The Lost Girls

by Heather Young

  “Melanie! Get out of there!” Justine shouted. Melanie’s head jerked up, her hair flying over her shoulder. Justine coughed so hard she doubled over. The air was poisonous, it would kill them, they had to get out right now. She grabbed Melanie’s arm and yanked her back to the door. But as she reached for the knob a roaring crash shuddered the walls, and the cracks around the doorjamb flared with angry red light. The whole back of the house had gone up—Emily’s bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen, all of it. A high keening split the air as the house’s dry wooden bones writhed and snapped. Above it Justine heard Melanie’s thin scream, choked off by the smoke.

  She shoved her back to the window. Melanie sank to the floor as Justine wrestled the sash through the warped frame. Open! Justine begged it, but after two inches the window wouldn’t budge, so she picked up the bedside lamp and hit the glass. Not hard enough; again. Every breath was a knife in her lungs. Finally the window shattered, and cold air rushed in. Justine gave a sob, pulled Melanie up, helped her crawl through the jagged glass in the frame onto the porch roof, then followed. Her arms sank to the elbows in snow. Melanie’s blood spotted the white. Above them, black smoke poured from the window in a thick column.

  She dragged Melanie to the edge of the roof and they knelt there, Justine’s arms clutching her, both of them sucking in lungfuls of icy, clear air. The snow in front of the house glowed a dull red, and Justine saw Angela in the road, her mouth open in a scream. Maurie crouched beside her, her face a rictus of terror. Behind them, Patrick walked in a tight circle, his hands on his head. Matthew Miller was coming down the road in a stiff-legged run, his coat half-buttoned. Justine tried to call him, but her voice rasped uselessly. Then Angela saw them and her mouth moved—“Mommy!”—and Matthew saw them, too. He ran past Patrick and up the walkway.

  Heat pressed against Justine’s back. She looked over her shoulder—the fire was in the green bedroom now, devouring the twin beds and the thin lace curtains, which exploded into plumes of sparks. The snow on the porch roof began to soften and slide. Horrified, she looked down to where Matthew now stood in the snow that had drifted up against the house. The drop was twelve feet or more.

  She took Melanie by the shoulders. “You have to jump.”

  Melanie’s eyes were blank with fear. She had one of the Emily books clutched to her chest. “Give me that,” Justine said. Melanie shook her head and held the book tighter. Justine ripped it from her grasp and threw it off the roof, pages flapping. “Get on your stomach.” Melanie was quaking so hard she could barely move, but she managed to get onto her belly. Justine lay down, too, her legs stretched back toward the house, her hands rigid with panic, gripping Melanie’s wrists as her daughter slid backward, her legs dangling over the snow.

  “Grab the edge,” Justine said, and one by one Melanie locked her shaking hands around the old metal gutter. “Now let go.” Melanie clung to the gutter, half on and half off the roof, straining against gravity, her eyes pleading. Justine, her voice breaking, said, “Please. You can do it,” and Melanie clenched her teeth, and then, with a strangled cry, she dropped. Her fingers strained on the gutter for a split second before they slipped away and she fell. Justine crawled to the edge, and when she saw her daughter safe, Matthew’s arms around her, relief made her so dizzy it felt like the porch roof was spinning.

  Then the window of the green bedroom exploded. Justine covered her head as flames belched through the window’s jagged mouth. Matthew pushed Melanie back, horror in both their faces, and Justine knew Lucy’s window was gone, too, and the living room; the house was going up like kindling now. Fire seared her back and the snow under her feet slid away. She stood up and launched herself off the roof, hurtling into the red-black night, her arms opening like wings, soaring on the hot breath of the fire. Down she fell, through the roaring air, until she hit the snow hard, sank up to her knees, and crashed face-first into the silent, blessed cold.

  A moment later Melanie’s and Matthew’s hands were upon her, turning her to face the sky. She stared up at it, stunned. The fire blotted out the stars, yet it made no sound. Snowflakes, melted by the heat, fell on her face like rain, but she didn’t feel them.

