The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  “Watch the eyes, there. I need those.” He chuckled and gently eased her grasping fingers away from his face. “Don’t worry. I’d never drop you. Does the world look a bit better from up there, my lovely weeping Willow?”

  Willow risked pulling a hand away to scrub at her eyes, sniffling and looking around. Up here she could look down at everything, and nothing could reach up to touch her. “It…it does.” She bit her lip, looking down at him. “Will I ever be as tall as you, Uncle Wally?”

  “Maybe not on the outside, darling. On the outside you’ll probably always be small and delicate as a little sugar candy unicorn. Remember when I used to bring you those?” She nodded enthusiastically, and he smiled, tilting his head back to look up at her with his eyes creased at the corners. “But inside, you’re as tall as you want to be. Inside you contain universes—and those, my sweetling, are infinite.”

  She smiled through her tears, and wrapped her arms around his head and hugged. He patiently squeezed her waist with another of his chuckles, only this time it bounced his shoulders and made her bounce, too, and she squealed and giggled and clutched at him.

  And suddenly, all was right with the world again.

  He held her that way all the way home, from her little corner middle school in one of the districts Dad always said “wasn’t zoned right,” whatever that meant, when he’d tried to get her into the magnet school for STEM students but they wouldn’t let him because she didn’t live in the right area and didn’t have enough money—though they’d told him to try again in high school and maybe it would work out. For the entire walk Uncle Wally spun and twirled her, until the world reeled by dizzily and she didn’t know up from down and didn’t want to. But at her gate he stopped on the walk, and gently let her down. That sad, tired look was in his eyes again, as he tucked her messy hair back from her face.

  “I’m sorry, my darling Willow. You know I can’t go in with you.”

  “I know.” And she hated that she understood why. Hated why Dad and Uncle Wally didn’t like each other, and when they were around each other the air crackled while Dad glared at Wally and Wally watched him with a sort of resigned, tired pleading. She bit her lip, twining her fingers together. “Uncle?”

  He sank down on one knee, bringing him from his towering Halloween-tree height down to her level; he was her very own Jack Skellington, and he bent like the pumpkin king, angles everywhere. “Yes, my sweetest heart of hearts?”

  Willow looked up at him uncertainly, then lowered her eyes. “Am…am I disgusting?”

  “Never in a lifetime.” He tapped the tip of her nose. “That’s pure and utter rubbish. Where did you hear that? Are those girls at school teasing you again?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, and offered a faint smile. “Something like that.”

  “Don’t you believe it. Ever. You’re made of wonder and magic, my dear, and wonder and magic are never disgusting.” He smiled, and gave her what she’d been waiting for: a little trinket of glass, this time in creamy swirls of pale frosted green and clear jade, shaped into an almost perfect sphere. “Your father loves you very much, and so do I.”

  But Mama doesn’t, she thought, and clutched the little bauble against her chest.

  “I love you too, Uncle Wally.”

  “Good girl.” He kissed her forehead, then stood, lifting his hand in an elegantly negligent wave. He was so graceful even when he was all sticks everywhere, and she hoped to move like him when she grew up: sharp edges and dapper style, awkward beauty made lovely because it was so strange. “Ta for now, darling heart.”

  She couldn’t help a laugh. He always called her some combination of anything and everything, but they were always another way of saying the same thing:

  That he loved her.

  With her heart a little ball of warmth that she clutched as close as her pretty green glass, she watched him walk away, then let herself in and up the walk to the house. But she paused on the front steps as her father’s voice filtered through the walls, the closed door. She hadn’t thought he’d be home from work by now, but he was here and he was shouting. Her eyes widened, and alarm strung her nerves on a tripwire. She crept up the steps and listened, but she couldn’t make anything out. Carefully, she fit her key to the door, edged it open without making a sound, and peeked around the doorframe.

  Her father paced the kitchen, bouncing at the end of the phone cord’s coiling leash like a dog tethered in the yard and testing its limits. His fingers were buried in his hair, and he snarled into the phone, his angular, weathered face chiseled into lines of fury she’d never seen before.

