The Lost Girls of Devon

by Barbara O'Neal

  I wished now that I had.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Zoe

  Sage and I pored over the ledger and the other papers he’d gathered from Diana’s desk, as well as the screenshots he’d taken of the books on her computer. I checked on Gran several times, but she continued to sleep in what appeared to be a natural, deep kind of sleep. Once she awakened and I helped her to the loo, but she didn’t speak and I couldn’t check her mental state. She just wanted to go back to bed.

  Isabel texted, telling me she was going with a friend to another friend’s house, right in the village. I wavered, but it was important that she’d start feeling like a normal kid again.

  Be home by nine, I texted back. And keep your ringer on.

  She sent me a thumbs-up emoticon.

  After two hours, Sage flung down the papers he held. “I don’t see a bloody thing out of place.”

  I shook my head. There were plenty of notes about customers and orders and preferences, notes on big orders of salmon, notes on when the repairmen would be coming to service the refrigeration system. “I keep coming back to the initials or whatever she’s using for Perse. Did we cross-reference the numbers and labels on that one?”

  He leafed back through, running his finger down the notations. Against my will, I was charmed by the sight of him sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen in a worn-soft cotton shirt with small green lines through it, his hair caught back from his face in a rubber band, his round spectacles on his face. “I don’t see anything.”

  I sighed. “Okay, maybe that was a wild goose chase.”

  “Perhaps.” He straightened, stretching his long arms over his head. “Are you saving the stew for a special occasion?”

  I laughed. “Not at all. Would you like some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I stood. “Get that stacked up, and I’ll dish up the stew. Will you also go check on Gran? She’s in her bedroom. Do you know where it is?”

  “No worries.”

  I reached in the cupboard for bowls and came back short—everything was in the dishwasher. Extra dishes were kept in the pantry, so I padded across the stone floor in my stocking feet to find some spares. I snagged a stack of bowls and carried them back through into the other room, then rinsed the dust out.

  I remembered these bowls from youngest childhood, deep ceramic bowls with an elephant pattern around the outside. As I held one, the raised pattern imprinting my fingers, I was flooded with memories. Of myself at four or five, trying to pour my own cereal; of my mother, hair impossibly long and loose over her shoulders; of Gran dressed for a meeting in her crisp best. Bright morning sun lit the memory, a sense of happiness.

  I shoved the memory away and ladled generous portions into the bowls.

  Sage came back. “Gran is sleeping soundly.”

  “Good.” I swallowed, picked up one bowl and handed it to him and then got my own, and I walked as if I were not crumbling inside to the table and sat down. “Do you want milk or something?”

  “No.” I could feel him looking at me.

  I took a bite of stew, wiped the memories away as if I were washing a counter, but a brand-new group fell in behind them. My mother in her swirling red scarf, dancing with me. Her voice over the phone from India, thin and sometimes interrupted by static—I’ll be home soon, my love, she said, over and over, and over and over. Lies, and she’d known it even then. She’d never had any intention of coming home.

  Sage reached over and covered my wrist with his hand, and with the other he offered his handkerchief. “It’s clean.”

  I hadn’t realized there were tears dripping off my chin until that moment, didn’t notice that the subterranean river of my losses had risen to the level of my eyes and spilled over. When I did, it was as if I’d given them permission, because they fell thicker and faster, even as I willed them to stop. I had no connection to the tears, exactly, just those memories rolling through, one after the other after the other.

  “I used to pray every day that she would come home,” I said, mopping my face. “Every day, for years and years.” The memory of my small self kneeling before a Catholic statue slid in, with me lighting a candle in some obscure place. “I lit candles at the Magdalene chapel and wrote notes to the piskies on the moor and petitioned every deity I knew by name.”

  His hand stayed on my arm, steady. Calming. He’d taken his glasses off, and I could see the clear celery color of his eyes. He was entirely present, right here, in this moment.

  “It’s so much harder than I expected, having to deal with her,” I whispered. “To feel . . . I didn’t know—”

  The wave washed over me, and I put my head down on my arms and wept silently for my little-girl self. Sage settled his hand between my shoulder blades and moved it in gentle circles. It released some switch, and I let it all flow through me, all those days I’d wanted her, all those evenings I’d spent waiting for her to walk back through the door.

  I don’t know how long I cried. Long enough to get a very sloppy face that I was too embarrassed to show to Sage, so I sat up, turning toward the sink. I ran cold water and splashed it on my hot eyes, washed away the tears and snot, and then just stood there, calming myself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”

  “Every grief brings back all the old ones,” he said.

  Startled, I looked at him. “I’ve been feeling raw for days. Just missing Diana so much and wishing I could talk to her about missing her, and having to deal with my mom, and now Gran, and I still haven’t figured out what’s going on with Isabel.”

  He nodded. “Come eat,” he said quietly.

  I carried myself to the table and sat. Like many good ideas, it was simple and true. As the stew settled in my belly, my whole being felt more centered. We didn’t speak. In the background, the same radio station I’d been listening to while I cooked played violin sonatas, melancholy and sweet.

