Little Broken Things

by Nicole Baart

  Poor Lorelei.

  And poor Mary Ellen. Mother. Mom. Mama. I wonder sometimes what I would have called her had she lived long enough for me to know her as something other than Mommy. Kids grow out of the sweet mommy stage so quickly, morphing overnight into titles that sound more adult. Don’t be fooled—it’s a sort of letting go, that moment when the near-perfect queen of the universe becomes a little more human, a little less divine. I know this from experience, too. When my baby made the switch, it was instant. One moment I was Mommy and she had cheeks like round, ripe peaches and a lisp that made me swoon. The next I was “Hey, Mom” and she was all skinny little girl with sharp elbows and corners to match. Don’t get me wrong, I like straight-up, no frills Mom, but knowing myself the way I do, I’m sure I would have called Mary Ellen all sorts of terrible names along the way. Like I did with Lorelei. Like Everlee would have eventually done with me.

  Lord knows there are a lot of things I have to ask forgiveness for. But I think the sin that might trump them all is making sure my girl will never have the chance to cuss me out like a sailor.

  That’s not true. Leaving her is my redemption.

  I can’t even think of it or I’ll fall all to pieces, lose my resolve. Maybe drive the ten or so miles to Mrs. Sanford’s house and beg her to let me in. Or to the A-frame at the north end of the lake—if Nora followed our plan, then my girl is there with Quinn. I never paid much attention to Nora’s little sister, but in my memory she is a smudge of light and laughter. Always happy, ever sweet. Nora assures me that she’ll hold Everlee close and read her stories. I was never very good at that—the reading stories bit. I guess there are a lot of things I’m not very good at.

  Like loving the people I’ve been given. My auntie died alone. Alone and hurting and scared, though the nurse who I called at Pine Hills every Saturday night told me that she passed peacefully.

  I know enough to call bullshit when I hear it.

  Maybe that’s why I came here one last time. To make amends? To say goodbye? But I’m not nearly as dense as all that. I wanted to be close to my girl for just one more day. I wanted to be home.

  I can’t say that I loved Key Lake, but for a couple of years when Nora and I were teenagers I thought that my life could be something good. We were bold and beautiful, wild and free. Nora didn’t know how lucky she was to have a family intact, even if it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. She had big dreams and the means to make them come true. All those things Nora told me? I believed them.

  The farmhouse is being rented by a couple with four kids. I know this because their little bikes are lined up in front of the attached garage. Two sparkly pink and purple ones with banana seats, and two in a bigger, more masculine design. Two girls, two boys. One dog who didn’t even bother to stand up and bark when I drove past. I wish I could see the house, wander through the rooms like a ghost, but I know that’s not an option. So I settle for the cabin, the four-room bungalow where my grandma and grandpa spent their final years.

  Hair dye and scissors, I’m doing it again. But this time the face in the mirror is mine and even I don’t recognize who I’ve become. Blond, wispy fringes. A messy Meg Ryan do circa You’ve Got Mail. It matches the wig I wore for the photos, more or less. A passing glance at my new driver’s license will cement the truth: I’m not Tiffany Barnes anymore.

  It’s dramatic, all of it. Like something out of a movie or one of those fat paperback novels my auntie used to love. Real life doesn’t turn out like this—with families scattered, loved ones abandoned at funeral parlors, kids scared and alone. No, not scared and alone. Everlee is far from alone.

  I will be alone. But I don’t have a choice in this, and before you think I’m making much ado about nothing, let me tell you what I know.

  I know that he’s a predator.

  Of course, I didn’t know this in the beginning or I never would have stayed. In fact, we had a happy season together—or as happy as you can be when you’re juggling dead-end jobs and fighting the easy pull of bad habits. Not that we fought very hard. Life was good enough that when he suggested we make it official I actually felt like a blushing bride-to-be. No ring to speak of, but he was working on it. And even more than that? He wanted to adopt my girl. Make her his own.

