The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “So?” I didn’t have energy or words to waste on why I’d come. I was literally holding my past in my hand, and I had just as literally gone for the sheriff’s jugular. If Bales had arrived a minute later, there might have been no coming back.

  “I could have told you they would separate us, Kira.” Gabriel kept his tone light, but the glint in his eyes was anything but. “Do you think I was in a better position knowing that if I didn’t give him what he wanted, he’d be more than happy to go play games with you in the other room?”

  What he wanted, I thought. And what exactly did he want, Gabriel?

  “Seriously, princess, do you really think having you here helped?”

  The fact that he could stand there and call me princess, like I was some pampered, spoiled little girl, like he had to protect me, pushed me over the edge.

  “Do you really think,” I echoed his own phrasing back to him, “that your brother is dead?” That was what he’d led me to believe back in the caves—he’d talked about accidents, about dropping dead, about predators.

  Gabriel’s face went blank.

  “Or do you think,” I continued, “that he has Bella?”

  * * *

  Gabriel didn’t give me an answer. He split the second we got back to the house.

  “I’ll send Jude and Free out,” Bales told me. Cady’s father seemed to know that he couldn’t fix this—or me.

  “Don’t,” I said abruptly. “I want to be alone.”

  “I find myself doubting that, Kira,” Bales said gently.

  “Please.” That was all I could manage—and all it took for him to leave me to my own devices. The file I’d taken from the sheriff’s office was heavy in my hands. It had my picture in it. It had my mother’s. But a file that thick? There had to be more.

  Police described the abuse as intermittent but severe. They think you used to take refuge in the forest to escape.

  Something wet and cold brushed the back of my hand—NATO. When I looked down at him, his tail started to wag.

  “Go away, NATO.”

  If Jude’s hound had been capable of smiling, he would have beamed at me—right until Saskia appeared between us and bit his nose. NATO yelped and backed up. After a moment’s contemplation, he darted forward again to lick Saskia’s face, then took off running before she could respond.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” I told Saskia. I wondered if she could tell from my tone that I wasn’t feeling very nice, either. Looking at her, I saw her the way she’d looked when we’d found her, bone-thin and bleeding. Someone had dumped her in Cady’s yard because they knew that Cady wouldn’t turn away a stray.

  My fingers tightened around the police file in my hand. My file. Something unnameable inside me cracked slowly open, something dark and cavernous and ugly.

  I read the file.

  The writing was detailed. The pictures were worse. My initial medical exam had been intensive. The doctors had documented my injuries, old and new. I’d always thought that the scars that marked my body were from the forest. According to what I read, some were.

  Some weren’t.

  That truth was like a shard of glass ground into my stomach. Everything inside me threatened to come up. I’d known—of course I’d known—that whatever family I’d had before was probably either dead or didn’t care much if I was. I had to have ended up in the forest somehow. But part of me—the stupid part, the hopeful part, the part that hadn’t looked for answers—had wanted to believe that I was normal once.

  That before I’d been Girl, I’d just been a girl. Not a dirty little animal who deserved what happened to her.

  “Kira!” Jude appeared beside me and hooked his arm through mine. “I have gathered that Gabriel Cortez is a withholding withholder who withholds.”

  Jude thought I was out here because of Gabriel—because Gabriel had lied to me. Misled me.

  Same difference.

  “In his defense, he just met us.” Listening to Jude’s voice was like looking unblinkingly into a too-bright light. “We can hardly blame him for not realizing how awesomely trustworthy and mind-blowingly nonjudgmental we are.”

  Go away, Jude. I wanted to send him running, the way Saskia had done to NATO. But I couldn’t, and Saskia took one look at the two of us and left me to fend for myself.

  “I am sure all our questions will be answered in time,” Jude declared. He was always sure. He never doubted.

  Jude had never had the underside of his arm pressed into a hot stove.

  “Kira?” Jude’s gaze fell on the police file in my hand.

  I jerked my arm away from his and stepped back. I didn’t want him to see the pictures.