  Sage finished his stew and went back to the pot for more, taking my bowl with him. When he came back, he said, “When Alice died, there were weeks when I wondered why human beings even bother to keep going—like if you live, you’re going to face loss after loss after loss, forever, and why would you do that?”

  I nodded. “I felt that way after I got divorced.”

  His smile was sad. “You always make it sound like it was nothing.”

  I shrugged, ate a perfectly round carrot from my spoon, pleased that I had made this meal with my own hands, that the depth of the flavors was so good. “I just didn’t want people feeling sorry for me. ‘Poor old Zoe, no one ever stays.’” A welter of sorrow welled up, and I forced it back in place, blinking. “It was humiliating, you know, but I also really did love him.”

  He nodded.

  We ate in silence for a while. “I’m sorry I was hard on you about your mother. I do remember how you missed her.”

  “If we start apologizing, it could go on for a while.”

  His chuckle, low and warm, surprised me. “True enough. Do you still have that scar from the tree?”

  I straightened my arm. “This one?”

  “Bad day, that.” He’d pushed me, playing around, and I’d fallen out of an apple tree and needed seven stitches to close the wound.

  “I lived.”

  Isabel suddenly came in through the back door, bringing with her a scent of night air and ocean. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She still had a generally cheery aspect, and the loose body language I’d missed so much. “Do you want some dinner? I made a vegetable stew.”

  “No, thanks. I ate some cheese pasties. OMG, they are so amazing!” She leaned against the counter, picking grapes from a bowl. Her hair had curled crazily in the damp, and now that she’d climbed out of the hoodie and sweats, you could see her figure, all legs and breasts and that beautiful face.

  She looked just like my mother, I realized. Just like her.

  “What have you guys been doing?” she asked.

  “Same thing. Trying to figure out something abo
ut Diana.”

  “That’s all anybody was talking about tonight at this party—the girl on the beach and Diana.”

  “Party?” I asked, alerts leaping through my brain.

  “Well, not exactly. It was a bunch of kids in somebody’s ‘lounge.’” She pulled more grapes off the bunch and tossed them up, one at a time, catching them in her mouth. “Nothing like before.”

  This was my Isabel, the girl I’d lost a few months ago, and I wanted to see her continuing to evolve. “What did they say?”

  “They all knew Diana, because I guess she volunteered at the school or something? And they think the body on the beach is going to be this other girl who ran away a little while back, Jennie.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to my room,” Isabel said.

  “Hey, you should know Gran is having a few issues. If she gets combative or mean, let me know. Don’t argue with her or try to change her mind; just go with it.”

  “Issues? As in dementia issues?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m going to look for a new carer right away, but it might take a couple of days.”

  “Why not ask your mother? She took care of her all the time before we got here.”

  I took a sharp breath. “I don’t want to.”

  “You’re being really stubborn,” she said, and the words sliced my skin in neat little marks. She picked up her earphones from her neck and started to plug them into her ears.

  My throat tightened, and I stood, holding my hand out.

  “What?”

  “Give me the headphones.”

  Her shock opened her eyes wide. “Why?”

  “Because you were very rude just now. I’ve been too lenient with you.”

  She huffed, throwing a look toward Sage before she hissed, “Are you seriously going to do this right now? In front of other people?”

  “It didn’t stop you.”

  With a furious gesture, she yanked the earphones out and stabbed them into my palm, then stomped off.

  With a sigh, I turned back and dropped them on the table. Rubbing my face, I said, “I’m sorry. Welcome to the madness.”

  He moved the bowls out of the way and tugged the sheaf of papers back to the space between us. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine, why?”

  His face went blank. “Just seem a little tense.”

  “I guess.”

  He flipped through several pages, then tapped an entry. “There’re two payments to an Exeter address here, both for the same sum.”

  I frowned. “That is interesting. What happened to that business card?”

  He shook his head with confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I shuffled through the papers he’d taken from her home desk, but it wasn’t there. “It was from an estate agent in Exeter. Maybe that person would know something.”

  “That’s good. Maybe it’s still on her desk.” He closed the ledger and leaned back, rubbing his temples. “I should probably go, get a fresh start on all of this tomorrow.”

  I felt bereft, but I took a breath. “Okay. Thanks for coming.”

  He regarded me silently for a long moment. “I could stay. Trounce you in a game of Mille Bornes?” He raised an eyebrow. “Or Yahtzee?”

  I smiled. “Oh, yes, please. Yahtzee.”

  “I’m shocked.” It had been a joke that I’d do almost anything to get people to play Yahtzee with me. Something about the dice and the sound of them rolling made me happy every time.

  “Is it in the closet?” he asked, standing.

  “I have no idea.” I carried our dishes to the sink and set the kettle to boil again. We moved around each other easily, and after I rinsed the cups, I crossed my arms to watch him sort through the debris in the closet.

  Those shoulders had always been so pleasingly wide and square, a bulwark against the world. And I liked his long legs, and even his ridiculous hair, which on anyone else would have seemed strange, but on Sage was just . . . him. I wanted to touch it, see if it retained the softness it had always held, and in my exhausted state, I realized dimly that I wanted to touch all of him.

