The apartment isn’t perfectly clean, but at least William won’t have to sort through all my and Mom’s things. It should make his job easier, or the landlord’s, or whoever’s. Taking some more of the casserole, I sit in front of Mom’s computer, which I didn’t unplug yet, and I search online.
I don’t know Claire’s last name.
I don’t know her hometown, where she was lost.
But I know enough. As the search results scroll down the screen, I feel my eyes water. The screen blurs in front of me, and I blink fast to clear my vision. The Scottsdale local news was abuzz for several days about a young girl who’d been missing for three years, presumed dead, who took a bus by herself from Flagstaff and showed up on her family’s doorstep in a princess dress. One has a photo of her, my Claire, in front of her new elementary school. I stare at the photo, touch the screen as if I could touch her, and then I jot down the school address and stuff it into my pocket.
As sunrise tints the sky lemon-yellow, I lock the door to Mom’s and my apartment one last time. I look at the key and consider sliding it under the door, or under my landlord’s door, but in the end, I stuff it into my pocket. After all, there’s always the chance that I’m totally wrong about this and that even if I find Claire, we won’t be able to find Lost again, and then I’ll feel pretty stupid explaining to William or the landlord why I need the key and why my apartment is all boxed up.
My belief in Lost is firm. My belief in my own abilities to find it...decidedly less so.
I’m nervous as I get into the car. I put my hands on the steering wheel. They’re already sticky, even though the morning is still cool from the night air. I check the gas. It’s close to full. Enough to get me to Scottsdale and farther. I put the car into Drive. And I leave.
* * *
It’s six hours on Route 10 from Los Angeles to Scottsdale.
I drove this way before, must have, on my way to Lost, but I don’t remember it. The view out the window had been a blur. Now I watch each cactus and highway sign. I loop around Phoenix, ask for directions at a gas station, and find Laguna Elementary School in Scottsdale. I park on the street.
It’s a flat reddish-tan building, the same color as the dirt here. Two tall palm trees flank the entrance, next to two equally tall flagpoles. The playground is enclosed by a chain-link fence. Kids are swarming over it. I step out of the car and lean against the door.
The wind picks up crumpled paper in the street, bits of dirt from the grassless ground, and the shouts and laughter of the kids on the swings and slides. A group of girls is clustered on a stretch of black pavement. Hopscotch.
But I look for Claire to be one of the loners, like the boy on the swing or the girl curled with a notebook near a rock. I don’t see her.
My hands feel slick with sweat. I wipe them on my jeans. She might not be here. She might not exist, no matter what the articles said. I could have hallucinated them all—the articles, the rabbit, the puffer fish, the diner menu, the Missing Man.
I don’t believe that.
She’s here.
I know she is.
And then, I see her. My Claire. She’s in the middle of the group of girls. She’s broken from the pack to toss a rock onto the hopscotch squares. I watch her hop on one foot. Her blond hair bounces. Her hair looks longer. She looks taller. Older. I realize she must have been in Lost for several years, not aging except on the inside. Balancing on one foot, she leans over and scoops up her rock. She’s steady, as she would be after months of scrambling over rooftops and through alleyways. She smiles triumphantly at the other girls, and then she hops back and passes the rock to a curly haired girl. Her friends cluster around her again, and she disappears from view.
I don’t move from the car.
She’s real. She’s alive. She’s happy.
I watch until the bell rings. Claire runs with the pack, her legs stretching, her lope as smooth as a deer. The other girls jostle around her, some keeping up with her, some falling behind, and they gather in a pack in front of the teacher. They jostle into a single line, my Claire in the lead. She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hesitate as she marches into school—her school.
I can’t take her from this.
This is where she’s supposed to be. And she’s well, and she’s happy.
I am crying as I climb back into the car and restart the engine. Mr. Rabbit watches me from the passenger seat as I pull away from the school and drive out of Scottsdale. I don’t watch the street signs as I leave. At the traffic light that leads back into a snarl of freeways, I don’t turn. I drive straight. And I don’t stop.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I drive. And drive.
I turn on the radio and wait for it to turn to static.
When it does, I switch the station and hope for more static, but I find another set of commercials and songs, another DJ bantering about inane relationship issues or celebrity gossip. I turn it off. I eat some of the snacks that I brought, drink some of the bottled water, and think about Lost, imagining it house by house, junk pile by junk pile, person by person, as if, if I can picture it clearly enough, it will materialize in front of me. I watch the horizon for any sign of dust, but it remains sharp and clear in the distance.
I think of the character in Lost Horizon who is never able to return to his paradise, and I think how hard Peter would laugh if he heard me compare Lost to Shangri-La, though he’d probably follow it up with, “I told you so.” Or maybe he’d quote from Lost Horizon, or Paradise Lost, and I wouldn’t know if he agreed with me or not.
I want to tell him that I made it back in time to see my mother and that Claire’s okay and home. I want to tell him about seeing the Missing Man at my mother’s funeral. I am trying not to think about what has happened to Lost while I’ve been gone, if the Missing Man returned, if people still cling to hope, or if the void has encroached again. I wonder if the ocean has claimed the little yellow house or if the attic room still waits for me to fill it with paints and easels.
I spend an hour or two worrying.
I spend an hour or two bored.
I cry for a while.
I scream.
I think about my mother.