  “—be because she’s your daughter, Miriam!” he bit off.

  Oh, God. Willow shrank back, her chest tightening. Her mother. Mama had called to tattle, and now he’d know. Now he’d know Willow had broken the rules and gotten on the internet, and he’d know she was bleeding and dirty. He hadn’t seen her yet, and she was tempted to turn and run. Just…run, and not come back.

  He closed his eyes, dragging his hand over his face. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” A pause. “That’s no ex—don’t you dare. Don’t you dare talk to me that way. Working late? Since when do you work at all?” Another pause. “Our daughter could be sick. She could be sick, and all you care about is your goddamned manicure or whatever appointment you missed.” His teeth bared like he wanted to bite something, his eyes glinting hard and bright and animal-strange with anger and fear. “She’s ten! That’s not normal at ten! Not if that girl hurt her!”

  Willow couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t stand listening to her parents fight, even if her mother was only a shrill mumble from the other end of the line, tittering out through the receiver. Willow pulled the door open wider and edged inside, watching him uncertainly from under her lashes.

  “Daddy?”

  He froze. A guilty gaze rose to her, and instantly that fury fell away, that strange angry animal mask, and her father was back. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes filled with worry, before turning away and snapping into the phone.

  “She’s home. I’m taking her—I don’t care if you’re not done. I am.” Firm, authoritarian, the Daddy she’d known before his hands started to shake while he tried to hide the pain. “Goodbye, Miriam.”

  He hung up the phone with a decisive slam. In two quick strides he was across the kitchen, dropping to his knees, pulling her into his arms and hugging her with a ferocity that knocked the breath from her lungs and choked a squeak from her lips.

  “Sweetheart,” he rasped raggedly. “Sweetheart, are you okay? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Willow stood there with her hands hanging numbly at her sides, afraid to touch him. “It’s bad,” she whispered sheepishly. “It’s dirty.”

  “No. No, baby, it’s not.” He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands, tangling her hair, looking at her desperately. “There is nothing bad or dirty about you. I promise. Nothing. It might be natural, but we’re going to the doctor just to make sure, all right? Just to be sure you’re not hurt.”

  “But…Mama said it was normal.”

  “Mama says a lot of things. She might be right, but I want to be sure because I love you, okay? I love you and I want to take care of you.”

  Willow hesitated, then nodded slowly. She was scared again—scared that maybe she really was dying, that Mama had been wrong, but being scared wasn’t so bad because Daddy still loved her even if she was dirty. “Okay.”

  “Does it hurt right now, baby?”

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “Okay. Okay, maybe it’s nothing, but come on. Here.” He stood, reaching for her. “I’ll carry you.”

  She blinked up at him. “But you said I was too old—”

  For the second time today, she was cut off by a man she loved lifting her up high. Her father caught her up in his arms and swept her against his chest like she was a princess in a movie about knights and dragons. His hands trembling against her, hard tight strain his arms, and she was afraid
he was hurting himself when the sickness he didn’t like to talk about was getting worse, even though he tried to pretend it wasn’t there and thought Willow didn’t notice how he’d pretended to throw his crutches out and only used them when she wasn’t in the room. She wanted to tell him to stop, to put her down, but then he nuzzled her hair and she smelled the familiar hazelnut coffee he loved on his breath, and the panic inside her calmed down like a cat being stroked.

  “Not for this,” he soothed. “Daddy’s got you, sweetheart. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

  He carried her from the house to the car, and buckled her in like she was made of tissue paper. For the entire drive to the hospital, he kept glancing at her—like he thought she’d disappear if he took his eyes off her too long, or shatter into tiny fragile pieces. She curled her fingers in the seatbelt and tried not to be scared, and when she caught his eye she smiled because she couldn’t stand to see him looking so afraid.

