The Lost Girls (31 page)

Patrick followed him with the tail end of one of his football stories while Justine got Matthew's coat. He looked exhausted as he put it on. After the effort it had taken to dress up and navigate the slippery road, the evening must have been a sad comedown from Christmases past. Impulsively Justine put her hand on his arm. “Thanks for coming,” she said.

Matthew's face warmed with the hint of a smile. Out of nowhere Melanie had her arms around him and her face buried in his coat. He touched her head lightly before he walked out. The wind had picked up, tossing the snowflakes like confetti.

After she closed the door Justine stood for a moment with her
hand on the doorknob. Then she turned around. “Patrick, you have to go, too. I need to get the girls to bed.”

She expected him to plead and wangle, but he played his trump: “Can't I watch them open my presents first?” Justine rubbed her arms in the cold air that had come through the front door. She couldn't deny him that. But it wouldn't take long. Then, somehow, she'd make him leave.

They went back to the living room, where Patrick laid his presents on the coffee table. Melanie arched her nose in the air, as though he were laying dead fish in front of her.

“Go ahead, open them,” Justine said.

Angela's gift was a pink Hello! Kitty tee shirt covered in spangles. She loved it, and the conflict that raged in her face was sad to see. Justine said, “You'll look pretty in that. You should thank Patrick.”

Angela nodded, relieved. “Thank you, Patrick.”

“Now you, Mellie,” Patrick said. Melanie opened her package to reveal a San Diego Padres shirt. As it fell into her lap she drew her hands back as though it were electric.

“It's so you can remember that time I took you to the game,” Patrick said, smiling.

Melanie raised her eyes to him. They were utterly opaque. Justine reached over and took the shirt. It was just an ordinary child-size Padres shirt. But Melanie's hands still hung motionless over her lap, and Patrick was still smiling at her. Justine felt a tremor of unease. The Padres game was one of the best memories she had of the four of them together. Patrick had bought the girls Red Vines and ball park dogs. The grass was greener than any grass she'd ever seen. Now Melanie stood up, and her face was pale. “I'm going to bed.” She walked out of the room without looking back. The inside of Justine's mouth felt like paper as she watched her.

“Angie, go up with your sister.” When both girls had gone she
said to Patrick, in a voice she hoped struck the right notes of pleasant and firm, “You really should go now.”

He got up and looked out the window, then shook his head. “I don't think I can drive back up that road.”

She pushed back the curtain and saw that he was right. The snow was up to the fenders of his truck. This explained the nervous energy he'd hummed with all night, and why he'd waited until evening to come: he'd seen the snow and hoped for this. For a wild, desperate moment she thought about asking Matthew to plow the road, but it was so late. And he'd been so tired; he was probably already in bed. “You can sleep on the couch,” she said, her jaw tight.

“Thanks.” He smiled his wide smile. It made the house seem very small.

Maurie said, “Well, if you're staying, I'll get the bourbon.” She went to the kitchen and reappeared with her Jack Daniel's. Patrick raised one hand.

“Maurie, do you think I could talk to Justine alone?”

Don't go,
Justine pleaded silently. Maurie looked from Patrick to Justine and back again, and for a moment Justine thought her mother's reluctance to be left out of anything would make her stay. Then her hand tightened on the neck of the bottle. “Of course.” She took the bottle upstairs with her.

A tenor crooned “O Little Town of Bethlehem” as Patrick sat on the sofa. Justine took a chair, keeping the coffee table between them. She was keenly aware of the snow all around, pressing on the roof, creeping up the walls.

“I have a present for you, too,” he said. “I probably shouldn't give it to you. But I want you to know where I stand.”

Justine had no doubt what it was. She took the small package with fingers that fumbled with the red wrapping paper and the black velvet box. The ring was gold and the diamond small and bright.

“It was my mom's. My dad said if it was for somebody Mom would have liked, I could have it. And Mom would have loved you.”

