The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  I tried not to think about Bella’s blanket, about her mother.

  Soon, the place was crawling with feds. The sheriff’s men ushered us to the side. At some point, someone draped a rough brown blanket over my shoulders. Like I was capable of feeling the chill that came with nightfall.

  Or like I was in shock.

  The sheriff arrived not long after they removed the first body. When I looked for Gabriel, I realized, through a thick fog in my brain, that he was gone.

  “Come on.” Cady squatted beside me. “You don’t need to see this.”

  See this.

  See this.

  There were so many people on the scene that I could make out very little. So why could I almost see a woman, lying prone on the floor? Why could I smell blood? My mind was a mess of traps and guns and teeth. It hurts—

  “Hey. Look at me.” That wasn’t Cady’s voice. It was deep and gentle. Somehow, I focused on Mac’s eyes, focused on the fact that he was kneeling in front of me, steady and real.

  He glanced at Cady. “You round up the other kids,” he told her. “Kira and I will be just fine.”

  After a long moment, Cady went to find Free and Jude. Mac and I sat side by side on the ground in silence.

  “When you do what I do, you see things.” Mackinnon Wade was nothing if not soft-spoken. “Natural disasters. Mass graves. The worst tragedies humanity has to offer.” He stretched his right hand out, looking at the back of his knuckles, like the story of those atrocities was inked into his very skin. “And then you come back to civilization, and you bring it with you. Sometimes, you keep those memories under lock and key. And sometimes, they get out. Sometimes, they drag you under, and you’re there, right there, all over again.”

  I closed my eyes. Girl.

  Running—

  Hurts—

  The fragments of memory stabbed at me like shards of glass. I breathed in, and I breathed out, and I breathed through them. Mac’s massive hand covered mine. I forced my eyes open. I didn’t like being touched. I didn’t like to show weakness. I didn’t know this man.

  But somehow, I didn’t want him to let go.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Mac said. “Having ghosts. It took me a long time to learn that, a long time to feel like I was fit for human company, and even longer to believe: The things that haunt us, they make us human.”

  He laid my hand gently in my lap and reached up to unclasp a pendant he wore around his neck. “When I met Cady, I was sixteen. She was fourteen, nosy, and somehow figured out that I was living in my car.”

  I thought that maybe he’d changed the subject for my benefit, to make it clear that he wasn’t talking to get a reply.

  That let me form one. “I bet Cady didn’t like that.”

  “Me living in my car? She hated it. Somehow—and to this day, I don’t know how—I ended up living on the Bennett property.” He looked down at his massive hands. “I built the place myself.”

  I thought of the makeshift cabin where Gabriel was living. Suddenly and without warning, the dam inside me broke.

  “How do you do it?” I asked Mac, rushing the question, the words piling on top of each other like trucks on the freeway. “How do you go out there, again and again, knowing what you’re going to find?”

  “I tell myself that I don’t find bodies,” Mac replied evenly. “I find answers. I find lost ones, and I bring them home.”

  He held out the pendant he’d removed from around his neck. I realized, belatedly, that he wanted me to take it. As my fingers latched around the gift, my chest loosened enough to stop fighting every breath.

  I turned the medallion over to get a better look at it.

  “My personal patron saint,” Mac offered. “The Wades—lovely bunch that we are—happen to be the world’s worst Catholics. You’re looking at the patron saint of lost causes.”

  My fingers tightened around the medallion. Saint Jude. A breath caught in my throat, and slowly, I began to understand why Cady hadn’t been glad to see Mac, why I was okay sitting next to a complete stranger, why Saskia had let him pet her. Mackinnon Wade was calm and collected and centered—and familiar.

  Ash isn’t Jude’s father. Before I could say anything out loud, Cady came back to retrieve me and took us home.

  When I was younger, I had trouble closing my eyes. I needed to be able to see things coming. Changes to routine, sudden movements, unfamiliar environments, unfamiliar people—those sent me straight to high alert.

  Surprises were indistinguishable from attacks.