  We started the paperwork right away because I have a hole in my heart that’s exactly the size of the blank line on my birth certificate where my daddy’s name is supposed to be. And Everlee? She has the same gaping hole. Not because I don’t know who her father is, but because I won’t tell. I can’t decide which is worse.

  But Donovan? He loved her. He loved her so much that one day when I was working at the window factory he took her on his lap and put his hand under her My Little Pony T-shirt. And up her flouncy little jean skirt with the three tiers of ruffles.

  When I walked into the living room he moved quick. Nothing going on here, nothing at all … And because I was reeling and didn’t know if I could fully trust what I had witnessed, I pretended that I hadn’t seen a thing. But the next day I burned that T-shirt and the skirt in the barrel behind the farmhouse. And then I called the cops from the pay phone in the parking lot of the Hy-Vee grocery store and gave them an anonymous tip about the meth they would find in his trunk.

  Once, I found the title to a car in Donovan’s underwear drawer when I was putting away laundry. It wasn’t in his name, but the initials were the same so I remembered it: Derick Robertson. Nora helped me look him up on her laptop and what we found is this: Derick Robertson was charged with the possession of child pornography and the abuse of an undisclosed minor less than one year before he waltzed into my life. The charges didn’t stick. Well, the abuse one didn’t.

  But I could testify in a courtroom that he was guilty as hell and just as slippery. Thing is, I’m not a credible witness. And I don’t want the world’s so-called justice anyway. I just want my girl safe. The plan was always that we would leave together—we thought it would be easy when Donovan was sent to jail.

  They let him off.

  Sometimes I think I should just kill him. I could. I hate him enough. But whenever my vision goes black and I burn with loathing so thick and animal it scares me, I pull myself back to Everlee. Her smile. The way she bites her lip when she’s concentrating. The sound of her bare feet slapping, always running, across the narrow boards of our wood-plank floor. Can you imagine? Everlee Barnes, the murderer’s daughter. She doesn’t deserve that.

  And I don’t deserve her.

  Day Four

  *

  Saturday

  QUINN

  BENNET DIDN’T REALLY have to drive Quinn home because she was sober as a kitten. In fact, she hadn’t had a single sip of alcohol all night. The pinot grigio she’d contemplated guzzling was forgotten the second she turned and found her former fiancé standing before her. But she let herself be led to his car anyway (a black Land Cruiser, he’d always wanted one) and climbed in without protest when he held open the passenger door for her.

  Quinn felt weak and feverish, as if her body were fighting an infection. Being with Bennet was so strange, so painful Quinn could hardly bear the ache. It was foreign and familiar, bitter and sweet. Her mouth stung with the taste of metal and lemons, acid and burnt sugar. The second she laid eyes on him she realized the truth: she loved him still, and always had.

  Or maybe she just loved what might have been.

  Bennet swung into the driver’s seat and asked, without looking at her, “You’re living at the château, right?”

  Quinn cringed a little at the nickname she and Bennet had given the cabin she and Walker now called home. She stole a glance at her former fiancé in profile and wondered if he remembered that they had once dreamed of living there. Of course he did. When her dad bought the dilapidated A-frame and her mother began restoring it, they snuck into the construction zone one night and made love in the loft. Daydreamed out loud about how they would decorate the rooms and the number of children who would fill them. Three, at least. Mayb
e four. They both wanted a big family.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “How did you know that?”

  “Your mom told me. And”—he paused, seemingly hesitant to say her name—“Lucy is staying with you?”

  “Yes.” It was barely a whisper.

  Bennet knew about Lucy. Quinn still hadn’t decided whether she was horrified by this or relieved. If they needed help, Bennet could very well be the person to provide it. But what if the police were exactly who Nora was hiding from?

  Quinn was just as perplexed by her mother’s motives. It wasn’t like Liz to call things out, to invite scrutiny. She wanted Bennet involved for some reason, but Quinn had yet to puzzle out why. It was enough to give her a migraine.

  “Want to tell me what’s really going on?”

