The Unremembered Girl: A Novel

by Eliza Maxwell

  The river came up to meet him, and the sounds of water rushing around him filled his ears as he was swallowed whole. With no time to waste, he fought his way to the surface, knowing all the while that seconds counted. Seconds could be the difference between life and death.

  As he broke through the water to the darkening day around him, he was oriented north. He could see Livingston, still standing upriver on the shallow plateau. He could see Mama, her hand over her mouth as she stood at the edge of the water. But as his eyes scanned the river surrounding him, he had a moment of anguish when he couldn’t find the girl. Gone, just like she’d never been.

  He was too late.

  “There! Henry, there!” his mother cried, pointing.

  He turned his head, just in time to see a dark form break the surface of the water to his right. He reached out a hand, lunging toward her, but she was too far away. He came back with nothing.

  But he’d be damned if he let her go now.

  With a burst of determination, Henry sliced through the water, pushing himself to reach her. He had to reach her this time. He’d only get one more chance.

  Praying he was close enough, and with a growing sense of dread that he’d come up empty-handed again, he made a grab for the dark fabric being carried away from him.

  And missed.

  His hand passed just millimeters from the girl’s ratty clothing. It may as well have been miles.

  Failure exploded upon him in a mushroom cloud as his hand passed through empty water.

  Images of another body in the water flashed through his mind. Another girl he’d been too late to save. Those images were so powerful, so debilitating, that when his hand, still open and clutching, came into contact with a limb below the surface of the water, he very nearly fumbled his final chance.

  But his hand, reacting before his brain had a chance to battle its way out of the thorny maze of painful memories, had a mind of its own. With a grip that wouldn’t allow another one to be taken by the river—not today—it tightened upon the arm of the girl from the woods, holding fast.

  The river still carried them, pushing and pulling farther and farther downstream, but now they were two.

  Henry yanked the girl toward him, and her head broke the surface, wet hair hanging across her face, but they weren’t in the clear yet. She wasn’t moving.

  He turned her on her back, gripping her beneath the arms with one hand while he fought his way to the edge of the river. His legs and one free arm pulled them closer and closer, until finally, he was able to come near enough that the undertow let them loose.

  Henry pulled the girl up onto the bank. She wasn’t breathing, nothing but pale skin and dead weight. Adrenaline was pumping through him as he pushed the wet hair away from her face.

  With desperation and prayers, Henry brought his mouth to hers, pushing air into her lungs, willing her to live. This girl he didn’t know, didn’t even want to know, couldn’t die on him here. Not like this.

  He pushed air in again, then moved to press the heels of his hands upon her chest—one, two, ten, twenty, thirty times.

  “Breathe, damn you, breathe,” he whispered, over and over, river water dripping from him onto her unmoving body.

  But she didn’t.

  Leaning in, he forced air into her lungs again, with all the crushing weight of loss that was beginning to descend on him.

  “Live, damn it. Live,” he demanded as he pushed on her chest again. “I don’t have room on my back to carry your death too.”

  Henry didn’t know if there was a God listening or not, but if there was, it was his mother’s God. The one who lived in the beauty of the woods, the one who had a cruel side, and a merciful side as well.

  The girl coughed. River water spewed from her mouth as her body jerked and gagged, expelling the liquid from her lungs and throat.

  Turning her on her side, Henry laid his head on the girl’s shoulder and closed his eyes while she coughed up death. He sucked in long, deep breaths, trying to quiet the shaking that was taking over his body.

  He sent up a prayer of thanks, just in case anyone was listening.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They stood apart, beneath the shared blanket of the night. Eve had been quiet since their return from the river. Henry had no way of knowing the thoughts that must have been churning behind her enigmatic eyes. But he’d given up trying to fight his compulsion to find out.

  As she stood with the moon behind her, he watched her with a focus he didn’t care to examine. Eve held her arms tightly around herself, and he was struck by how the changes in her managed to highlight the things that remained the same. Her hair hung down her back, revealing a face that might have been washed clean of dirt and grime, yet still gave nothing away. Her posture was tall, claiming more space in the world, but her shoulders still turned inward upon herself. Her clothes were clean, an old sundress of Mari’s and an oversized cardigan, but they hung from her frame in a loose way that proclaimed them not her own. She didn’t seem to notice, or care.

  He’d never seen anyone who looked so apart from the rest of the human race.

  Taking the steps down the porch, he approached her, drawn in by her isolation. Once at her side, he searched for words that might let her know that she wasn’t alone. If she didn’t want to be, that was.

  He failed, and settled instead on putting his hands in his pockets and hoping his presence alone could convey that.

  After a while, she turned her head to meet his eyes. She didn’t smile, and neither did he.

  “You saved me,” she said, studying him.

  It wasn’t a question, and he needn’t reply, so he remained silent and waited to see if she’d say more.

  “Why?” she asked finally.

  He drew back. What kind of question was that? He opened his mouth to say the obvious things. Because you needed help. Because it’s what anyone would have done. Because I couldn’t let you drown.

  But those weren’t the words that came out.