I think about William. About Claire. About art. About the friends that showed up to the funeral who I’d barely acknowledged and the aunts and uncles who came that I barely knew. I think of my apartment and about the job waiting for me and about the art career that I could start. I’m tempted to turn around.
But I don’t.
I keep driving until the car sputters and slows and runs out of gas in the middle of an empty stretch of desert. I step out of the car and look in every direction. There is no dust storm in sight. I don’t see any cars or trucks, but I do see a sign saying Route 10 East. I look at my phone and note that I have no coverage.
I try to tell myself this is a good sign. I’m close to Lost.
Either that, or I’m going to die.
I take my backpack and I fill it with a few essentials: water, some food, a couple of sketches of Mom, the book of memories from her funeral, suntan lotion, my toothbrush, Mr. Rabbit. I tuck Mom’s plant, an aloe, in the top so the leaves poke out through the half-closed zipper. And I walk off of the highway and into the desert.
If the sign says Route 10, then I need to leave it. I need to lose my way literally, since I no longer feel lost inside. The sun blazes above me, and I strip off my outer shirt and tie it around my waist. I’m in a tank top and shorts. My shoes are sturdy and practical, a vast improvement over what I was wearing that first time. See, I’ve learned.
I drink the water sparingly but regularly. Contrary to what William feared, dying isn’t my plan. I think of him and wonder if he’s gone to my apartment yet. He probably has. I wonder if he’d let himself inside if I didn’t open the door. Agai
n, probably yes, if he were worried enough, and he seems like he would work himself into worried enough. I think I should have left a note, but how to explain? There isn’t a way. I left the sketches of Lost, of Claire and the diner, and the yellow house. I left the sympathy collage.
Even if he somehow guesses the truth, I doubt he’ll like it.
I hope he does water the plants.
I wish I could stop thinking about water. I pause to smear myself with suntan lotion, glad that I brought it. As the sun bakes my body, I wonder who will find my car and what they’ll think of everything inside. I don’t know what happens to abandoned cars in the middle of the desert. Some freeway patrol must be responsible for them. Impounded at first, I guess, and then sold off. I wonder if it will show up in Lost, if no one does find it.
I don’t know that I’ve really thought all of this through.
I don’t want to die out here in the middle of the desert. But I haven’t made plans not to die out here. My car is several miles away now and out of gas anyway. My phone has zero coverage. I didn’t leave a note saying where I was going, and no one but Mom knew where I went the first time. I suppose I told the hospital staff who first showed me the X-rays and the photos and the rest of the proof. If he figures it out in time and if he doesn’t think it’s crazy, William could try to save me. I imagine him driving out here, seeing my footsteps, coming charging across the desert on a white steed in full armor.
He’d bake in full armor in the sun. I hope he doesn’t wear armor.
I squint at the horizon.
Smudge, dammit. Blur! You’re supposed to be dust!
Except for a few dust devils, there’s no dust storm anywhere. The air is still. I begin to hope William will find me, that he’ll talk to the hospital staff, that he’ll guess I drove out on Route 10 again. But I don’t stop walking, and I don’t turn around.
“Mr. Rabbit,” I say. “I may have made a mistake.” My legs are feeling wobbly, and I am seeing black spots in my vision. I drink more water, but the spots don’t fade. It’s hard to catch my breath. I think it must be the heat. Or exhaustion. I didn’t sleep last night. I should have slept. I should have delayed a week. Prepared more. Prepared better. Or not tried this at all. Learned to like my life at home. Dated William. Brought my sympathy collage to a gallery. I bet a gallery would have liked it. I knew as I made it that it’s the best piece I’ve ever done. It’s full of everything real art should be full of. It’s a piece of my heart ripped out and placed on canvas. It might have started my career. I might have been able to make it as an artist. At least I could have tried.
Maybe in time, I’d have moved in with William. He’d support me while I worked on growing my art career. It would be hard at first, and I’d get angry at him sometimes when he called it my hobby or when he’d be home late from the hospital, his true love. But I’d forgive him, and he’d forgive me for my quirks. Maybe we’d have a kid. I’d name her Claire. She’d look just like my mother, and I’d tell her stories about Mom. I’d teach her to swim in the ocean, and I’d take her on vacation to Maine. We’d rent one of those old houses with the weathered shingles by the rocks, and I’d read a book on the rocks and try to protect our lunch from the voracious gulls. William would call out to little Claire to be careful on the rocks, don’t slip, don’t fall, but she’d be agile and never, ever fall.
I am so caught up in this daydream of my lost future that I don’t see the dust storm until it surrounds and swallows me. Everything blurs around me, as if a painter smeared the colors of the desert together. Blue sky fuses with red sand and then is gone. Sounds fade. I don’t hear the wind. Dust coats my body like a thin layer of mist. It pours into my mouth and soothes my raw throat. It embraces me.
I walk and then run into the dust.
* * * * *
Find out what Lauren discovers in
THE MISSING
by Sarah Beth Durst
Coming soon!
Acknowledgments
This book was born at a stop light. One random day, I waited, blinker on, to turn left and thought, “What if I didn’t turn? What if I never turned?” And in that idle thought, The Lost was born. So I’d like to thank that intersection. I’d also like to thank my wonderful agent, Andrea Somberg, and my magnificent editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, as well as all the other amazing people at Harlequin MIRA, for believing in this book. Many thanks and much love to my family, and especially to my husband and my children, who keep me from ever being lost.
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ISBN-13: 9781460330111
THE LOST
Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Beth Durst
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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