The Lost Girls (17 page)

She looked for a long minute. Then she turned off the light and closed the door.

In the heat of the afternoon, when the fishermen dozed in their rooms, the Miller boys had a break from their chores. So every day after lunch, I waited at the edge of the forest beside the Millers' wooden toolshed until Matthew wandered down, his hands in his pockets.

We always played in the woods—never by the water, up at the creek, or past the Davies house where the rope swing hung. We knew there was something illicit about our friendship, so we were secretive. Anyone who saw Matthew serve my ice cream would think we were just Thomas Evans's daughter and the Indian boy whose family ran the lodge, but as soon as we vanished beneath the leafy canopy, we crossed the boundaries between us and became fellow explorers in a land that was ours alone. We went places Lilith and I never had gone, places so deep the rest of the world fell away. We built forts, set traps, and caught bugs. We stomped through the undergrowth, climbed trees, and listened to our voices reverberate in the green air. Matthew was always one for collecting things, like shells and rocks, so we looked for small treasures, and every afternoon when we left the woods his pockets would be crammed full.

We stayed away from the Hundred Tree. Even though Lilith never wanted to go there with me anymore, that place was still hers and mine. Instead, Matthew and I spent much of our time at a place Matthew called “the berms”: six mounds of earth that rose as high as our shoulders in a clearing a quarter mile to the west of the Tree. We didn't know what, or who, had made them, but we decided they were Indian graves, because that made the way we played
on them delightfully forbidden. Matthew brought cardboard boxes from the lodge that we flattened to make sleds to ride down their sloping sides, and we jumped from their tops into the deep, mulchy beds of leaves between. It was a more boisterous sort of play than I was used to. Lilith and I had played games of the imagination, pretending to be fairies or princesses in an enchanted forest. With Matthew, everything was physical. Running, climbing, jumping, hunting, building, destroying.

We had quiet times, too, when we sat, temporarily exhausted, on the soft tops of the berms and talked. I'd never talked with anyone but Lilith, not in that intimate way of shared confidences. But Matthew was easy to talk with. His words were few and careful compared to Lilith's lively and abundant chatter, but he thought about things in an interesting way, and I found the slow rhythms of his conversation comfortable. I especially liked hearing him talk about the other people at the lake. Mother would call it gossip, but it wasn't that, not really. He had a different perspective on us, that was all, and through his eyes I saw the people I'd known all my life in a new way. For example, he told me Jeannette's father, Dr. Lewis, brought him the sports pages each weekend so he could follow the baseball season. I told him Dr. Lewis had a son who'd died when he was three or four, and we calculated he would have been about Matthew's age now, had he lived. From then on, whenever Dr. Lewis barked at the boys who played loudly in the lane while he read his newspaper on his porch, I thought about him bringing Matthew the sports pages. I'd never pitied an adult before.

As Lilith and I had, Matthew and I also talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up, but with him I found myself spinning different dreams than I had with her. What if I went to college? Some Williamsburg girls had done that, although not many, and most of those had gone to the teachers college in Duluth. But I thought I would like being a teacher, especially if there were chil
dren like me in class, quiet ones who liked learning about history and the natural world but who never raised their hands. I imagined living in a small town—not our town, but another place that could be known and managed—and teaching in the school. My husband would be the mild sort, like Mr. Jones; perhaps he'd have a general store, too. They were such little dreams, so plain and ordinary compared to the grand ones Lilith made for me, but they felt more real, as if they might come true.

Matthew's dreams were big, like Lilith's, but they were boy-flavored. He was sure people would go to the stars someday, and he wanted to be on the first ship. He had his brother to look after, but he could bring Abe along when he went to whatever big cities star-travelers lived in when they weren't on their rocket ships. Abe would like that. Their father would be sorry to see them go, but he couldn't expect them to live in this lodge forever, could he?

After that summer we never played together again. I suppose it was to be expected. We'd become friends at one of life's sweetest but most fleeting times—the last days before childhood gives way to adulthood and all its complications. Soon, like Lilith, we would be too old to play in the woods, and as teenagers we would grow shy and awkward around one another. This would make me sad, but I would tell myself it was the normal growing apart that happens to children as they get older, and nothing to be regretted.

