasses the creek had ripped up by the roots, a clutch of flotsam among the lilies.

  I plunged in. The water came up to my chest. The muck on the bottom sucked at my shoes and slipped cold tongues between my toes. The waterfall thundered in my ears, and creek water grabbed me, trying to push me away. When I reached her, I turned her to the sky and pulled her on her back, as Lilith had pulled me to the pontoon that early summer day so long ago, to a spit of land on the far side of the creek. I dragged her until she was clear of the water. Then I fell to my knees beside her.

  She lay still, with her arms flung wide. Her white nightgown clung to her like wet tissue paper. Her eyes were open and blank. I took her face in my hands and whispered her name. But those eyes that were so like Father’s did not blink, and when I lay my hand on her chest it did not move.

  All around us the night teemed with silent life. In the reeds and in the sand, frogs and crickets and crayfish. In the lake, fish. In the trees, birds. Hundreds of tiny hearts beat no farther from me than I could skip a stone, and I heard them all in the marrow of my bones. But in my sister’s limbs was a terrible stillness, an incapacity of movement that was nothing like sleep. I had never seen death before. I had never seen the body cast aside, like flotsam from the creek. There was nothing of Emily in it. Nothing at all.

  When I took her to the woods that day, just the week before, we went to a glade Lilith and I knew, and I tried to play with her as Lilith and I had played. Let’s pretend we’re princesses, I said. Let’s pretend there are fairies here, and animals that can talk to us. But Emily didn’t know how to play that way. She hadn’t learned the essential childhood art of imagining a life better than your own and pretending to live it. So I took her to the berms, and we slid on the cardboard sleds, and she laughed, and I laughed, too. Now, as I knelt beside her on that ragged beach, I thought about how she’d never once played pretend, and I wept.

  I don’t know how long I knelt there before Lilith came. I didn’t see her appear on the far side of the creek, or wade into the lake. I saw her only when she walked out of the water onto the little strand. I put my hands on my knees, and I did not wipe away my tears. Lilith stood still for a moment, water dripping heavily from the hem of her dress. Then she knelt on Emily’s other side and touched her chest. When she felt the silence there, she squeezed her eyes shut. In the moonlight, her face was gray. “I just wanted her to go home,” she whispered.

  One of Emily’s bare feet lay in the water. The lake licked at it in little rills. Her mouth was open, and between her lips I could see her small white baby teeth. She hadn’t lost one yet.

  “What do we do?” Lilith asked. She was trembling.

  It took me two tries to say the words. “We have to tell Mother.”

  “We can’t. They’ll think I did it.”

  She had done it. She had pushed Emily over the bridge, and Emily had died. But I said, “We’ll tell them she fell.”

  She shook her head. She pointed to Emily’s throat. In the moonlight I saw the dark marks below the delicate jaw, the imprints of Lilith’s hands, which would blaze red in the light of morning. On Lilith’s face the scratches my fingers had made were darkening with blood. She was right. No one would believe Emily had fallen.

  Lilith wound her fingers together under her chin. She was shaking now. “Lucy, please. Help me.” Behind her the creek spilled into the lake. It was such a little thing. Three feet of silty froth sliding over a log into a lily patch. Just a summer creek, swollen with rain.

  A breeze kicked up, chilling me in my wet cotton nightgown. A cloud slid across the moon, and our small beach fell into a darkness that hid Lilith’s face from me, and mine from her. The blood in my veins slowed. She had thrown our sister into the creek, where her lungs filled, not with the silken lake water I once
breathed, but violent, muddy water that forced its way in uninvited. Now she knelt before me in her cabaret dress, which was drenched and stained with dirt. The dress she’d planned to wear to California, without me. Leaving me with Father.

  Then the cloud passed, and the moonlight fell again upon her angular, haunting features, and I knew that I would help her anyway. Just as I knew, with terrible clarity, what I would ask in return.

  I said, “You have to stay.”