  Jude had made it his mission in life to run interference on my behalf. Not this time. I felt motion sick, though I knew the gut-rending nausea had nothing to do with the way Cady was driving. Jude can’t run interference, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that Mac is his father. He doesn’t know, and I do.

  As a child, I’d been taught by specialist after specialist to recognize, regulate, and appropriately express my emotions. How do you feel? The question was a thorn, wedged into my flesh. How do I feel? I thought angrily.

  I felt like I’d seen a mass grave. I felt complicit in the way that Bella Anthony’s story had ended. I felt like I had no right to have been the one that Mac told about Saint Jude.

  “Out.” Cady didn’t bother to issue separate orders to the dogs and the three of us when we arrived back at the house. She didn’t say a word to Free, Jude, and me about the way we’d moseyed right into a crime scene. Part of me wanted her to read us the riot act. At least that would have been predictable.

  “Go on,” Cady said once we were inside. “Pack your bags. We leave in the morning.”

  Jude and Free bolted for the stairs like prisoners who’d received a last-minute stay of execution, but my feet felt like they’d been welded to the entryway floor, my chest muscles tightening like a vise around my lungs.

  “We can’t leave,” I burst out.

  “We’re search and rescue, Kira. If you choose this life, you won’t always like what you find.” Cady could have stopped there, but she didn’t. “Do you think I wouldn’t give my right arm to bring that little girl home? Do you think I wanted it to end like this?”

  No. That was what I meant to say. What came out was “It’s not over. It can’t be.”

  I’d stepped back from this search, and where had that gotten us? A barking cadaver dog and unmarked graves. I could picture Bella’s blanket in my mind. I could feel it in my hands.

  “Someone has to tell Bella’s mother,” I said hoarsely. “The police will identify the bodies, and then someone has to tell Bella’s mother. It’s not over.”

  It wouldn’t be over until Bella—like Mac’s lost ones—got to go home.

  “There’s nothing more I can do, Kira,” Cady told me, her voice tight. “And what I’ve already done—it’s cost you and Jude enough.”

  “Jude and I are fine,” I insisted.

  Cady gave me a look. “Jude is the world’s leading expert at pretending to be fine, at willing himself to be fine, but even he has his limits. And don’t tell me that this search hasn’t taken a toll on you. I saw you back at the clearing. I felt you remembering things that no child should ever have to experience.” Cady’s voice was shot through with emotion. “I won’t stand by and watch you go through it all a second time.”

  “What if I want to remember?” I’d spent a lifetime walking in minefields. If I was the one who blew them up, at least I’d have a choice about it.

  At least I’d see it coming.

  Cady pressed her eyes closed—just for a second—before she responded. “If that’s what you want, then I can set up an appointment with Dr. Wilder. But not yet—not until you’re sure, not here, not because I dragged you into this mess.”

  This mess. As in the search she’d kicked me off of? The child we couldn’t save? Or the entire life she’d hidden from us, like we didn’t—like Jude didn’t—have a right to know?

  “Mac is Jude’s father.” I tried out the words. It felt like r
ipping off a bandage, though whether the wound in question was mine or Jude’s or Cady’s, I wasn’t sure.

  Opposite me, Cady fell silent.

  “Does Mac know?” I asked, taking a step forward. “Does Jude?”

  “I can’t do this with you, Kira.”

  “We could stay,” I told Cady, reaching out to lay a hand on her arm. “Just for a few days. Just until they catch the person who took Bella.”

  “They might never catch the person who took Bella.” Cady took a step back, away from my touch. “Get packed. I want to be on the road at first light.”

  Cady knew that I didn’t do physical contact easily. I couldn’t ever remember her shrugging me off. It made me want to fold in on myself, retreat.

  “So that’s the plan, is it? You’re just going to run away again?”

  I turned to see Ness standing in the doorway between the entry and the kitchen. The older woman coughed, and I remembered Free mentioning that she was down with the flu. Dark smudges circled her eyes, but her posture more closely resembled a general on the verge of leading his troops into battle.

  “I’m not running away,” Cady said carefully.

  Ness gave Cady a look that reminded me of every warning look Cady had ever given Free, Jude, and me. “Little girl, you’ve been running for years.” The old woman let those words

  sink in, then turned on her heel. I could hear her slamming her way through the kitchen, banging open a cabinet.