But here, where I've sworn to tell the truth, I must confess I knew that wasn't it, not entirely. There was that last terrible day, of course, which also happened to be his birthday. And Emily. After Emily, he looked at me differently, as everyone did. Our family was a tragedy, and no one knew how to talk to us. Lilith, Mother, and I didn't help; we kept to ourselves, with all our hopes and secrets. It wasn't until Mother died and Matthew took over the lodge from his father that we saw each other as neighbors, and not until Lilith died that we became friends once more. Though our friend
ship remains seeded with a certain distance even now. I wonder if he ever thinks about that summer. He probably doesn't. It was so long ago, and it was just a summer.

But one of our playdates in particular I must recall here, because it changed things in a way I only appreciated after everything was done. It was late July, a close, cloudy afternoon that threatened rain. Matthew and I were walking home through the woods, filthy and sweaty, when we heard a sound not far off. It wasn't a forest sound; we knew all those. It was a low, whimpering cry that made the hairs at my nape rise straight up. We'd become so comfortable playing among the imagined dead that we no longer felt that wonderful tickle of fear in the berms, but this cry sounded exactly like the keening inhabitant of a desecrated grave.

I tensed to run. Matthew put his hand on my arm. He pointed to our right, where the sound came from, and stepped into the undergrowth. Being alone seemed even scarier than advancing toward the sound, so I followed him. We tried to walk quietly, but the untrodden brambles cracked with our every step. The whimpering stopped, but whatever had made it breathed in choked little gurgles, and I knew it wasn't a ghost, and that it was afraid.

It was Emily. She was sitting under a tree, her arms around her knees. Her white socks were stained and her arms and face were scratched from the brambles she'd pushed her way through. I couldn't have been more astonished if we'd found a gorilla sitting there. She'd never gone into the woods, much less ventured way out here. When she saw us she gave a bleat of relief.

Matthew knelt in front of her. “Hey, it's okay. Are you lost?”

Of course she was lost. At first I was irritated. Then I saw something else. She was wearing the dress she'd had on at breakfast, but now she had several blouses over it and three or four skirts underneath. Beside her was the pink purse she'd gotten for Christmas. Something wiggled inside it. I squatted beside Matthew, picked it up, and opened it to find a kitten, a little calico. It blinked up at me
with its round blue eyes and opened its mouth in a tiny, insulted mew.

I turned to Emily in stunned comprehension. “Were you running away?”

She gave a hiccupping sob. I could not believe it. Why would this girl—this pampered, favored sister—run away from home? My hand tightened on the purse, and the kitten squalled in protest. I took it out. It was bigger than it had been on Independence Day, but it was still too small to leave its mother. Emily took it from me and tucked it under her chin.

“Does it have a name?” Matthew asked.

“Mimsy.”

He touched its head. His two fingers filled the space between its tiny, triangular ears. “Emily, listen. You can't run away. It's too dangerous.”

“I'm not scared,” she told him, though she was clearly terrified.

“What about your mother? She would be so sad if you left.”

Two fat tears slid down Emily's cheeks. The kitten licked at them, its pink tongue dabbing in and out. “She wouldn't miss me.”

“Don't be stupid,” I said. “Of course she would.”

“No.” Her eyes were pools of ink above the kitten's tiny face. “She would just love you instead.”

I sank to my knees on the rough, leafy ground. As if Emily had conjured them, I felt Mother's arms around me, in my bed in the brown house in Williamsburg.

“That's not how mothers are,” said Matthew, the boy with no mother. Neither Emily nor I answered him. After a moment he reached out his hand. “Come on, we'll take you home.”

Emily stifled a small sob, but she took his hand. Matthew walked her back through the forest while I followed behind. When we got close to the houses, he ducked his head once and turned toward the lodge. Emily stood looking after him, her purse with Mimsy back inside dangling from one hand, until I came and touched her
shoulder. I left my hand there as we walked the rest of the way to our backyard.

Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Pugh were standing by our clothesline. Mrs. Jones had her hands on her hips. “Well, I don't know,” she was saying. “I don't see mine between dinner and supper and you don't see me going to pieces.”