  She went absolutely still. I waited. I waited for her to think it through. She couldn’t leave that night. They would come for her with police and dogs, not with “lost” posters. She also couldn’t leave later. That was my price. That was what she needed to understand. For the quiet space of a dozen heartbeats we knelt there, unmoving in the light of the stars, above the body of our sister, while I waited. Waited for her to believe that I would do it. All of it.

  Then she closed her eyes, and I knew it was done. I touched my finger to my lips, then to my heart, and held up my hand. She did the same, and pressed her palm against mine. It was cold.

  I told her to get a boat. She left me on the shore with Emily and walked back up the creek. It was only half a mile along the curving edge of the lake to the dock, but it was a long time before I saw her black silhouette walking along it. Someone was with her, and I knew it was Abe; that he had come to the bridge to meet her as they’d agreed, to ferry her to freedom on his motorcycle.

  “I didn’t tell him why we wanted it,” she said when she’d rowed, alone, to our small strand. “And he won’t tell.” I knew he wouldn’t. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, then or later. I waded into the water and helped her beach the boat. I didn’t ask what excuse she’d given Abe for why she looked such a mess, or why she wouldn’t leave with him as they’d planned. I didn’t care.

  “I couldn’t find her slippers,” she said. “It was too dark.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

  We laid Emily on the bottom of the boat, where the fish I caught with Father flopped and died. Her dark hair floated in three inches of rainwater like the shadow of an aura. The moon was out again, shining full on her face. I’d closed her eyes, and in her white nightgown she looked strange and beautiful, like a water sprite brought up in a fishing net.

  I took one oar, and Lilith took the other. Slowly we made our way, pulling in time. My nightgown dried stiff against my skin, my ribs stabbed me with every stroke, and the water in the boat sloshed around my feet. There were still no lights on the shore. I wondered if Abe was still there. I found myself hoping that he was, another soul awake in the night.

  When we were a hundred feet from the pontoon I stopped.

  “Here?” Lilith said. “It’s not too close?”

  “It’s very deep.”

  We pulled in the oars. The night waited, infinitely patient. The wind had died away, and the water glinted like obsidian between the dark shoulders of the forest. The sky was a cathedral of stars, their reflections glowing like candles in the depths, held aloft by a silent, watching congregation.

  The anchor was behind me, tied by a rope to a ring on the side. I untied the rope from the boat and handed it to Lilith, and she passed it beneath Emily and tied it around her waist. When this was done she sat with her hands in her lap until the boat quieted. Then she drew a deep breath, and leaned down.

  “Wait,” I said. I closed my eyes and reached for the words. When I found them I kept my eyes closed and let them leave my lips and settle around us, both heavy and light, like birds.

  Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

  Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

  For I acknowledge my transgressions; and my sin is ever before me.

  Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

  Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

  Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

  Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

  Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

  When I opened my eyes, Lilith was weeping. With one hand I smoothed the wet hair from Emily’s cheek. I alone knew where she was going. I alone knew the dark welcome, the eternal stillness, and the cold peace that awaited her. Silently, I promised her I would watch over her always. A poor promise, I know. But I have kept it.

  Then Lilith and I lifted our sister, Emily Rose Evans, and laid her upon the water. She sank soundlessly, her nightgown opening like a flower. I took the anchor and lowered it by its rope beside her until my arm reached into the lake up to my elbow. She was already far away, a pale shimmer among the reflection of the stars. I released the anchor, and she was gone.

  Justine

  It was the darkest part of the night when Justine woke. Although it was quiet, her head echoed with the sound that had woken her. Her children were asleep. She pulled the quilt closer around them. The air was still, and in the light from the lamp everything in the little room was in its place: the photographs on the table, the jar with Lucy’s hairpins, the bags of Lucy’s clothes in the corner. All of it, like Justine, alert. Waiting.

  As Justine watched, the doorknob turned with slow stealth. The door pushed against the deadbolt, then fell back. Just as quietly, Justine climbed over Angela’s sleeping form and got out of bed. She stood in the middle of the room, her body rigid, watching the doorknob. Her skin prickled with revulsion. She knew what he wanted. He wanted to slip into bed beside her. To wrap his arms around her, to seduce her. He didn’t know her daughters were in here.

