He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, contemplating. There were so many things he could say, so many late-night thoughts about loneliness and belonging, about his parents, his father especially, how he always felt like he was disappointing them, never able to live up to their expectations, about Lucy, about how afraid he was of disappointing her too, all these things he’d never wanted to share with anyone until now, until her. Finally, he said, “I think I was born on the wrong planet.”
He held his breath, waiting for her to laugh and let go of his hand, but she didn’t. She squeezed tighter.
“What do you mean?”
He tried to explain. “Sometimes when I’m at school or at work, surrounded by so many people, all the cars, the lights, the buildings, everyone talking and rushing to get places, I start to feel dizzy, confused. I don’t know. I feel lost. But then, I look up at the stars. And it feels like home.”
She didn’t say anything.
“It’s stupid, I know.”
“It’s not.” She lifted her face to the sky even though there was nothing to see but empty blue and a blinding sun. “I’ve had days like that, too. Days when I feel like I don’t belong here, when I’m surrounded by people who don’t see me, not the real me.”
He wanted to hold her and whisper that he saw her, that from the very first time they met, he knew how special she was, how rare. He wanted to kiss her again, too, but he wasn’t sure if she wanted the same.
She lowered her gaze and caught him staring, but she didn’t pull away. She smiled softly and rubbed her thumb across the back of his hand. “Tell me what you’re thinking about right now.”
“The rule of three.”
Her thumb stilled, and her eyes narrowed slightly. He could tell she didn’t understand, that it wasn’t what she’d been expecting him to say, so he explained, “If you have one extraordinary thing happen to you, you can consider it an anomaly. If two extraordinary things happen, then you might be able to brush it off as coincidence. But three things, and that’s a pattern. It has meaning and so you should pay attention.”
“Has something extraordinary happened?” she asked.
“The night before I met you, I saw something out here. Lights.” He wasn’t nervous at all telling her, the way he would have been if he were talking to his mom, or Lucy, or even Wyatt, who believed the same as Nolan. He didn’t have to try and impress her, he didn’t have to be anyone other than himself. “They touched down for a few seconds by that telescope. I think it might have been . . . well, I don’t know what exactly, but it was definitely extraordinary.”
“So an anomaly, then?”
He shook his head. “A month ago I saw similar lights hovering over the boulders behind my house.”
“Like UFOs?” It didn’t sound like she was making fun of him, but he hesitated anyway, and she added, “I saw a ghost once.”
He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.
“The lights flew,” he said. “And I have yet to identify them, so technically, yes, Unidentified Flying Objects.”
She laughed, but in a way that made him feel expansive, rather than belittled. Then she asked, “Was there a third thing?”
He traced the freckles on her hand. “You.”
This time she kissed him, and it was even better than the first time, deep and sweet, their bodies humming in harmony, and he never wanted it to end.
She pulled away, but only for a second, long enough to whisper, “What if I stayed?”
6
Lucy woke early, when the rose-colored dawn seeped through the motel room’s thin curtains and flared across her face. She lay in bed watching the light creep up the wall and set the room ablaze. Her migraine was gone, but she still felt a little shaky. Yesterday had been a long day. A lot of hours behind the wheel, a lot of disappointing conversations, far too much of Adam fucking Paulson—she shuddered thinking about him—also she didn’t remember eating anything after breakfast. Most likely the headache was a consequence of all those things combined. A stress headache, a hunger headache, and nothing more to worry about.
She rolled out of bed, ate a granola bar from the vending machine, then changed into her running gear and headed out for an easy two miles. She stuck to the main streets, choosing neighborhoods with lots of houses, and as she ran, she tried to work out what she was going to say to Sandra. The trouble was deciding where to start. There were just so many things that needed saying, ten years’ worth of words. More than that even, because really they’d stopped talking about important things long before Nolan went missing. But first, before anything else, Lucy had to come clean about the photographs. She had to tell Sandra, and now Wyatt too, she supposed, the truth about what she’d done.