  “Here it is,” he said, blowing a loose ringlet from his face, and then stopped. He looked at me across the room, and I had no will to hide anything, and it seemed to shift something between us.

  He gently set the game on the table but kept coming forward until he stood right in front of me. I kept my hands on the sink behind me, fingertips itching, as he lifted a hand and brushed hair over my shoulder.

  “You’re a magnet,” he said quietly, and he stepped into my space until our bodies were lightly touching, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, his hands braced on either side of me on the sink.

  He bent closer, holding my gaze, which forced me to lift my chin to hold that intense connection, and then he dipped in that last small distance, and our lips met. I made a soft noise and our mouths opened and our tongues met, and he kissed me as delicately and softly as a prayer. I raised my hands to his shoulders, and he cupped my face and took a half step, meshing our bodies even more.

  It was green and fresh, and I fell adrift in the taste of him, the solidness of his shoulders, the legs scissored between mine. He smelled of himself, of sunlight and limes and his own skin, and my body reacted, coming alive to sensations I’d shut down hard.

  After a little while, he lifted his head and looked at my face, touched my hair, smoothed it back from my face, and then he sighed, resting his forehead against mine.

  We simply stood there like that for a long time, heads pressed together, hands in innocent positions. I absorbed him, the nearness of him, the sound of his breath, the tangle of his fingers in mine.

  And then, in unspoken agreement, we moved toward the table and played Yahtzee, as if nothing had ever happened.

  As if it would never happen again.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Isabel

  Gah! I can’t believe my mother took away my headphones! For what? For practically nothing! All I did was roll my eyes, but she said I was disrespectful. She acts different here. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s way different. Especially when she’s around her friend Sage.

  Tonight I went to a party with Molly and Isaac. It wasn’t much of a party, I have to admit, just a bunch of kids lying around a living room with ugly carpet, smoking weed and listening to music I don’t know. I felt like I do sometimes when I’m with my cousins in New Mexico, like they’re speaking in code. My grandpa says I’m too sensitive, but sometimes, those cousins are kind of mean about me, and they call me “white girl” even though I’m multiracial.

  Isaac kissed me. I like him. He’s not as stoner-stupid as he pretends he is, but I get the feeling his life at home is not great. He made me laugh three times, which is a record. Once was a play on words, once was a joke about numbers, and one was just a funny quip he made to somebody else, super fast.

  He’s not the kind of guy I’d pick as a boyfriend or anything, but when he kissed me, I liked it.

  For about three seconds, and then the panic attack started blazing through me, sucking the air out of my lungs and making it feel like I couldn’t breathe. So I bailed, and he probably thinks I’m an idiot. All the way home I thought about that. About fitting in or not fitting in.

  I stopped and took some photos of the moon over the bay, and something hot and mean struck me right through the chest, this giant ugly weird emotion. I heard a bunch of voices, laughing, and—

  I stopped and tried to hear. Let the memories surface. I would feel so much better if I could remember. I know what happened because I saw the photos and saw all the writing, but they gave me something, and I can’t remember the actual events. I hate that I can’t remember!

  Listen.

  Me. I heard me, crying but in a weird way.

  My heart sped up again, and I had to start counting. In the dark, it was hard to see, and I started feeling really scared being out by myself in a town where my mom’s friend is
missing and another girl has washed up on the beach, and I practically ran the rest of the way home.

  Running blew away the bad feeling, and by the time I got to the kitchen door, I wasn’t scared, but not exactly normal either, and I just wanted to get to my room and write, but there was my mom in the kitchen with Sage, and they had their heads bent over some papers. I saw him raise his head and look at her, and it was an expression I’ve never seen on anybody’s face before, like love to the twelfth power.

  I like him, so I don’t know why it felt so weird. It’s just that everything is different. Everything, everything, everything.

  I hated it when my parents got divorced. They weren’t happy for a few years, but so what? Nobody has happy parents, except maybe our neighbors the Rodriguezes, and they even got married really young and had a bunch of kids, and they don’t make a lot of money, but that’s a very happy family. Mr. Rodriguez will steal kisses right in front of everybody.

  I changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth and wrote for a couple of hours. It kept me from stalking all my old friends—not that I’m friends with them anymore.

  But you can’t exactly be in the world without social media now, and now that I’m away from the old crowd, I’ve joined everything with a new identity, witchesgranddaughter333. I have zero friends, and I like it that way. I’ve followed a bunch of generic photography accounts and cat people so I’ll look like a complete nerd. And then I can stalk people I want to follow, just randomly. If anyone notices, they’ll only see the weird cat person with no followers.

  Which maybe they’ll figure out is me, but I haven’t decided what to do about that.

  The dream showed up right after I fell asleep. I was standing on the beach under a full moon. A bunch of people stood around me, dressed in weird old-school clothes, and somebody was reading something out loud.

  I was myself, but not exactly, and I was trying to explain that my friends were lying about me, that they had set me up, but no one was listening. I saw my friend Kaitlyn in the back of the group, half smiling, and I yelled, I didn’t want your stupid boyfriend! He was the one who wanted me!