  Stomach hurts. The memory pulled me under. It’s dark outside. I’m hungry. So hungry. Maybe she’s asleep. I can be quiet. I can be small. I can be quick.

  I almost make it to the kitchen. Then I see her. She’s facedown on the tile floor.

  Not moving.

  Blood. The memories started piling on, fast and frantic, spinning. I could only see bits and pieces, but I could feel—running. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. You’ll be safe in the forest.

  Hide.

  “Hey.” Jude bent down until his face was even with mine. “It’s okay, Kira. Whatever you’re remembering—it’s not real. You’re safe now. You’re here.”

  “It is real.” I expected that statement to come out garbled, but it didn’t. My eyes were dry, but I couldn’t stand to blink. The thick folder in my hands blurred in front of me. “The sheriff had my file. I have it now.”

  Jude sucked in a breath. “You don’t have to read it.”

  “I already have.” It was right there on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything, to purge the poison, to bleed it onto him. My biological mother hurt me. Whenever she was drinking—I learned to stay away. The police thought I used to take refuge in the forest when it was bad.

  When it was bad…

  “Whatever the file says…” Jude’s voice somehow broke through the cacophony in my head. “It doesn’t matter, Kira mine. It doesn’t change anything.”

  “You don’t know.” The words flew out of me, living, breathing, angry.

  An expression flickered over Jude’s achingly familiar features. Not quite sorrow.

  Guilt?

  “Jude?” I managed.

  He didn’t reply. The last thing I’d said hung between us. You don’t know.

  “Mom had a talk with me when you came to live with us,” he said softly.

  I realized then what should have been obvious: Cady knew. Of course she knew. She’d adopted me. She’d been a part of the search. She’d probably seen this file.

  Cady knew. Jude knew.

  “Mom said not to ask you about it—not unless you brought it up first. She said…” Jude swallowed, his Adam’s apple tensing against his skin. “She said that if the worst thing you could remember was the forest, then maybe that was a blessing. She said that it was our job to protect you.”

  At some point in Jude’s confession, my grip on the file must have loosened, because I dropped it. A gust of wind blew the folder open. My past—the statements, the pictures—scattered.

  Anyone could see them.

  I lunged, stumbling to my knees to get them back. Jude knelt beside me, his fingers capturing a wayward page. I ripped it away from him.

  “Go,” I said.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “You lied to me,” I said, my voice eerily calm, even to my own ears. “My whole life—you knew, and you kept this from me.” I’d told Bales not to send Jude out here. And now I was naked and raw and bleeding, and Jude wouldn’t leave.

  “I’ve been keeping things from you, too,” I heard myself say. “Bales is dying.” I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t. Sometimes, a wounded animal nipped as a warning.

  And sometimes it bit to draw blood.

  “Cady knows,” I continued, “but she won’t forgive him. She won’t stay.”

  Hurting Jude didn�
�t make me hurt any less.

  “Ash isn’t your father. He had a thing for Cady, but she had one for Mac.” I pulled the Saint Jude pendant from the pocket of my jeans and held it out to the boy who’d been my anchor, my friend, my everything before I’d known how to be anything back. “Mac gave me this.” I nodded to the medallion as Jude took the necklace from my hand. “That’s his patron saint.”

  “Saint Jude.” Jude’s voice was as quiet as mine now.

  He left.

  I chased down most of the pages, but a few got away from me. Within an hour, I was tired of looking and done running after ghosts. Most of all, I was sick of replaying my conversation with Jude. I’d hurt him. I’d known I was doing it, and I’d done it anyway, and why?

  Because he knew what I was, what I’d survived. He’d always known—and maybe he thought he’d been protecting me. Maybe he and Cady had done what needed to be done, but I didn’t want to be that girl.

  I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want them to know, either.

  For once, the open sky overhead did nothing to calm the twisting, aching awful inside me. The trees and grass and dirt weren’t comforting or familiar. They just reminded me what I’d known as a child: No matter how far you ran, you couldn’t stay out of arm’s reach forever.