  “A long time ago, my sister died. In the river. Alone. Her skin was cold and pale when I found her. I still dream about it sometimes.”

  Eve tilted her head to the side, peering at him. She offered no condolences or sympathy, and he was glad of it. He imagined her as a person who’d been whittled down to the core, with nothing left over for social niceties or expectations. Nothing left but sinew and bone. He shook his head at himself. How would he know?

  “You cared for her?” Eve asked.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  She nodded, then turned her face back to the dark outline of the forest that surrounded them.

  “Do you have family? That you miss? Someone that’s missing you?” He didn’t want to pry, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  She looked back toward him, but her eyes grew unfocused, and he had the feeling that she was gazing at something else entirely.

  “No,” she said shortly, turning away.

  “Who are you?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Where do you come from?”

  He saw a shiver run through her, and she held her arms more tightly around her body.

  “No one,” she whispered, while Henry strained to hear her. “I’m no one. From nowhere.”

  The words rang with a hollow, haunting note of desolation, pulling at Henry in a deep, dark place that he hardly knew existed. Those words wrapped around his soul, and he yearned to give her better, determined that this was one thing he could do. He could fix it. For this one woman, this one broken soul, he could make things right.

  He’d failed before, failed with Mari, and now she was gone forever, nothing left of her save the memories that haunted those who’d loved her but never understood her.

  He wouldn’t fail again.

  “Not anymore,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  The first time Henry had met Eve’s eyes, he’d felt pierced through. With these words, he formed the first unbreakable thread that would bind them together. He did it without con
scious thought, with no regard to the consequences.

  In the weeks that followed, a thousand more tiny stitches were woven through their hearts. When Eve plucked a wildflower to give to Mama—a child’s gesture of admiration that lit his mother’s face—another stitch. When she turned her silent face to the morning sun, soaking it in like she’d never bathed in its light before, another.

  When Mama taught her to weave on her old loom, a pursuit his mother had shown little interest in since the cancer, and they both laughed like girls at Eve’s first awkward scraps of cloth, yet another stitch was pulled taut.

  When Eve began to make a deep guttural sound in her throat at Livingston’s sharp words toward Mama over dinner, a sound that brought to mind a wolf warning of imminent danger, his mother patted her hand and reassured Eve that all was well.

  And another stitch tightened.

  In quiet ways, a strange love grew. Not with a bang, not with hugs and kisses, but silently, insidiously. Neither Henry nor Eve knew they were resting in the eye of a storm, a storm of their own making.

  When the winds of that storm inevitably began to blow, they’d have nothing to cling to but one another. Nothing to shield them from the fallout, when life and death came crashing together with a thunderous roar and a strange, inevitable love became stained with obsession.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  One month later

  “Henry, my boy, come on back to my office after you unload that whiskey and we’ll get your money sorted out.”

  King Barrett, proprietor of the local beer joint, was in a good mood that day. Henry normally had to hunt him down to get paid. Worse, if it was “his time of the month,” as his wife, Raylene, referred to those dark days when taxes came due, Henry would have to sit through an endless rant about the “evil, thieving hand of the guv’ment” before King handed over payment. He’d heard it so many times, he knew just where to throw in the occasional “Obviously,” or “Criminal, ought to be locked up, the lot of them,” until King ran out of steam.

  Henry glanced over toward the bar, where Raylene had given Eve a bottle of orange soda. He could hear the two women chatting. Well, Raylene did the talking, but Eve gave the occasional shy smile as she sipped the sugary drink and listened to the older woman flutter on. It was early, and the place was nearly empty.

  “It’s all there,” King said, handing over an envelope of cash when Henry joined him in his cramped back office.

  “Sure it is, you sneaky old SOB,” Henry said, opening the envelope to count the money. “And I had to duck to miss the pigs flying past when I came through the back door.”

  Far from apologetic, King just shrugged. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

  Opening a drawer in his desk, he pulled out an additional bill and handed it over.

  Henry counted it anyway, then raised an eyebrow at the bar owner.

  With a sigh, King reached in the drawer again and added another bill to the stack.

  “You’re heartless, son. Just like your daddy before you.”

  Folding up the envelope and sliding it into his back pocket, Henry gave King a nod.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Intended as one,” King said, patting Henry on the shoulder as they walked out of the office. “You know, Henry, there’s been lots of talk going around.”

  “Talk tends to do that.”

  “Don’t give me any guff, boy. I’m concerned.”

  Henry’s brows shot up. “You’re concerned? About what?”

  “This mystery girl you got hanging around,” King said in a low voice, nodding toward the bar. “People are saying a lot of crazy things.”

  King stood there looking at Henry like a tabloid reporter waiting on the inside scoop.

  “And?”

  “What do you mean ‘And’? Don’t you want to set them straight?”

  “You’d do that for me, King? Set them straight?”

  King leaned in conspiratorially. “Course I would, Henry. You know you can count on old King.”

  Henry thought about it for a moment, then nodded solemnly.

  “All right, then. You tell them . . . You tell them that that girl . . .” Henry leaned in closer to King. “That girl out there is none of their damn business.”

