Unleaving

by Melissa Ostrom

  Summer was over. On the trees edging the water, orange and scarlet streaked the foliage in narrow swaths. Even the September sky belonged to fall: fitful, moody. Silver-edged clouds, like dirty fingerprints, smudged the bluest blue.

  She caught her hair and held it down. Aunt Wren’s bit of shoreline was like a lopsided smile, quirking on the one end, a short bluff with a bent pine, and drooping into a marshland on the other. Maggie looked beyond the cattails. In that westward direction, the land formed a narrow peninsula, craggy with giant rocks and lush with maples, oaks, and locusts. The muck, tall grass, and vines made the place unapproachable. But even if she wanted to tackle the swamp to reach it, she shouldn’t. It didn’t belong to the aunt. Wren had said so herself. Isolated, severe, wild, it didn’t seem like the kind of place anyone could own.

  Maggie lowered her gaze to the sand and started walking.

  The lake was inventive. Each lapping break delivered something new. Along the water-laced sheen where waves and land met, she looked for beach glass. Mixed with wet stones, the remnants of old bottles glinted. Frosted white, pale green, warm amber, deep blue, smooth and rounded—small treasures. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. The search—the mindlessness of it—was addictive. As the morning wore on, beachcombing became brain-combing, a soothing repetition of walk, pause, bend, collect, white, green, amber, blue. Thoughts turned blunted like the glass, as if the waves had plucked the sharp things from her head, carried them to the lake on a retreating swell, and then tumbled them over and over, ground them into something bearable, before sweeping them back to her. Here. They can’t hurt you now.

  Nothing to wonder but the simplest question—pebble or glass? Nothing to feel but the lake circling her ankles and the sun threading warmth through her hair. Nothing to look out for but harmless things, half-buried in shifting sand, a coin among broken shells, a glimmer by a silver feather, a bright wink under sodden wood.

  The simplicity of the exercise pleased her. After a couple of hours, it struck her as funny. Who needed college? What would she have done with an English degree anyway? Maybe she wouldn’t bother reading those crazy-long Victorian novels she’d bought yesterday. Maybe she would give up words entirely. She’d just pick up glass from now on, day in and day out, this way and that, walk, pause, bend, collect, white, green, amber, blue. The pockets of her rolled-up pants sagged damply with chips of glass. Her feet were numb from the cold water; her nose, sunburned. She didn’t care. She was going to tell her parents not to worry. They could stop freaking out about the scholarships, put away their fears for her health and happiness. They didn’t need to stress about her lost year, this year, the leave of absence Carlton had readily granted. Just to get her the hell out of the way, Maggie suspected. Put an end to the ugly press. Shoo, shoo. And take your bad business with you.

  This was her destiny. Clean Lake Ontario of all its glass. A good occupation. A safe one. Wasn’t this safe? Just her and the churning body of water, dumb and constant. No designs, no lies.

  She laughed, a high-pitched trill.

  The sound jarred her. She was shaking, gasping. She squeezed her eyes shut, willfully slowed her breathing. She needed to stop thinking. Stop thinking.

  Then she stopped altogether. Not to calm down or bend and collect, but to listen. Beyond the water’s hollow roar, under the screech of gulls, along with the hum of wind—a human sound, a swelling holler. She turned, just as a shouting child reached her.

  The girl stormed Maggie. Not a hug. A tackle. They staggered together into the water. She was barefooted, brown-skinned, black-haired, and small enough that her barreling, as measured on Maggie, was only a hip-high collision. She laughed and yelled, “Got you!”

  Startled, Maggie grabbed the child’s elbows to steady them both and scanned the shore.

  Aunt Wren’s assistant, Sam, was scowling at the rutted drive. He gripped his hair, then strode across the beach.

  The girl bounded over to him. “Daddy!”

  He caught and hugged the child without looking at her. Maggie raised a hand in a halfhearted wave and began to sidle out of the way, but his expression gave her pause. “Everything all right?”

  He shook his head. “Where’s Wren?”

  “Out for lunch with my mom. I think they’re going to the Memorial Art Gallery afterward.”

  “Fuck.” He glared at the lake. When the girl squirmed, he set her down but took her hand. His troubled gaze focused on Maggie as if he were finally registering who she was. “I—I need some help.” He plowed a hand through his hair. “Can you help me with Kate? For, like, just an hour?”

  Kate slipped out of his hold and ran for the water.

  “You want me to watch her?” Maggie asked.

  He nodded impatiently.