Mrs. Pugh saw us and gave an exasperated sigh. “Emily, your mother's been looking everywhere for you.” She took us around front, where mothers and children were calling for Emily along the beach, up the road, and in the marshy grasses past the Davieses'. They sounded unconcerned, even annoyed. I wondered how long she'd been missing.

A clot of women stood near one of the picnic benches. Mrs. Williams was there, and Mrs. Lloyd, and Mother, who made squeaking gasps, as though she were having an asthmatic attack. Mrs. Lloyd said, “Eleanor, get hold of yourself. She's not an infant. She's just off playing somewhere.” Mother shook her head. Behind them Lilith leaned against the big elm, watching Mother with naked contempt.

When Mother saw us, she gave a cry, ran across the road, pushed me aside, and grabbed Emily's shoulders. She screamed something I couldn't understand and started shaking Emily so that Emily's head looked as though it might snap off her neck. Emily dropped her purse, and it lay wiggling on the ground until I picked it up.

Mrs. Pugh shouted in alarm, and she and Mrs. Jones grabbed Mother's arms. “For God's sake, Eleanor!” Mrs. Jones said.

Mother broke free, clutched Emily, and buried her face in her hair. The women stood around in an uncomfortable circle. Mrs. Williams patted Mother's back. “See, she was just off playing with Lucy, like Agnes said.” Over Mother's shoulder Emily looked straight ahead, at no one.

Finally Mother got herself under control. She released Emily and gave a shaky smile. “You know I don't like you to go off by
yourself without telling me.” She stroked Emily's arm and noticed all the blouses she was wearing. She lifted her bulging dress to see the skirts she wore underneath. She looked at her youngest daughter with a stunned expression. Emily looked back, unflinching, just as Lilith had regarded Father in our parlor that first night, after she'd asked him when he stopped being a child. Mrs. Pugh and Mrs. Jones exchanged a look.

Mother tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, a furtive, embarrassed gesture. She picked Emily up and balanced her on her hip. Emily's legs hung past Mother's knees. She was way too big to be carried like a toddler, I realized, though Mother carried her like that all the time. Mother nodded at the women and said, “Thank you.” As she carried Emily to our house Emily watched me over her shoulder. She was worried about the kitten, I knew. I nodded at her. I would return it to its mother, just as I'd returned Emily to hers.

Once they'd gone, Mrs. Pugh gave Mrs. Jones another look, and Mrs. Jones glanced at me. The two of them, joined by Mrs. Lloyd, walked off, whispering as they turned up the road. Only Mrs. Williams remained. “Lucy, where did you find Emily?” she asked me.

I liked Mrs. Williams. She was a short, round hen of a woman with friendly brown eyes in a plain face and a warm, sparkly manner. The whole Williams family had that aura of contentment some families have that makes you wish you'd been born in them instead of your own. But right then I couldn't look at her, because I knew she would see evasion in my eyes. “Just in the woods,” I said. “Not too far off.”

She was quiet for a moment, and at last she said, “Lucy, you know you can talk to me anytime you want.” I studied the ground. I couldn't imagine what I would talk about with Mrs. Williams. “Remember that,” she said, and headed down the lane.

As soon as she was gone Lilith came over to me. “What happened?”

I held Emily's purse behind my back so Lilith wouldn't see it. “I think she was running away from home.”

Lilith squinted at the house, where Mother was undoubtedly stripping Emily of the shirts and skirts she'd thought she'd need in whatever life she'd been running to. Her face curdled, making her strong features ugly. “What's she got to run away from?”

I thought of Emily's legs hanging down as Mother carried her. I thought about the empty look on her face as Mother hugged her. I thought about never being able to play in the forest alone, or make a friend, or spend more than a few minutes by myself. I thought about not having even the privacy of my own bed at night. I thought, for the first time in a long time, about how those things had made me feel, when Mother slept with me.

But to Lilith I said, “She doesn't know how good she's got it,” and for a moment she and I were united once more in our disdain for our little sister, our parents' favorite, who couldn't understand how lucky she was.