  Melanie’s face bent over hers. “Mom! Mom!” Justine coughed, blinking the snow from her lashes. Sound returned, and with it, sensation. Cold. Heat. She moved her arms, then her legs, feeling them move thickly in the snow. She was okay. Nothing was hurt. She laughed out loud at the miracle of it, and Melanie’s face loosened with relief. Then Matthew took her arms, and he and Melanie pulled her away from the flames that sprang from the living room to the porch swing to the porch roof, pulled her to where Angela’s and Maurie’s hands, too, reached and clung.

  They watched from the road as the house burned. It didn’t take long. They wrapped themselves in the quilt from the lavender bedroom, their faces warmed by the fire and their backs chilled by the cold air pushing in from the lake. Just before the fire trucks came, the roof fell in and the green bedroom and the yellow bedroom and the lavender bedroom crashed into the kitchen and the elm table and the parlor with the Christmas lights and the guitar and the ice skates that fell in their turn upon the photo albums and the dust-covered furniture in the basement, all gone already, of course; just as the Emily books and the little girl’s clothes and the picture of Melanie and Angela at the Padres game were also gone. When the house collapsed, it gave a long, rolling moan, and a thousand billion sparks swirled into the night like fireflies. Ash drifted down all around, mixing with the snow that also fell.

  Justine laid a hand on Melanie’s head where it rested under her chin. The edges of the Emily book she’d saved, locked once more in her arms, dug into Justine’s ribs. Maurie buried her face in Matthew’s coat and he put his arms around her while Patrick stood beside them and watched, without a word.

  There was no fire hydrant, and the only water was frozen in the lake, so when the firefighters came they gave them oxygen to breathe and bandaged Melanie’s arms where the broken window glass had torn them. Then they, too, stood and watched the burning, the lights of their trucks swirling and blending with the light from the fire until the whole world pulsed red.

  Lucy

  There were no fishermen at dawn. It was the last morning, so it was for packing trunks and loading cars. Lilith and I had changed into dry nightgowns. We had covered the scratches on her face with makeup as best we could. Now we lay together in my bed, waiting. As the air warmed, we heard the first risers open their doors and greet one another. A wind rose, filling the morning with whispers.

  At last we heard Mother cry out: Emily? Lilith’s arms tightened around me as Mother ran first to the room where Father slept and then to ours. Mother’s eyes were dark, as though her pupils had eaten the blue of her irises, and I could see the knowledge there. She knew already that Emily would not be found in the house, at the beach, or under the lodge. She knew already that she was lost.

  All that morning we searched, fanning out through the forest, our neighbors calling anxiously now, for this time was not like before. This time a child had disappeared in the night, every mother’s greatest fear. Lilith and I stayed together as we walked the forest with our neighbors. I couldn’t look at the wind-blown lake, the color of chipped sapphires in the sun, so I kept my eyes on the dead leaves on the forest floor. Wherever we went we heard Mother’s voice above the others’, a high, feral cry shaped into a human sound only by the syllables of Emily’s name. I shook when I heard it, my body clenching until finally I vomited, crouching behind a tree. “Poor thing,” Mr. Jones said when he found me covering my mess with leaves. “Don’t worry. We’ll find your sister.”

  It was midmorning when Dr. Pugh and Mayor Lloyd suggested that “the Miller boy” should be questioned. The police had been called, but they hadn’t yet arrived, so this was the last opportunity for vigilantism. Lilith and I had just come from the woods. It had occurred to me that someone might notice one of the fishing boats was missing an anchor, and the thought had m
ade me so ill I needed to go to the docks to make sure no one had. They hadn’t, and they never would. I don’t know what the Millers thought when they stowed the boats for the winter, but they never said a thing.

  Abe wasn’t hard to find. He and Matthew had been helping the searchers that morning, but as lunch drew near, Mrs. Lloyd had asked them to make sandwiches for us. Mayor Lloyd walked into the kitchen as though he had the right and brought Abe out to the main room where Dr. Pugh, Mr. Davies, and their wives waited. Matthew and his grandmother followed, and the men made a half circle around them. Mr. Miller wasn’t there, and I wished he were. His wife’s mother wasn’t going to be able to protect her grandson; I could see that in her face, which was the color of mahogany, and in her thick fingers knotted in her apron.

  Abe looked at the men in confusion. As he had that first summer day when Lilith and I came for groceries, Matthew moved to stand in front of his brother. His muscles were tense. He knew what Mayor Lloyd was after.