  Sooner or later, you had to go home.

  I made it into the house and up to the bedroom Free and I had been sharing without running into Jude or Bales, for which I was grateful. But my luck ran out when I opened the bedroom door.

  “You look about as good as Jude does.” Free was standing near the window. I wondered where she’d been, wondered if she’d talked to Jude, wondered if she knew.

  “I need to lie down,” I said.

  I need you to not be here.

  “Jude is a happy guy,” Free commented, ignoring my silent message. “Pathologically, unerringly, purposefully happy at almost all times.” She paused. “If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that if the two of you had a fight, Jude’s not the one who picked it.”

  “It wasn’t a fight.” I didn’t elaborate. What did you call using the truth as a weapon? What was the word for looking at someone you loved and feeling like your guts had been hollowed out?

  “You hurt him.” Free was never one to sugarcoat things. “Whether you meant to or not—”

  “I meant to,” I said quietly.

  Free gave me a long, assessing look. “Then you and I have a fundamental disagreement about how you treat family.”

  She was right. I knew she was right. But all I could do was repeat myself as I turned my back on her. “I need to lie down.”

  I need you to go away.

  “Not until you tell me what happened.” Free’s hand closed around my arm. She forced me to face her, and for a moment—just a moment—I wanted to hurt her. Not the way I’d hurt Jude. I wanted to hurt her the way I’d hurt Gabriel when he’d grabbed me. I wanted to let everything inside me—the anger and the sorrow and the fear—out.

  No.

  “Seriously, K, Miscreant to Miscreant—”

  “Go away, Free.” I felt desperate, but I sounded angry.

  Free dropped my arm. For a split second, I saw something raw and vulnerable cross her features, and then all hint of emotion disappeared from her face. “Fine.”

  When I heard the bedroom door shut behind her, I shuddered. Once I started shaking, I couldn’t stop. I curled into a ball on the bed, and a desperate, keening sound made its way out of my throat.

  I was supposed to be stronger than this.

  I was supposed to be better than this.

  I was supposed to protect the people I loved.

  I noticed my bag sitting beside the bed. Free must have brought it up, just like she’d packed it for me. A horrible, twisting tension spread from my stomach outward. Sadness was a visceral emotion for me, as white-hot and sharp-edged as rage. One second I was lying there, and the next, my hands were tearing through my bag. I hurled the things Free had packed for me to the ground, one by one. I ripped a shirt, the cotton giving way beneath my need to do something, to hurt something. I heard the shirt tearing, and I felt it, and it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t stop, not until my fingernails scraped the bottom of the bag and hit fabric. Threadbare. Soft.

  Free had packed my blanket.

  I stopped breathing and sank to the floor, pressing it to my face, a sob caught in my throat. I heard someone padding toward me—Silver. I hadn’t even realized she was in the room. This had been her blanket once.

  She’d seen me at my worst. Then. Now.

  My constant guardian pressed her nose to my neck. I didn’t push her away. I hadn’t, even when I was wild and hurting and small.

  “It shouldn’t matter,” I said through the blanket, squeezing my eyes shut and breathing in Silver’s smell. “What happened to me before the forest shouldn’t matter. Whether or not Jude knew—it shouldn’t matter.”

  I fisted my hands in her fur—gently, but I couldn’t let go. “I know that I’m your pup, and I’m Cady’s kid and Jude’s sister and Free’s friend, but when you all treat me like I’m fragile, like I’m some bomb on the verge of going off…”

  I don’t feel human. I don’t feel like a person at all.

  Silver lay down next to me, her body pressed up against mine. Silver is here. Kira is here. Silver is here with Kira. I buried my face in her fur. I listened for her heartbeat instead of my own.

  I broke.

  I didn’t understand why I’d let a man like the sheriff do this to me. I choked on my own sobs, unable to understand what was wrong with me.