  King stood straighter and shook his head at Henry. “Go on with you, then. You Martells. A more tight-fisted, closed-lipped bunch of—”

  The sounds of shouting and glass shattering interrupted them. Henry turned away from King and ran toward the bar, where the voices were coming from, becoming louder by the moment.

  As he skidded around the corner, Henry took in the sight of Eve backing away from a man on the same side of the bar. Her eyes were bright and wide, her breathing shallow. She was holding the broken orange soda bottle by the neck, like a knife, in a tight, unflinching grip.

  Raylene was frozen with a bar towel in her hand, shocked into stillness by the sudden and violent shift of what had been a fine morning. But it was the old drunk bleeding onto the front of his shirt from a cut on his cheek who was making all the noise.

  “Ah, Lordy, I’m bleeding! I didn’t mean you no harm, girl,” Dwight Pennick was saying, as he took his hand from his cheek to look at the blood on his palm.

  Behind Dwight’s words, Henry could hear King speaking on the phone. “Send one of the deputies down to my place, Gladys,” he was saying to the dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Department. “We got ourselves a problem, and it ain’t even lunchtime yet.”

  Henry came around the corner of the bar and stood in front of Eve. He had to stoop to put his face in her line of sight, and he watched her eyes come back to focus on him.

  “Eve, give me the bottle,” he said in a voice that was calm but brooked no argument.

  She looked down at her hand, as if noticing the broken glass for the first time. It had spots of blood clinging to the sharp parts, bright and red.

  He placed his hands slowly around hers, and peeled her fingers from the makeshift weapon.

  “Henry, I swear, I didn’t mean her no harm. I just walked up to say hey there and introduce myself to a pretty girl. I didn’t mean to scare her none.”

  Henry set the broken bottle on the bar but kept his eyes on Eve as he spoke to the man he’d known his entire life. Dwight was seventy, if he was a day, and he’d spent most of those days avoiding work and searching for his next beer. The only things he’d ever been dangerous to were the fish in the river.

  “I know, Dwight, I know. No worries, man. How bad is it, Raylene?” he asked.

  The bar owner’s wife had come around and was taking a look at Dwight’s face.

  “Oh, I think he’s gonna live,” she said. “I got a first-aid kit behind the bar, Dwight. A little disinfectant and a butterfly bandage or two, and you’ll be right as rain.”

  Dwight, God love him, was still trying to apologize as he let Raylene lead him, casting a wide berth around Henry and Eve, to the back of the bar so she could doctor his cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Henry. Ma’am, I didn’t mean no disrespect, I promise you.”

  Eve hardly looked at him as he passed by. Her eyes were locked on Henry’s.

  “Come on, Eve,” he said, leading her to a table away from the bar. “Everything’s okay. You just sit down in this chair right here. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded and dropped into a chair. Henry knelt in front of her.

  “You’re okay. You’re safe. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Do you understand what I’m telling you? You’re safe.”

  She nodded again.

  “Now, I need to go and check on Dwight. You just sit tight, okay?”

  Looking down at her hands, twisting one upon the other in her lap, she nodded again.

  With one last glance at her, Henry turned back to the three people gathered at the bar. Raylene was dabbing at Dwight’s face with a cotton swab, and King was standing by with his hands on his hips.

  “Damn, Henry, I feel real bad about scaring the gir
l.”

  “He really didn’t do anything, Henry. Just sat down next to her,” Raylene said, meeting his eyes with a worried look of her own, then looking back at her patient. “Guess you’ll think twice before you stick that ugly mug of yours in a woman’s face again, won’t you?”

  Dwight chuckled, then winced as Raylene dabbed some more alcohol on his cheek. “If that ain’t the truth.”

  They all turned as the front door swung open, letting the morning sun come in along with Brady Watson in his brown deputy’s uniform.

  “Took you long enough,” King said.

  “It’s been all of a minute and a half since Gladys got me on the radio,” Brady said, rolling his eyes at King. “You’re lucky, I was headed this way anyway.”

  “Ah, man,” Dwight said, shifting in his seat to look at King. “You didn’t have to go and call the cops. It’s just a scratch. I had worse from trying to shave after a few beers.”

  “Be still, will you, Dwight, or this is gonna open up again before I can get the bandages on, and I don’t want blood on my new blouse,” Raylene said, taking Dwight by the chin and turning his head back.

  “What happened to your face, Dwight?” Brady asked, leaning in low to peer at the old man’s cheek.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” King said, pointing at the chair where Eve was sitting, staring at her hands. “That girl over there happened.”

  Everyone’s heads turned toward Eve.

  Brady whistled low and rocked back on his heels.

  “That little old thing did this to you?”

  “It’s nothing, Brady. I’m telling you. Just a misunderstanding. My fault for coming up on her sudden-like. I ain’t gonna press no charges. Nothing to see here, so you may as well go on about your business.”

  “All right, all right,” Brady said, holding his palms out toward Dwight. “Cool your jets, old man. I’m not the gestapo.”

  “Thank you. Really,” Henry said to Dwight, who nodded.

  “Even if he doesn’t press charges, I don’t want to see her back in here again, Henry. You hear me?” King added.