Back at the motel, Lucy showered and changed into the same clothes from yesterday, jeans, a red T-shirt, and black hoodie. She blew her hair dry, then slipped back into her running shoes.
Her father called while she was in the shower. She listened to his short message. “It’s me. Just wanted to find out if you’re settling into your new apartment all right.” Then deleted it. The landlord called yesterday after she was already an hour outside of Los Angeles. She told him there was a slight change of plans. She had a few personal matters to attend to before she could officially move in, and since she’d already paid the first month’s rent, she asked if he would just hold the apartment for her, assuring him that she still wanted the place, apologizing for any inconvenience, and promising he could keep her security if she wasn’t moved in by the end of the month, which she would be, she assured him again. The landlord told her she had until the fifteenth to pick up the key. Otherwise, he would rent the place out to someone else and keep her money. At some point Lucy would have to tell Robert where she was and what she was doing, but not yet. He wanted her to grow up and start handling life on her own. That was his whole reason for kicking her out of the house. So here she was, doing just that, or trying anyway.
On her way out to the car, Lucy stopped by the front office to pay for another night’s stay. Then she drove north, following Wyatt’s map until she came to a no-name dirt road distinguished by a wooden post stuck in the ground with an antelope skull perched on top. Another half mile and the road ended in front of a double-wide trailer. A few yards from that was a small airplane hangar. The siding was new and shining. A row of small windows ran along the top, winking in the sunlight. A large satellite dish, set up in the space between the two buildings, pointed southeast at a sharp angle from the horizon.
Lucy pulled up next to a motorcycle and a blue sedan, but didn’t get out of the car. Earlier she’d been so certain she was doing the right thing, but now that she was here, her mind flooded with excuses of why she should leave. Sandra wasn’t going to believe her anyway. Maybe Sandra wasn’t even here. Maybe Wyatt had lied in order to lure her out to this isolated location where no one could hear her scream. Now she was just being ridiculous. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and stared into the distance where clouds threw down blue shadows over a row of golden-fleeced and rolling hills. The light was in a constant state of flux, goldenrod to ochre to burnt sienna to gray and then a flash of brilliant yellow as the clouds cleared for a brief moment before scudding in again and turning the landscape violet. Anyone else might have sighed at the beauty of it, snapped a picture or two. Lucy looked at those mountains and their shifting light, and saw only duplicity.
Before she could come to any decision, one of the hangar doors opened, and Wyatt stepped out. He walked toward her, raising his hand to wave. A large black dog trotted at his side. Lucy got out and met them halfway.
“Any trouble finding the place?” he asked.
She shook her head, her gaze moving past him to the open hangar door.
The dog bumped against her leg. His mouth hung open in a sloppy grin, his tail wagging his whole body side to side. He was a German shepherd covered in thick black fur, all black, night black, with pointed ears, sharp teeth, strong haunch
es, paws as big as pancakes, and muscles that rippled with even the slightest motion.
“This is Kepler,” Wyatt said. “Kepler, this is Lucy.”
The dog wagged harder.
“Technically, he belongs to Sandra,” Wyatt explained, reaching to scratch between his ears. “But some days I think he fancies himself the whole world’s dog.”
Kepler grinned at Lucy and then reached a long, pink tongue to lick the back of her hand. She laughed, and then she and Wyatt started to speak at the same time.
“About last night, I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m sorry I stormed off—”
They both stopped midsentence. Wyatt smiled. His hair wasn’t slicked back today. It was loose and tumbling. He looked casual, relaxed, more like a person and less like a pundit, and Lucy thought that if this had been the man she met at the bar the night before, things might have gone quite differently.
“I think we can agree we both started off on the wrong foot,” he said. “Let’s just call it water under the bridge and start over fresh, okay?”
She nodded and then asked, “Does she know I’m here?”