  And Silver nudged my neck with her wet nose, saying—for the hundredth time or the thousandth or the millionth—that there was nothing wrong with me at all.

  Girl’s mouth is dry. Her lips are cracked. There’s dried blood beneath her nails.

  She tries to sit up but can’t. Can’t move—

  “There you are.” The woman’s voice is sweet. She kneels next to Girl, and Girl flinches, but the hand that touches her face is gentle.

  Soft.

  In the light of the moon, the woman begins digging. She half buries first one rock, then another. Girl’s fingernails claw at the grass beneath her. Her body writhes, but she still can’t sit up. She can’t run.

  No. This can’t be happening.

  This never happened.

  The world shudders with that realization, and suddenly, I’m standing beside my younger self and watching—watching the dark-haired woman and the writhing child, and I know that this isn’t a memory. It’s a dream—just a dream—but still, I can’t turn away. I can’t stop watching the dark-haired woman as she completes the Circle and stands to examine her work.

  Her eyes meet mine.

  “Someone’s coming,” she whispers. “Hide.”

  I bolted up in bed. A glance at the clock told me that I hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour. The sun was still shining outside. Jude and Free were nowhere in sight.

  Except for Silver, I was alone.

  My canine guardian was asleep beside me, lying on her side. I laid a hand on her head, stroked it down the length of her body, the dream lingering in my mind. I forced myself to sort through the tangle of now and then, imaginary and real, and at some point, I realized that Silver wasn’t moving.

  She wasn’t responding to my touch.

  Her chest wasn’t rising or falling.

  She’s not breathing. That thought stilled the breath in my own lungs. “Silver.” I said her name quietly at first, then louder. I cupped her head in my hands. I petted her, and I told her that she was a good girl, and I waited for her to wake up.

  Wake up, Silver. Please—

  I’d known objectively that she was old for a German shepherd. I’d known that she wouldn’t be with me forever. But not now, not like this—

  “She’s gone.” I wanted to take back the whispered words. Saying it made it real, and I needed it not to be real. I needed her to wake up. I needed to save her, the wa
y that she had saved me.

  That day in the ravine. The weeks and months that followed. Every nightmare, every morning when I woke up—

  I didn’t cry. I couldn’t, because Silver wasn’t there to put me back together, to lick my face and nudge my neck and let me break.

  She was gone.

  I curled my body around hers. I held her, the way a man dangling off a cliff holds on to the side. But I couldn’t hold on forever. Slowly, I wrapped my oldest friend in a sheet from the bed. I carried her down the stairs, struggling under the weight, but unwilling to let myself even think about dropping her. If it killed me, I’d get her out of this house.

  I’d get her outside.

  I laid her out beneath the tree where I’d slept my first night. I knelt down next to her. I told her, again and again, that she was brave, that she was good, that she was perfect.

  You were mine.

  I wanted Jude and Free, but most of all, I wanted Cady. I wanted someone who’d loved Silver as much as I had, who’d loved me as fiercely and as steadfastly as the faithful dog had—day after day, year after year, even when there was nothing in me to love.

  “How old was she?” Gabriel knelt beside me, his eyes on Silver’s body, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it.

  “Twelve. Almost thirteen.”

  Gabriel was quiet for almost a minute. “Doesn’t make it any easier,” he said.

  I shook my head. Someday, it would be Saskia—and NATO and Duchess and every dog I loved, unless something killed me first.

  “Do you want to bury her?” Gabriel asked me.

  No. I didn’t want to put Silver in the ground. I didn’t want to pile dirt on top of her. I didn’t want to say good-bye.

  I forced myself to nod. When Gabriel fetched a shovel, I took it from his hands, and I wouldn’t give it back—not even when my fingers began to blister from digging and my palms began to bleed.

  Silver had spent most of her life taking care of me. I could do this—this one thing—for her.

  As Gabriel and I lowered Silver’s body into the grave, Saskia found us. She stood silently beside me, and when I began shoveling dirt onto Silver, the husky threw back her head and howled.