  “Son, I’m going to ask you a question, and I’m going to want your honest answer,” Mayor Lloyd said. I hated him, I realized. I hated his red, beefy features that might have been handsome on the young boxer but were swollen and pitted on the overfed politician. “Did you see Emily Evans last night or this morning?”

  Matthew said, “He was in his bed all night. I can swear to it. We’re in the same room, him and me.”

  “And were you awake all night?”

  “No. But if he’d gone anywhere, I’d have woken up.”

  It was the only thing he could say, but of course it was a lie—Abe had left, and Matthew knew it. I could see it in his face. He had woken up, sometime during that quiet hour when Lilith and I rowed out to the pontoon, and Abe hadn’t been there. When his brother came back, creeping through the damp dark, had Matthew asked him where he’d been? What had Abe told him? I was in plain view, but Matthew didn’t look at me.

  The men exchanged glances. Mayor Lloyd was puffing himself up. They were going to take Abe and hold him for the police, and my head felt light. It was never part of our plan to have blame fall on any innocent person. I looked at Lilith: now was the time to lead them to the conclusion we needed them to reach. She was watching the scene with a small frown, but she didn’t say anything. So I did.

  “Maybe she’s just run away again.” Every head in the room swiveled to me, even Matthew’s. I swallowed, though my throat was dry. “She’s done it before.”

  At this Mrs. Davies nodded her head. “About a month ago. We found her pretty quickly, but she was wearing a lot of dresses and skirts, and she had a little bag with her.”

  “Why would she run away?” Dr. Pugh asked, and I knew why they would doubt it, just as I had at first. Sweet, docile Emily, beloved daughter of a decent family—such girls did not run away. In our haste the night before, Lilith and I hadn’t talked about the answer to this critical question.

  Then Lilith said, “Mother told her she couldn’t take this kitten she’d found back to Williamsburg. She was very upset about it.” In a smooth voice she explained about the kittens and how Emily had a favorite she’d hoped to adopt as a pet. The ugly current that charged the air weakened as the grown-ups listened, and though I wouldn’t look at him, I could feel Matthew’s relief.

  Mrs. Davies sent Ben to find Mother and asked her, in the gentlest way, to check Emily’s things. Mother stiffened as she realized what Mrs. Davies meant, but she went to the lavender bedroom, where she found several dresses were missing along with Emily’s saddle shoes and her Christmas purse. Then Lilith came and said Emily’s kitten was gone from under the lodge. Mother put her hand to her mouth and moaned, a wrenching, shuddering sound that came from a territory beyond weeping. She would have fallen if Father hadn’t caught her.

  Later that afternoon, Lilith and I were in the woods beyond the Lloyds’, where no one else was searching. We walked a little ways, then we stopped in a clearing. Lilith sat on a large rock, closing her eyes and letting her shoulders slump. I sat beside her. I closed my eyes, too, and the sun made the insides of my eyelids red. From this distance, the faraway calls of the searchers sounded almost like birds. Long minutes passed. I wished I could stay like that forever; I was so tired. Then I felt Lilith move beside me. I opened my eyes to see Abe standing there. In his hands he held one of Emily’s blue slippers.

  “Give that to me,” Lilith said, and he did. The slipper was caked with dried mud on the bottom, but it was dry. It hadn’t gone into the creek. I had a small bag with two of the sandwiches the Millers had made, so I took it and put it inside. Later I would hide it deep in our closet, and I would keep it even after Lilith and I burned Emily’s clothes and purse in the clearing by the Hundred Tree. I have it still.

  “Do you know where she is?” Abe asked Lilith.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I found that on the bridge last night, while I was waiting for you.” His cow eyes were gloomy and afraid. “And the boat. You wanted the boat.”

  “What are you saying? She’s my sister.” I was struck rigid by the utterly convincing indignation on Lilith’s face. She put her hand on Abe’s chest. “You’re not to tell about the boat, remember? Other people might wonder the same thing if they knew.”

  I waited for him to ask the obvious questions: What had she wanted the boat for? Why had she been wet to the skin when she’d met him? I didn’t know what she would say if he did. But he didn’t ask. Maybe because he was so slow. Or maybe for the same reason I never asked what she did with the kitten: he didn’t want to hear her answer. Instead he said, “Are we still going to California?”