He scratched the top of Kepler’s head again. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
She followed Wyatt and the dog into the hangar, which was far more cavernous than it appeared from the outside. The front half was set up like a living area with a couch, a television, and a small kitchen, while the back half appeared to be both a workshop and office space. There was no clear division between the two sections. Various tools, machinery, and kitchen appliances cluttered workbenches along three walls. An engine hung from the ceiling by a heavy chain. Along another wall were filing cabinets and a corner desk where Sandra sat working at a computer, her back to the door. Lucy recognized the shape of her shoulders, the hunched-over way she’d always sat at a desk, hunting and pecking the letters with two fingers.
Kepler went over and nudged her leg. Sandra patted his head, but kept working. Wyatt cleared his throat, his eyes darting between Lucy and Sandra, then he turned away from both of them and went to a row of cabinets, taking a kettle from one and filling it with water out of an industrial sink. He poured the water into a coffeemaker and then busied himself scooping grounds into the filter and finding cups and sugar.
Lucy stood frozen near the door, all the words she’d practiced earlier evaporating like so much steam. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in over nine years? What do you say to a mother who hates you? This was a conversation that should have taken place years ago when it would have made a difference. The silence stretched to breaking, and Lucy was about to turn and go because what the hell was she thinking coming here anyway? There were not enough words in the English language to fix all that was broken between them. Then Wyatt called across the room, “Sandra, come have a cup of coffee with us.”
Sandra didn’t move for a long minute, then she sighed and pushed back from the desk, and Lucy had to remind herself to breathe as her mother came closer. Sandra stopped in front of Lucy with her arms crossed over her chest. She’d gained weight. Her cheeks were puffy and round, and there was very little definition now between her chin and neck. The clothes she wore were loose and baggy, all that extra fabric adding pounds. Lucy wondered if she had changed as much in Sandra’s eyes as Sandra had changed in hers. Was there anything familiar? Any trace of that bubble-cheeked, pigtailed, happy little girl Lucy used to be? Or was she completely unrecognizable now? Only a shell of her former self. She had grown up, which was more than Nolan ever had a chance to do, and maybe that’s what Sandra was seeing now: all the things her son would never be.
“Does she have a device?” Sandra asked.
Nothing about her voice had changed, her words still clipped short and no-nonsense; the sound of it still made Lucy shrink a little on the inside.
As far back as she could remember, Lucy had never known how to talk to her mother. They spoke, it seemed, in two different languages, and every conversation that didn’t include Nolan acting as mediator ended with someone, usually Lucy, breaking down in tears. Lucy spent much of her childhood feeling invisible in her mother’s presence, or on the worst days, inferior. She wasn’t artistic or clever like Nolan. She wasn’t sick or bleeding like the patients who came into the hospital. There was nothing very special about her at all. For years, she tried to be noticed. She was a good girl and followed all the rules and fought for her good grades, even did all the extra credit problems or made up her own if there weren’t any, and helped out other kids who were struggling, and her teachers said she was a joy to have in class, a special little girl indeed, but her mother, distracted as she was with the divorce and then her work and her wine and later Nolan, could only see the things Lucy got wrong. How she didn’t sort the laundry right. How she stayed up too late watching television and because of this sometimes missed the bus the next morning. How she got an A on her spelling test instead of an A+. Nothing Lucy did, it seemed, was ever good enough for Sandra.
“Does she have a device?” Sandra asked again, and though she stared at Lucy, her question was clearly directed at Wyatt.
He lifted his eyebrows, giving Sandra a bemused look. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
“That’s how they track us,” she countered. “You know that. They’re listening to every word we say right now.”
“Who is?” Lucy asked and then pressed her fingers to her lips, horrified that these were her first words to her mother after all this time, that her tone betrayed what she was thinking. This is nuts. You are nuts.
“The NSA,” Sandra said. “The FBI. The police even. They’re all listening.”