  “I don’t know.” It was the truth. Liz had summed up pretty much everything that Quinn knew. Nora had dumped Lucy in Key Lake without so much as a hint about why or where she came from or what she needed protection from. “Nora didn’t tell me anything.”

  Bennet stopped at an intersection for three full seconds and looked both ways before continuing on. So straightlaced, even past midnight. Even on empty country roads where the only light was cast by the moon and the glow of his own headlights. “I’m going to have to check the missing and exploited children’s database,” Bennet told her quietly.

  “Bennet, please—”

  “If Lucy is in danger, and if you don’t know who she really is, I don’t have a choice.”

  “She’s my niece,” Quinn said with more conviction than she felt.

  “Did Nora tell you that?”

  Her silence was answer enough.

  “I’m going to need to talk to her. Nora, I mean.”

  “Good luck,” Quinn muttered, turning her head to look out the window. A part of her wanted to lay her cheek against the glass and cry. And another part wanted to bridge the gap between them and make Bennet remember that they had been more than this once. More than strangers.

  How many times had she sat like this, beside Bennet as he navigated the same dark roads they now drove? She used to reach across the console and take his hand, trace patterns in his palm like a love story in a sign language all their own. In some ways, it would feel natural to do so now. Her heart cartwheeled at the thought, but instead of thrilling her, Quinn felt nauseous.

  “You shouldn’t get involved,” Quinn said. “Please, just forget that my mother said anything at all.”

  “And if something happens?” Bennet slid her a sideways glance. “That’s on my head, Quinn. If I knew about Lucy and didn’t look into the situation, I could lose my badge.”

  Was he punishing her? Quinn couldn’t tell. She knew she deserved it. If the roles were reversed, Quinn would want her pound of flesh. Recompense for the way they had been torn apart. Who wouldn’t? In some ways it felt like a lifetime ago that they had stopped on the sidewalk in front of Betty’s Cakes, but in others it was only yesterday. The wound was fresh, seeping.

  “I can’t do this,” she had said. She was standing in the shadow of a sweeping lilac bush in late May, the fragrant purple blooms just a little fetid and a week or so past their prime.

  “Forget your mom,” Bennet said, lacing his fingers through hers and giving her forehead a chaste kiss. “If you want chocolate cake, let’s have chocolate cake. So what if white is traditional?”

  But Quinn wasn’t talking about the cake. She was breathing quick and shallow, her lungs pinched tight as she struggled beneath the wave of panic that threatened to consume her. It was all too much, too fast, and their whirlwind engagement (less than three months from proposal to wedding day so they could take advantage of married student housing in the fall) had left her dizzy and heartsick.

  “I don’t care about the cake,” she choked.

  Quinn could see in the way his heart shattered before her eyes that Bennet knew exactly what she meant.

  It wasn’t supposed to be forever. Just a little break while Quinn set herself in order. But then she found the acceptance letter from Biola when she was cleaning out her backpack, and suddenly the option she had already discarded seemed her only saving grace. She was gone.

  For all Quinn knew, the simple solitaire with a diamond the size of a grain of rice was still in the top drawer of the bedside stand in her childhood room. Bennet had refused to take it back. She could hardly stand to think of it.

  “I still can’t believe you’re a cop,” Quinn said, just to fill the silence. The stillness felt thick and threatening, but what was she trying to do? Distract him? Flatter him? Quinn didn’t even know her own mind. She just felt the need to talk, to keep talking. They had wasted an hour, two, at her mother’s party by carefully reminiscing, laughing modestly about old friends and reliving the sort of safe stories that would keep them balanced on a tightrope where they were suspended above reality. It was a diversion. But now the night felt urgent.

  Bennet shrugged.

  “Do you like it?”

  A grunt. “I guess. Everly is a much bigger town than Key Lake, so there’s always something going on. I don’t spend my day writing traffic tickets, that’s for sure.”