  “Justine!” Patrick kicked the door violently. Justine’s muscles leaped beneath her skin. The old wood splintered but held. Melanie and Angela sat up, groggy and frightened. He kicked it again. “Justine, wake up! There’s a fire!”

  All around Justine, Lucy’s things gathered themselves with a silent drawing in of breath. This was what they had been waiting for. Justine inhaled, too. She could make out the faint smell of smoke, like the memory of a dream. He didn’t want to get in her bed. The house was on fire. Her mind fluttered wildly, like a panicked bird. Then it snapped into a bright, singing lucidity.

  “What’s happening?” Melanie said.

  “The house is on fire,” Justine said. Her voice was calm. Angela covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide. Melanie’s face drained of all color. Justine put on her shoes, tying the laces with slow thoroughness. Patrick kicked the door again, but she ignored him. She helped Melanie and Angela from the bed. She looked around, one last time, at all the helpless, waiting things. Then she scooped up the photographs, the jewelry box, and the L pendant from the bedside table. Everything else she left. She opened the bedroom door.

  Patrick stood on the landing with the skin of his face tight against his bones. Smoke flowed up the stairs, tasted rather than seen, puddling just below the ceilings. “Get my mother,” Justine said. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears.

  “I have to get you—”

  “We’re fine. Get my mother.”

  His mouth opened and closed. Then he went to Maurie’s door.

  “Take your sister outside,” Justine said to Melanie. Melanie took Angela’s hand and they ran down the stairs into a darkness lit by a faint red glow. Justine waited until Patrick had disappeared into Maurie’s room before walking after them. The foyer was blurry with smoke, dark ropes of it moving like snakes across the faces in the photographs. Down the hall, in the kitchen, flames swam around the cupboards. As Justine watched, the gingham curtains went up like twin torches. She thought: I liked those curtains.

  She opened the closet and gathered their coats and snow boots. Then she walked out, closing the door
behind her. On the porch she helped Melanie and Angela put on their coats and boots. She put on her own coat, too, tucking the things she’d taken in the pockets, and then she led her daughters out to the road. There, calf-deep in fresh snow, they turned to face the house.

  From here they could see no sign of the fire. The house looked as it always had, heavy and regretful. Slow, fat snowflakes fell, the only things that moved in the whole world. Justine stood between her daughters, holding their hands. One minute went by. Two.

  In a violent crashing of doors, Patrick and Maurie burst from the house. They stumbled down the porch steps, and Justine, still calm, met them at the bottom. Patrick was gasping. Maurie had the quilt from the lavender bedroom around her. Her hair was a black nest, and her eyes were blank and confused. She slipped to her knees, and Justine smelled the bourbon as Patrick lifted her in his arms and carried her toward the road. The quilt fell and Justine picked it up. She would wrap her daughters in it. They would go to the lodge and call the fire department. The firefighters would come and put out the fire. It was a small fire. It was just in the kitchen.

  Then something passed her in a blur: Melanie. She ran up the steps, across the porch, and into the burning house. The door slammed behind her, and the glassine calm in Justine’s mind shattered in to a million pieces.

  “Melanie!” She lunged after her daughter but tripped on the quilt, fell, scrambled to her feet, then ran up the steps. As soon as she got in the house she knew it was doomed. The fire had already swallowed the kitchen. Now, tasting fresh oxygen from the door, it leaped into the hallway. The heat of it slammed her backward. Too fast, she thought wildly. It was burning too fast.

  Melanie vanished into the smoke upstairs, and Justine stumbled after her, choking on the hot and swollen air. Flames from the kitchen below flickered outside Emily’s window, and the little room glowed like the inside of an ember, waiting to burn. Justine ran into the green bedroom and closed the door behind her. It was dark, a thick dark suffocated with smoke, but there was Melanie, silhouetted against the lesser black of the window, scrabbling in the bedside table drawer.