  At the hospital, they waited in the emergency room for a long time. Dad paced some more, and went up to the nurse’s admin window to ask what was taking so long, then again, then sat down and glowered when he was told quite firmly to sit down and wait or he’d be asked to leave. Willow kicked her feet in her chair and read; she still had her backpack, and her environmental sciences textbook had a really neat section on geothermal energy and geoscience. Focusing on that was easier than watching her dad pulling at his hair, or looking around at all the people who were sick or hurting or whimpering in pain. She didn’t like to see pain, didn’t like the sight of other people hurting when she couldn’t fix it.

  Then their names were called, and she held her father’s hand tight as she was led into a cold examining room. And she told herself she wouldn’t cry, but she hadn’t realized the doctor would want to look at her, and she begged Daddy to look away, to turn his back, while the awful man with the cold gloves poked and probed and stared. Daddy looked away like she asked, but he held tight to her hand—and she squeezed and squeezed and squeezed when it hurt, when something cold and slick went up inside her and then it stretched and pinched, and she cringed from every edge and bump and hinge and detail with awful awful hyper-reality while the horrible doctor peered one big round eye up into her dirty thing and please, please just stop…

  Over. It was over and she scrambled back into her clothes and flung herself against her father. She was too tired and strung out to even sob, but she couldn’t stop the quiet tears that streamed down her face as she clung to him. Over her head the doctor and Dad conversed in hushed tones, and she didn’t care what they were saying—but for a moment the doctor’s voice was accusatory, Dad’s furious and defensive, then the doctor’s soft and apologetic while her father’s arms tightened protectively around her.

  Then the doctor was talking to her in words that didn’t really go in, though she’d remember them later when she needed them. Words about how she’d be all right, she just had to be a little delicate with herself for a few days and be careful when she washed, and keep clean and watch for any blood when she went to the bathroom. He’d give her some antibiotic pills, he said, and some cream she could use to prevent infection. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him, look at him, but she made herself peek out past the rumple of Daddy’s shirt and ask,

  “Then…then I’m not…on my dot?”

  “Your do—oh.” He laughed—a kind of patronizing laugh people saved for little girls who asked what they considered stupid but adorable things. “No, sweetie. That won’t happen for a few more years.”

  Willow only hid her face in her father’s stomach again, while he smoothed his hand over her hair.

  “Come on, Willow. Let’s go home.”

  They didn’t talk, on the way out. They didn’t talk about the money they didn’t have to pay for this, about anything, but her father’s hand was tight in hers, keeping her from floating away into the sadness all around her. She wasn’t on her dot. She wasn’t going to die. But those fingerprints inside her made her even dirtier, sullied, all the color wiped out of her, smudged off by the doctor’s probing, searching, invading fingers. She was gray. She was a weeping willow like Uncle Wally said, drooping forward and trailing in the imaginary water of her humiliation.

  They were almost home before her father spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. Low. Subdued. As if he’d done this; as if he’d failed. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I want to speak to that girl’s parents. It’s not right that she’s allowed to run around hurting people like this.”

  “Don’t!” Willow gasped, no longer gray but the trembling yellow-white of panic. Her head jerked up. “It…it’ll only make everything worse.”

  “But Willow—”

  “Please, Daddy.”

  He watched her sidelong. His fingers clenched and twisted on the steering wheel, before he sighed. “If you’re sure that’s what you want, sweetheart.” When she nodded quickly, he smiled. “Hey. You’ve earned an ice cream. Want to?”

  “Okay,” she said to make him feel better, though she didn’t have much appetite at all.

  But at the ice cream parlor she got her favorite flavor—daiquiri, pronounced da-kee-ree, and she didn’t know what that was but it tasted like forbidden things, tart and sweet and strange, and she found her appetite again by the time she was on her second scoop. She laughed when Daddy teased her, and by the time they made it home again—with a detour by the drug store for her first mega-embarrassing box of panty liners—she could almost forget that she was still sore and twinging where that thing had been inside her in a way that she never wanted anything inside her ever again.