  Lilith shook her head. “I can’t go until I know Emily is safe. I’m sorry.”

  Days passed. The sheriff came with his deputies, and they sent for volunteers from Williamsburg and Olema who walked for miles in every direction. More days passed as they searched through trees turning russet and gold, their hunting jackets red and their dogs bounding through the bracken. Much later, in the quiet of another autumn day, Mother would tell me she heard those dogs every year when the leaves turned. I never did, but I’ve not forgotten the sound they made, either. The excited yowls, like laughter. Then, at odd moments, a lonely, mournful cry, the sound of loss itself.

  Near the end of September they dragged the lake, but only to a distance of a few hundred yards, because no one thought Emily could swim farther than that. And, of course, no one thought she’d gone swimming. Lilith and I watched from our bedroom window, our hands clasped together, until they stopped well short of the pontoon and brought the boats back in.

  In early October, when the frost came, the search became a weekend enterprise and the searchers became fewer. They were no longer looking for a living child. Then, when late October brought the first snow, Sheriff Llewellyn came to Mother, hat in hand, and said with gentle gravity that they had done all they could. After he left, Mother sat in the parlor staring into the gray air, her face still but her hands kneading.

  Through all of this, Father diminished. In the beginning, he seemed to recover some of the strength he’d lost since Independence Day: he strode through the trees, his great baritone roaring out Emily’s name. Each evening he gathered us in the parlor and led us in prayer: Gracious Lord, Father of all children, shine a light in the darkness for Your lamb, that has wandered from Your fold. But each day that brought no news of her made him smaller and quieter. He kept his distance from Lilith and me, and his nightly prayers became open pleas for absolution, for forgiveness for sins he could not name. I pitied him, for I loved him still. Lilith watched him with merciless eyes.

  When the sheriff’s car drove away, he stood in the doorway, watching it go. We were the only lake family still there. Many had stayed long past the end of summer to help us search, but one after another they returned to their jobs and homes in town. Just Mrs. Williams was left, bringing us food we barely ate and comfort we barely took. Now she sat beside Mother on the davenport. The little house was cold; it had no radiators y
et. Outside, the trees were bare except for the new snow that dusted their branches.

  “Eleanor,” Father said, “we have to go.”

  Mother hadn’t left the lake once since Emily disappeared. Father had been to town many times, meeting with the bankers who held off on collection in deference to our loss. Two weeks later he would sell his grandfather’s pharmacy to Mayor Lloyd for less than his debts. By January the lake house was all we had, and Father was in his grave.

  Mother said, “I won’t leave her here alone.”

  “The house isn’t fit for winter,” Mrs. Williams said.

  “I’ll manage.” Mother was so thin. Insubstantial, like a ghost. But her voice was resolute. As long as I could remember, she had bent to Father’s will. Now, when it didn’t matter and she couldn’t save anyone, she would not.

  Before he left, Father came to Lilith and me in our room. “You’ll come with me,” he said from the doorway. He said it to both of us, but he was looking at me. I remembered the first day of summer, when he’d stood there, looking first at Lilith in her Cinderella headdress, then sliding his eyes to me. My legs went wobbly with fear.

  Lilith said, “Mother needs us here.”

  “I need you, too.”

  I knew he did. I could see it in the way his hand shook on the doorjamb. And I am certain—I have no doubt at all—that I would have gone with him if Lilith hadn’t said, as though stating an unarguable fact, like the month of the year or the color of the sky: “You can’t have us.”

  He dropped his eyes, and for the first time in my life I beheld him without those dark, mesmerizing irises. I saw a tired man, bowed and old before his time. When he raised them again he raised them to Lilith, not to me, and unlike on that first summer day, she didn’t look away. She stood between our beds, every muscle frozen save for her hands, which trembled a little. A filament of understanding crackled between them, like the one that had joined him to me for that brief moment at breakfast the morning we fished, then snapped with a sound that was almost audible. Lilith’s hands stopped shaking. Father took a step back, as though he’d lost his balance. He went to Williamsburg later that afternoon, alone.