  “Ness.” Cady followed her. I followed Cady, then pulled back when Ness turned from filling a teapot with water to whomping it down onto the stove.

  “You need to forgive your father, Cadence.” Ness didn’t pull her punches.

  “That’s between him and me.”

  Ness turned on the stove, then pivoted to face Cady. “I love you. I raised you as much as Bales did, and Ash was my son. I’d say that gives me a stake in this.”

  “My kids come first,” Cady said, her voice steely. “And I—”

  Ness didn’t let her finish. “Your father’s dying.”

  Cady stepped back, her right hand gripping the kitchen sink so hard that even from my spot in the doorway, I could see her knuckles turning white. Silence reigned between the two of them until the teapot began to whistle. Ness grabbed a faded kitchen towel, moved the pot off the stove, then grabbed a mug from the still-open cabinet overhead.

  “The stubborn old coot won’t tell you that he’s sick. He’s too proud to ask you to stay.” Ness poured hot water into a mug. Her hands shook slightly as she fetched a tea bag. “So I will.”

  “That’s why Bales asked Cady to come back for this search.” I wasn’t usually a person who thought out loud, but Cady was still standing there, white-knuckled and frozen, and all I could think about was what Bales had said about regret. “He wanted another chance.”

  “Smart girl,” Ness commented. She nodded toward the open cabinet. “If you’re the type for tea, help yourself.”

  Cady let go of the sink and walked over to Ness. “He could have just told me.”

  Ness fixed Cady with a look over her mug. “Your daddy’s been trying to get in touch with you for years, Cady. Letters. Calls. Emails. You never even responded.”

  “You know what he did.” Cady didn’t just sound angry. She sounded gutted. “You were there, Ness. When I came to my father on bended knee, when I groveled, when I begged—”

  “There was nothing he could do.” Ness slammed her tea down onto the counter.

  “He had contacts,” Cady insisted quietly. “In South America. But calling them in was too dangerous. He wouldn’t—”

  “He couldn’t,” Ness insisted. She shook her head and quietly got two more mugs down from the cabinet. “Not with the risks you’d already taken. Not when it was clear as day you’d take more.”

  “That was my choice.”

  “It was a suicide mission,” Ness countered, her mouth set into a grim line. “Do you think, even for a second, that’s what Ash would have wanted? My son loved you, Cady. He was in love with you. And you were pregnant.”

  I saw Cady swallow. “Ash and I weren’t…” she started to say. “Jude isn’t…Ash isn’t his…”

  Ness poured two more mugs of tea—one for Cady and one for me. “Whatever you were or weren’t,” Ness said, brushing off Cady’s words like they were nothing, “we’re family, Cadence Bennett, and if you’re half the woman I raised you to be, you’ll think long and hard about what that means.”

  By daybreak, our car was packed. Four humans, five large dogs, and a metric ton of family secrets took the atmosphere right from claustrophobic to suffocating.

  I felt like I’d left a part of myself—maybe the most important part—back in the park.

  When Cady pulled off at a gas station on the way out of town, a niggling panic built inside me. She hadn’t given me a choice about being kicked off the search. She wasn’t giving me a choice about leaving now. She hadn’t told Jude the truth about Mac or the truth about Bales.

  “I will admit that this is an unfortunate turn of events.” Jude turned in the front seat to look at me the moment Cady got out to pump the gas. “I had hoped for at least one family bonding moment before we left.” He swallowed. “And Bella…”

  Hearing Jude’s voice break broke me.

  “We did what we could.” Free set her jaw, but even I could see that she didn’t believe what she’d just said.

  We should have done more.

  “Darn our human limitations,” Jude said out loud.

  Bales is dying, I thought in reply. Mac is your father, and Cady’s just running away.

  “Don’t look now,” Free murmured, “but we’ve got company.”

  I turned to look just in time to see Mackinnon Wade climb out of his car and stride toward Cady. The pendant he had given me was in my pocket. My fingers closed around it as Cady turned toward him. I searched Mac’s face for some resemblance to Jude’s.