This was what he'd been doing these past three days, she realized. He hadn't been in Williamsburg at all; he'd driven to his father in Indiana and gotten this, his dead mother's ring, to offer her. For a moment her trepidation gave way to a pity so profound that she almost wept. It was such a beautiful, sad, desperate gesture, and it held everything she loved about him, and everything she needed to escape.

The colored Christmas lights danced on the facets of the little stone. It was a simple thing, a farmer's ring for a farmer's wife. Justine touched it. Seven weeks ago, this would have been everything she wanted. Marriage. Security. A man who would never leave. She would have taken it without question, grateful for everything it promised.

He leaned forward. “Jus, come back with me. I'll get a job selling cars, and in no time we'll have enough for our own house. A new one, where we can make our own family.”

She could see it, shimmering in the white-cold heart of the diamond. A small house, in one of the new subdivisions going up east of town. Mountains in the distance, a good school a few blocks away. A two-car garage with Patrick's latest restoration project inside. Neighbors, barbecues, kids playing kickball in the cul-de-sac. The four of them around the dinner table, and the baby in his high chair. All of it seeming, to someone looking in the window, exactly like the life she'd always hoped for.

When she had looked long enough, she closed the lid. She put the box on the table between them. “I'm sorry.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “I'm really, really sorry.”

He shrugged, a wounded jerk of his shoulder. “I guess I didn't expect you to take it.” He glared around at the walls of the faded living room, as if it were the house's fault Justine had said no. Then
he picked up the wrapping paper and crumpled it, the sound harsh in the quiet room. “But I'm not giving up. Because you do need me. And the next time I ask, you'll say yes.” He had that hectic look he'd had in his truck the night of the concert, the night he'd messed with the starter. Justine felt again the wormy unease she'd felt then.

She stood up. “I'll get your things.”

She brought two blankets from the linen press. While Patrick spread them on the sofa she turned off the radio and took the empty glasses to the kitchen. When she headed for the stairs he blocked her way, towering over her, his shoulders hunched.

“Can I have a kiss?”

For a long moment the only sounds in the room were the pings of the radiator and the faint hum of the Christmas lights. Then Justine lifted her face a little, and he kissed her, tenderly and lightly, on the lips. “Good night, Jus.”

She went to the girls' room. They were awake under their covers.

“Is he gone?” Melanie asked.

“It's not safe for him to drive. He's sleeping on the couch.”

“You said it was going to be just us.”

“It is. He's leaving in the morning.”

“Is he going back to San Diego?”

Justine was tempted to lie, but she couldn't. “I don't think so.”

The house was quiet, but Patrick's presence filled every corner of it. “Come sleep with me,” she said. The girls got out of their beds without a word. After they climbed into her bed she slipped the deadbolt into place and crawled between them. She didn't put on her pajamas, and she didn't turn off the light.

Patrick wasn't going to leave in the morning. He would find a reason to stay, then another, and another. But it didn't matter. They were going to go. In the morning Matthew would plow the
road, and they'd wait for their chance. Maybe tomorrow night, when Patrick fell asleep. They would be very quiet as they put their things in the Tercel and drove away.

“We're going to leave tomorrow,” she whispered to her daughters.

She lay awake for a long time, listening to the silence downstairs.

I don't know what woke me in the quiet of that last night. Perhaps it was the front door closing as she left, or the sound of her feet on the path. My eyes opened, and her bed was empty. I went to our window. The clouds of yesterday's storm still cluttered the sky, but stars glinted, and the moon shone on her slender figure walking up the road. Though she carried nothing, I knew she was leaving.

I put on my shoes and forced myself to move quietly down the stairs, every slow step an agony. I opened the front door by excruciating inches, tiptoed across the front porch with its treacherous, creaking floorboards. When I reached the road I could no longer see her, but I knew where she'd gone. She was on the journey she'd begun on Independence Day, when she'd taken Charlie's hand: across the bridge, to the road, to California, without me.