  But while Dad made dinner, Willow snuck into the den. There was a second phone there, and she prayed and prayed and prayed that no one had called when they weren’t home. She knew the star-sixty-nine trick, and while she wouldn’t fool the receptionist again she might be able to get her mother’s direct line. Mama had called Dad to tell him Willow was hurt, so she must care, right? And she’d want to know. She’d want to know Willow was okay.

  She punched the three keys, beep-BEEP-beep, then waited mouse-quiet and closed her eyes. Don’t pick up, she thought. Don’t pick up, please pick up, don’t pick up, please pick up. But then there came the click-rattle and a sigh, and a sullen, syrupy, “Hello?”

  “Mama? It’s Willow again.”

  An exasperated sound. “I thought Joseph was taking you to the hospital.”

  “He did.” She whispered so Daddy wouldn’t hear; he wouldn’t want her to do this. “I’m okay. Daddy took me to the doctor. The doctor said it…he said my…” She tried to fish the words from the white haze of the examining room, the choking cloud of her upset. “…my hi-men broke, and…and there was tissue tearing and bruising, but it’ll heal.”

  “And you are telling me this because…?”

  She crumpled inside, this wad of used-up tissue pretending to be a girl. Mama was an Erin, she understood now. Mama was an Erin, and said things to hurt people.

  “I thought you’d want to know I’m okay,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  Nothing. Just silence, waiting and cold.

  “Mama?” Willow ventured.

  “What is it?”

  “When are you coming back?”

  The phone cut off, the tell-tale click of the line hanging up, and then it was her and the dial tone again. She listened to its familiar voice for a few moments, then sighed, set the phone in its cradle, and left the room to join her father for dinner.

  She was going to be all right, though she was more tired than tired. Broken. But she would be all right, and for a little while longer she got to stay little-girl Willow instead of grown-up Willow. She wasn’t going to be a woman yet.

  She didn’t ever want to be a woman, if it meant growing up terrible and cruel and selfish like Mama.

  She never wanted to be a woman at all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHE LAY IN THE CIRCLE of Priest’s arms, with his hand spread over the swell of her stomach and his
breaths warm against the back of her neck. This was the resigned taste of defeat, she thought. This quiet fatalism, and finding what warmth she could in these little moments that gave her a respite from the fear, from the uncertainty of not knowing. Of waiting.

  “I feel like my life is a life of waiting,” she whispered. “Always waiting for something, and never quite getting there.”

  Priest stirred against her back, making a soft, sleepy sound. “Waiting for what?”

  “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.” She laughed softly, bitterly. “First I was waiting for Mom to come back. Then I was waiting for Dad to get better. Then I was waiting for Dev to forgive me, to speak to me even once. Then waiting to go to school, go away. Then…then it just felt like I was waiting for that moment when my life would start. Like I was never actually living; just waiting for one day, always thinking this would be my time, this would be my chance, and things would get better and I’d stop waiting and suddenly I’d be alive. Dad would get better, or I’d find a job that paid well, and things would change. Only nothing ever did…because all I did was wait to live, instead of risking having a life. I didn’t realize that all those little mundane moments between the cracks, all those little failures and triumphs and the crushing defeats…those were life, and what I was waiting for was slipping right past.” She bit the inside of her lip, then added, “…and now I’m just waiting for you to decide when I die.”

  “Firefly…”

  “No…no, it’s okay. You don’t have to say it. You don’t have to say anything. I know. I know, okay? I’m…I’m trying to decide if I can accept it. I accepted it for my father. How is this any different?”

  He said nothing. He said nothing, and she wondered what she would see, if she turned to look at him, if she met those fox-gold eyes. Inside her was a tight cold scared place, but she didn’t even know what she was afraid of. For a few moments, she’d tasted what it was like to have control. To know the heady power of making someone else bend to her, instead of always bowing and compressing and making herself small to leave room for others to take up space. And now that she knew, she didn’t know how she could go back. Go back to being small; go back to making way for other people, always, always putting them first, and never quite bringing herself to say no.