  “What do you think they’re saying?” my foster brother asked. “Do you think it’s dramatic? I bet it’s dramatic.”

  “Whatever the Gentle Giant is saying,” Free interjected, “Cady does not look happy about it.”

  I could make out tension in Cady’s lips, an odd glint in her eyes.

  “That’s not anger,” Jude said quietly. “It’s not sadness. It’s hope.”

  Hope? Hope for what? I didn’t risk asking that question aloud, in case he was wrong.

  Cady opened the driver’s side door. “Something’s come up. Pad”—the dog’s ears twitched forward—“you’re with me.” Cady snapped her fingers, and the golden leapt from the car to stand beside her. “As for the rest of you…” Cady tossed her car keys to Jude. “Head back to the house. Tell Ness and Bales that preliminary analysis suggests that all five bodies we recovered yesterday were adults.”

  Adults. My heart slammed against my rib cage. As in, not Bella.

  She’s alive.

  “Mac and I are headed back to the site,” Cady continued, “and so help me, if you three even think about following, I will devote the time between now and your eighteenth birthdays to constructing new and inventive ways to make you rue your collective existence on this planet. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal!” Jude chirped.

  “Message received,” Free confirmed.

  Cady turned to me. I said nothing, but I did reach forward to grip her hand. I thought she might push me away again. Instead, she squeezed back.

  “No giving up this time,” she told me. “No running away.”

  A ball of emotion rose in my throat, and a moment later, Cady was gone.

  “Bella might still be out there,” I said. If I could say it, maybe I could believe it. “She might still be alive.”

  I hadn’t promised Cady that I would stay out of this, because I wasn’t sure that I could—or should. We needed to do everything we could for a child people had given up on. For Bella.

  For Girl.

  I blinked, and suddenly, Jude wa
s pulling the car onto the gravel drive leading up to the Bennett property. I’d lost time. Seconds? Minutes? I wasn’t sure. I focused on the here and now—and the fact that we weren’t alone.

  “That’s the sheriff’s car,” Jude commented, pulling up beside it. “And that’s the sheriff. And that’s—”

  “Gabriel.” I finished Jude’s sentence, my jaw clamping down as I registered the way the sheriff shoved Gabriel as he marched him toward the car.

  As I registered the handcuffs on Gabriel’s wrists.

  Trapped. I felt like I was looking at the wolf from my memory, his leg caught between vicious metal jaws. But Gabriel didn’t thrash or fight, didn’t so much as resist as the sheriff put a hand on the back of his neck and roughly pushed him into the backseat of the police cruiser.

  “Don’t. Touch. Him.” I was out of the car and inches from the sheriff in a heartbeat. I was vaguely aware that Saskia had followed me, that Silver—as old as she was—stood at my other side, her teeth bared.

  “Don’t,” Gabriel said sharply. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or the dogs. He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before the sheriff shut the car door.

  “I would advise you to take a step back,” the sheriff told me before shifting his gaze to my canine companions, like they were the real threat.

  “Stepping back now!” Jude put himself between me and the sheriff. “And since we’re stepping back,” he said cheerfully, as he began herding me away from the sheriff, inch by inch, “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind telling us exactly what you’ve arrested our good friend Gabriel for.”

  “He’s not under arrest.” The sheriff didn’t sound particularly happy about that. “He’s just coming down to the station to answer some questions.”

  “Without a lawyer?” Free inquired politely, squatting down next to the dogs, calming them the way Jude had calmed me. “And under duress?”

  “Do you want to mention the handcuffs?” Jude asked me. “Or should I?”

  I wanted to show my teeth. I wanted the sheriff to look at me and know that I knew exactly what kind of coward he was.

  “We have reason to believe that Gabriel might know something about Bella’s kidnapper,” the sheriff told us before offering me a very small close-lipped smile. “But if you would like to explain how it is that you and Gabriel found the cave where Bella was being kept, why Gabriel decided to take a road trip to Alden, and how the whole lot of you just happened to stumble across a mass burial site exactly as it was being uncovered, I’d be glad to take your statement as well, Kira.”