I ran, no longer caring how much noise I made. I didn't know what time it was, but the lodge and all the houses were dark. The only sound beside my hurried footfalls was the soft drip of water from the leaves. The air smelled amphibian with leftover rain.

When I got to the top of the hill, I saw her standing by the bridge, a half-lit shape. She was wearing the dress she'd borrowed for her Boswell Sisters routine. A bag lay at her feet, a small satchel. It must have been soaking wet, for I knew she had hidden it by the bridge that morning, when she rose so early. She'd scripted her exit perfectly. But she hadn't planned on the rain, and she hadn't planned on me.

She saw me right away, because she was looking back for some
one else. She reached out a hand, and I stopped. “I left you a note,” she said. “You'll see it in the morning.”

Below us the creek, swollen with rain, rumbled on its way to the lake. The roaring in my ears was louder still. All through this long summer, as I'd watched her move away from me, I'd never thought she'd truly leave me behind. Not this way, by taking the journey alone that we'd always planned to take together. And not now, after I'd finally become a citizen of that strange and terrible country she'd occupied alone for so long.

“You're supposed to take me with you. That's what we always said.”

“Lucy.” I heard sorrow in her voice. “You know you were never going to come with me.”

“I will. I'll leave with you right now.” But even as I said it tears filled my eyes, because I knew she was right. I wouldn't go. I was never going to go. Even after what Father had done, the thought of the world beyond the lake and Williamsburg filled me with fear. What would two girls alone, with no money and no one to protect them, do in such a world? I hated myself, hated my cowardice, but when she said, “No, you won't,” all I said was, “Please. Don't leave me.”

A breeze shifted the leaves above us. Water fell like rain, then stopped. I crossed the space between us and touched her arm. Every night we'd spent talking in our starry bedroom, every time I held her hand, every day we escaped to the Hundred Tree, and every game we'd ever played was in my touch, and she felt these things and pulled away. “Read my note. It will tell you what to do. You've started doing it already. And—” She paused, a careful weighing. “And there's Emily.”

Something pressed against me. Something heavy. I said, “Emily?” Even though, in that moment, I knew.

She grabbed my arms. Her fingers dug into my skin. “Lucy, listen to me. It doesn't have to be you. It can be her. It's going to be
her anyway, someday. Mother can't protect her forever. Even she knows it.”

My ears filled with cotton. I saw Emily on Father's lap, his lips against her neck. Mother's hand, reaching. Emily beside me on the davenport. Her arm trembling. I saw Lilith's hand, slipping through the firelight to take Charlie's as Father watched. The thing that pushed at me pushed harder. Your turn, it said. Your choice. I shook my head. “No.”

“Lucy, please,” Lilith said. But she didn't say anything more, because behind us came footsteps on the path. She looked over my shoulder, and her face closed.

I turned. Emily was standing there. Like me, she was in her nightgown, but hers was smudged with dirt, and I knew where she'd been. She had slipped from Mother's smothering, saving embrace to spend one last night with her calico, not caring what the punishment might be. She'd seen us, one after the other, glide past under the moonlit sky, and she'd followed. Now she stood with her hands clasped, her nightgown paler than the moon, her hair blacker than the night. Unlike Lilith, who looked so grown-up, she looked younger than her years. She was such a small, fragile thing, then and always.

“Come here,” Lilith said. Her voice was hard. Emily came, slowly, her blue slippers scuffing in the dirt. Lilith bent so her face was just inches from hers. “Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go back to bed right now, and you're not going to tell anyone you saw me.”

Don't do it, I begged her in silent desperation. Go home. Tell Mother Lilith is leaving. We can stop all this. We can stop it right now. I caught her eye and shook my head. She shifted from one foot to the other. She didn't understand me.

Then she saw Lilith's bag. She looked up at Lilith, and her voice was small. “Are you running away?”

“Yes. Tomorrow, I don't care who knows. Tonight, you can't tell anyone.”