Lucy stared, trying to figure out if Sandra was drunk. Her eyes were bright, her hands steady, her words clear. There were no empty bottles lying around, no stench of booze on her breath. She looked sober enough. Though that didn’t mean much. For many years after the divorce, Sandra was a highly functional drunk. If confronted, she denied it. A glass of wine after work, what’s the big deal? she always argued. And that was fine for a while, but then she started to work graveyard and “after work” was seven in the morning and the glass of wine was her breakfast. She was sober again by the time her next shift started and except for a few times when she’d fallen asleep and forgotten about Nolan and Lucy, who then had to fend for themselves at dinner—taking money from her wallet and ordering a pizza, or eating cold cereal and toast in front of the television—except for those few times, Lucy hardly even noticed. It was only after Nolan went missing that Sandra replaced wine with vodka, and the liquor seemed to mix differently with her pain, turning her angry and mean.
Speaking to Wyatt again, Sandra said, “I’d feel more comfortable if she left it in the car.”
Wyatt looked at Lucy and shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
Sandra had always been a very rational-minded woman. She used to tell Lucy and Nolan that there was a reasonable explanation for everything, and if something sounded impossible, it probably was, and to question everything twice. She drilled the scientific method into their brains the way other mothers drilled the alphabet. When she found out about the UFO Encounters Group, she forbade Nolan from attending, and even as he ignored her and collapsed deeper into his delusions, she fought to bring him back. She fought, and she lost. And maybe that was when the old Sandra, the reasonable-explanation-for-everything Sandra, took a step back and allowed this new, my-son-was-abducted-by-aliens-and-the-government-is-listening-to-every-word-we-say Sandra to take over.
Lucy took her cell phone out of her purse and gave it a little shake. “Is this what you’re talking about?”
Sandra made a face. Wyatt nodded. She had already come this far, hadn’t she? She went back to her car and left the phone in the glove box. When she reentered the hangar, Sandra and Wyatt stood close together, talking in low voices. They stopped when she came in.
“Want one?” Wyatt held up a cup of coffee.
Lucy took it and sat down on a folding chair next
to the minifridge.
“Thank you for humoring me.” Sandra smiled stiffly, taking her own cup and sitting on a spread of rumpled blankets covering the couch. A suitcase lay open at her feet. Clothes spilled out of it onto the floor.
Wyatt perched himself on another folding chair near Lucy. With a heavy sigh and jangling tags, Kepler sank onto the rug in the center of their clumsy circle. He laid his head on his paws and shifted his keen black eyes between the three of them. Lucy hoped Wyatt would speak first and break the building tension, but he seemed wholly focused on his coffee, taking long, thoughtful sips and then staring into the cup as if he might be able to discern their future in the swirls of cream.
Lucy tested the coffee, but it was too hot for her to drink. She held the cup in her lap. Someone had to say something. The silence was starting to feel oppressive. “I went by the house looking for you.”
“I haven’t lived there in a long time,” Sandra said.
Lucy waited for her to continue and fill in the missing years, but she didn’t, and the silence rushed in again, expanding and making it hard to breathe.
What happened to everything she left at the house on Skyline Road? Lucy wondered. The twin bed pushed up against the wall, covered in a hot-pink comforter she received as a present for her thirteenth birthday. The wooden nightstand painted robin’s-egg blue and riddled with stickers. The stack of Boxcar Children books she kept on the bottom shelf. The matching dresser. The oval mirror that hung on the wall above it. Her clunky boom box that sat on top surrounded by meteorites and other interesting rocks she and Nolan had collected together. The posters of her favorite track stars Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Steve Prefontaine taped to her closet doors. She didn’t take any of it with her to her father’s house. She’d asked him to buy her all new things, and he had. He’d given her a whole new life. But where were her old things now? Boxed up and collecting dust in some storage unit? Rotting in a landfill? She scanned the hangar, glancing over the filing cabinets and several small cardboard boxes scattered throughout the shop. Nothing looked big enough to hold all she’d left behind.
Everything We Lost Page 10