  Quinn was quiet for a moment, trying to imagine what sort of savagery he faced. Drugs? Domestic abuse? Murder? In their little corner of Minnesota? She decided she didn’t really want to know. “Do they still have the grad dance?”

  “Of course.” Bennet smiled, but it was tight and unamused. “This year may have been the last. Too many minors drinking.”

  “We were minors drinking at the Everly dance.”

  “That was different. I swear, teenagers get younger every year.”

  Quinn hummed her assent.

  “There was a fight this year. Someone was thrown off the bridge.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “He landed in the shallows. Nothing more serious than a broken leg, but we were never able to prove that he was helped over the edge. A half-dozen boys swore he was drunk and tripped. We’re pretty sure they tripped him—the railings are four feet high—but what can you do?”

  “He’s not talking?”

  “Would you?”

  Quinn glanced out the window. She could picture it: the end of the year grad dance on the old bridge to Everly. Or the bridge to Key Lake, depending on where you lived. It was the only time the two rival high schools came together for a reason other than competition. Though there was plenty of preening and posturing, petty jealousies, and girlfriend stealing that transcended the festivities.

  “No,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t say a word.”

  “Me either.”

  Because the trestle bridge was on a gravel road, the county police closed it off for one night in early June and let a DJ set up speakers on the wooden deck between the first and second beams. It was a BYOB affair, but of course, beer was prohibited. So there were two-liters of Coke and Mountain Dew, boxes of pizza on the open tailgates of the trucks that backed onto the entrance of the bridge. Half the bottles of Pepsi were filled with rum. Vodka mixed well with Sprite. And a few kids could be relied upon to smoke up in the trees along the sandy beach between the trestles. The woods around the little tributary of the Cottonwood River were thick and mysterious, perfect for secrets and things people would rather keep hidden.

  “It used to be the cops would cruise around once or twice but mostly leave everyone alone.”

  “That’s not the case anymore,” Bennet told her. “It’s just too dangerous. We’re all afraid that someone is going to get really hurt.”

  What did her mother say? The more things change, the more they stay the same? Quinn was quite sure that many people had already gotten hurt on the Everly bridge—just maybe not in the way that Bennet and his cop friends expected.

  “Quinn?”

  Something about Bennet’s voice was off and Quinn pulled her attention from the stars so she could study him, a wisp of anxiety rising in her like smoke.

  “What’s going on?”
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br />   She followed the path of his finger through the windshield to the black edge of the horizon beyond. At some point he had turned down her road, the gravel ribbon that wound around the farthest curve of the lake. Quinn knew the serrated edge of the landscape around her, the familiar trees, rolling hills, and sleepy homes that looked two-dimensional, cut from black cloth against the backdrop of the equally dark night. But instead of peaceful shadows, the silhouettes were alive and writhing, dancing against a curtain of orange.

  Quinn couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing and she leaned forward, clutching the dashboard in her sweaty palms. But even as she wondered at the spectacle before her, it became suddenly, terrifyingly clear. Something was burning.

  “Oh my God!” Quinn fumbled for the door handle, Walker’s name on her lips.

  Lucy.

  But Bennet was quicker, and stronger. “Quinn, no!” He snagged her by the arm and hauled her back, bruising the skin with a grip that brooked no argument. “Shut the door!”

  She obeyed, but just long enough for him to drive the final stretch past the boathouse and the A-frame, which, thank God, was not on fire. When Bennet pulled to the side of the road just past her home, Quinn yanked her arm out of his hand and threw open the door while the car was still coming to a stop. She ran up the same short hill where she and Lucy had picnicked, tripping and stumbling through the tall grass, and stood at the top of the rise, panting.

  The little abandoned shack was aflame, each board cast into bright relief as a roaring fire blazed through the dry wood. The heat singed her face and Quinn had to shield it from the lick of the scalding air. As she watched, a beam gave way and the fire soared even higher. It was vicious, hungry, lapping up the night sky in greedy, violent mouthfuls that made Quinn fear for the field, the cabin, the boathouse, and beyond.