Emily picked at her nightgown. “But I don't want you to go.”

“Well, I am.”

Emily cut her eyes to me, the barest glance, then back to Lilith. “What about Father? He'll be so sad.”

The inside of my mouth went dry. She knew. She knew what I had never guessed. But she thought it was love. Lilith was right; she would go to him so willingly. As willingly as I had gone fishing with him. In the rush of water below I heard a voice whisper,
create in me a clean heart
, and he was beside me, talking about the unnoticed who hear the entire liturgy. He traced his fingers along my arm. The fish were dying in the bottom of the boat, terrified of the sky. His face was in my neck and the buttons of his shirt were sharp in the cold halo of light.

Lilith gave a bitter laugh. “No he won't. He has Lucy now.”

Something inside me shattered. With a howl I ran at her, my hands clawing at her face, at her hair. I couldn't see her, a blackness hung before my eyes, but I felt her fall back and I felt her skin beneath my nails, her bones beneath my fingers, my beloved sister, my enemy, my protector, my betrayer—
you sent him to me!
—and then she was hitting me, shoving me to the ground, kicking my stomach, my side, my ribs, my head. She was screaming
I saved you, all those years it was me, I saved you, I was the only one who saved you, nobody but me
and above it Emily was wailing, stop it! stop it! you're hurting her! Then her small body was between Lilith and me, pushing Lilith away, but Lilith's hands were on her throat,
not you, you got none of it, ever, you were safe, safe, safe, SAFE
and I couldn't get up, my ribs were in agony, the world was spinning, but I got to my knees and I shouted, “Let her go!” because Lilith was shaking Emily back and forth so that her hair whipped and flew—and she did stop, for just an instant, Emily's pale, fragile throat in her hands, and the whole dark earth held its breath. Then she shoved Emily backward, and Emily fell over the bridge.

We froze. Lilith with her arms outstretched, I on my knees. The only sound was water, crashing over rocks.

I pushed myself up and ran, stumbling, holding my side, past Lilith, who still stood unmoving, her face stunned, to the end of the bridge, where the bank was slick with mud and the creek was so high it ran fifteen feet across in a massive, swollen distortion of the timid brook it had been the day before. I didn't see Emily, in the water or out. I screamed her name again and again, scrambling along the bank, following the water, looking for a dark head, pulling my way with the roots of trees that stuck out into the creek bed, my ribs jagged, an eternity of falling, slipping, grabbing, and sliding, branches tearing at my nightgown and my hair. But the stream was loud, and my voice such a weak, high bleat that not even I could hear it.

Finally, two hundred yards below the bridge, in a last torrent, the water spilled over a fallen tree into the lily patch where Father and I had fished. It was there that I found her. She floated beyond the push of the creek water, facedown in a knot of sticks and grasses the creek had ripped up by the roots, a clutch of flotsam among the lilies.

I plunged in. The water came up to my chest. The muck on the bottom sucked at my shoes and slipped cold tongues between my toes. The waterfall thundered in my ears, and creek water grabbed me, trying to push me away. When I reached her, I turned her to the sky and pulled her on her back, as Lilith had pulled me to the pontoon that early summer day so long ago, to a spit of land on the far side of the creek. I dragged her until she was clear of the water. Then I fell to my knees beside her.

She lay still, with her arms flung wide. Her white nightgown clung to her like wet tissue paper. Her eyes were open and blank. I took her face in my hands and whispered her name. But those eyes that were so like Father's did not blink, and when I lay my hand on her chest it did not move.

All around us the night teemed with silent life. In the reeds and in the sand, frogs and crickets and crayfish. In the lake, fish. In
the trees, birds. Hundreds of tiny hearts beat no farther from me than I could skip a stone, and I heard them all in the marrow of my bones. But in my sister's limbs was a terrible stillness, an incapacity of movement that was nothing like sleep. I had never seen death before. I had never seen the body cast aside, like flotsam from the creek. There was nothing of Emily in it. Nothing at all.

When I took her to the woods that day, just the week before, we went to a glade Lilith and I knew, and I tried to play with her as Lilith and I had played. Let's pretend we're princesses, I said. Let's pretend there are fairies here, and animals that can talk to us. But Emily didn't know how to play that way. She hadn't learned the essential childhood art of imagining a life better than your own and pretending to live it. So I took her to the berms, and we slid on the cardboard sleds, and she laughed, and I laughed, too. Now, as I knelt beside her on that ragged beach, I thought about how she'd never once played pretend, and I wept.

I don't know how long I knelt there before Lilith came. I didn't see her appear on the far side of the creek, or wade into the lake. I saw her only when she walked out of the water onto the little strand. I put my hands on my knees, and I did not wipe away my tears. Lilith stood still for a moment, water dripping heavily from the hem of her dress. Then she knelt on Emily's other side and touched her chest. When she felt the silence there, she squeezed her eyes shut. In the moonlight, her face was gray. “I just wanted her to go home,” she whispered.

One of Emily's bare feet lay in the water. The lake licked at it in little rills. Her mouth was open, and between her lips I could see her small white baby teeth. She hadn't lost one yet.

“What do we do?” Lilith asked. She was trembling.

It took me two tries to say the words. “We have to tell Mother.”

“We can't. They'll think I did it.”

She had done it. She had pushed Emily over the bridge, and Emily had died. But I said, “We'll tell them she fell.”

She shook her head. She pointed to Emily's throat. In the moonlight I saw the dark marks below the delicate jaw, the imprints of Lilith's hands, which would blaze red in the light of morning. On Lilith's face the scratches my fingers had made were darkening with blood. She was right. No one would believe Emily had fallen.

Lilith wound her fingers together under her chin. She was shaking now. “Lucy, please. Help me.” Behind her the creek spilled into the lake. It was such a little thing. Three feet of silty froth sliding over a log into a lily patch. Just a summer creek, swollen with rain.

A breeze kicked up, chilling me in my wet cotton nightgown. A cloud slid across the moon, and our small beach fell into a darkness that hid Lilith's face from me, and mine from her. The blood in my veins slowed. She had thrown our sister into the creek, where her lungs filled, not with the silken lake water I once breathed, but violent, muddy water that forced its way in uninvited. Now she knelt before me in her cabaret dress, which was drenched and stained with dirt. The dress she'd planned to wear to California, without me. Leaving me with Father.

Then the cloud passed, and the moonlight fell again upon her angular, haunting features, and I knew that I would help her anyway. Just as I knew, with terrible clarity, what I would ask in return.

I said, “You have to stay.”

She went absolutely still. I waited. I waited for her to think it through. She couldn't leave that night. They would come for her with police and dogs, not with “lost” posters. She also couldn't leave later. That was my price. That was what she needed to understand. For the quiet space of a dozen heartbeats we knelt there, unmoving in the light of the stars, above the body of our sister, while I waited. Waited for her to believe that I would do it. All of it.

Then she closed her eyes, and I knew it was done. I touched my finger to my lips, then to my heart, and held up my hand. She did the same, and pressed her palm against mine. It was cold.

I told her to get a boat. She left me on the shore with Emily and walked back up the creek. It was only half a mile along the curving edge of the lake to the dock, but it was a long time before I saw her black silhouette walking along it. Someone was with her, and I knew it was Abe; that he had come to the bridge to meet her as they'd agreed, to ferry her to freedom on his motorcycle.

“I didn't tell him why we wanted it,” she said when she'd rowed, alone, to our small strand. “And he won't tell.” I knew he wouldn't. There was nothing he wouldn't do for her, then or later. I waded into the water and helped her beach the boat. I didn't ask what excuse she'd given Abe for why she looked such a mess, or why she wouldn't leave with him as they'd planned. I didn't care.