  She looked over her shoulder. Kate jumped into the swell of a wave, soaking herself to the waist. Five years old, Maggie guessed. She swallowed. “She doesn’t know me.” I am not a good choice for a babysitter. “Won’t she be scared?”

  He grunted. “She’s not scared of anything.” When Kate flew back to him, he sat on his haunches and loosely held her in place. “Hey, sweets, give me a kiss good-bye.”

  The child’s smile disappeared. “You said you’d play with me.”

  “I said I’d take you outside. I have to go somewhere for a little while.”

  “Can I go, too?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll be back real soon. Want to play on the beach with Wren’s niece? Want to play with—” He glanced up.

  “Maggie.”

  “With Maggie here?”

  Her expression said no. But she answered, “Okay.”

  “That’s good. I’ll pick you up in a bit.” He kissed the top of her head, straightened, hesitated. To Maggie: “If Wren gets back, tell her…” His mouth closed, tightened. He briefly shut his eyes. “Tell her Linnie’s missing.”

  * * *

  “Want to make a sand castle with me?” Maggie asked, scanning the beach. With what? She didn’t have a cup out here, let alone a pail and shovel.

  Kate ignored her and watched her father walk away. When the screen door slapped shut, the child slunk toward the house. She kicked the base of the porch stairs, as if the bottom step, specifically, were to blame for separating her from her father. Arms folded and head lowered, she lingered there, kicking the rickety wood, climbing the stairs, stopping at the closed door, trudging back down, a deliberating little person, until the studio wing’s back door slammed and the old pickup growled and shot out of the driveway. Then she ran after the truck, straight down Ash Drive.

  “Oh shit.” Maggie, who’d thought she’d give the kid a few minutes to adjust to the notion of a strange babysitter (and, okay, give herself a few minutes, too), raced after the girl, calling breathlessly, “Kate! Hey, Kate! Want to see what I’ve got? I’ve got…” What did she have? What did she have? “Beach glass!”

  She caught up with her on the side of the parkway. Kate was stomping in an eastward direction, her expression scared and pissed.

  The road stretched empty and gray. A loose piece of macadam gouged one of Maggie’s bare feet. She winced and then arranged her features into what she hoped passed for cheerfulness. “Want to see my beach glass collection?”

  Kate scowled.

  Maggie reached down to collect the small hand, but the girl jerked away. “Please?” Maggie sighed. “I’m not sure where he’s going. But he said he’d be back in an hour.”

  Silence. They continued walking. Finally, the child halted and released a frustrated sound that pitched into a sob.

  She let Maggie take her hand and escort her back to Aunt Wren’s place. On the beach, she let Maggie situate her on a warm patch of sand. And when Maggie sat across from her, she let her talk. All these allowances: bitter, condescending.

  Maggie emptied her pockets and made up lame stories for the pieces of beach glass. (“This one must really be jade. I’m going to sell it. Think how rich I’ll be.” “Here’s a little topaz. Pir
ate booty. Bet the rest of the treasure will ride in on a wave any minute now.”) Inane chatter and an unspoken plea: Don’t run away again. She thought about the tremble in the hand she’d held on the way back to the cabin. When was the last time Maggie had reached for a hand and held it? When was the last time she’d touched someone more scared than herself? Where her fingertips had grazed the fragile wrist, Kate’s pulse had fluttered like a trapped winged creature.

  Sam was wrong. His daughter was not fearless. It bothered Maggie that he believed this. It worried her that his daughter pretended to be.

  Kate watched and waited, eyeing Maggie suspiciously and then checking the driveway, back and forth, again and again. She didn’t talk except twice, once to clarify, “You are not my mom or my teacher or Wren,” a statement that Maggie interpreted to mean, You are nobody important.

  And a second time: After Maggie finished a convoluted magical sapphire story for a blue chip, Kate turned to stare at the driveway and said, “Stupid. It’s just glass. I’ve seen broken glass lots of times.”

  * * *

  “It’s too early to go to bed,” Mom said, “and you haven’t even had supper. Did you eat anything today? You’ve got to eat, Maggie.”

  “I did.” Earlier. At some point. Didn’t she? “I’m not hun—”

  “Wren and I went out of our way to stop at a bookstore this morning, just so I could buy that book you wanted. Can’t you do this little thing for me? And look. Look at all this stuff we brought back.” Takeout containers covered the kitchen table. Maggie’s mother seized one and cracked the lid. “Cashew chicken. You used to love cashew chick—”

  “Okay, okay.” Jesus Christ. Hot-faced, Maggie sat.

  Sam, who’d been frowning at the floor, glanced at her. Kate was in his arms, sleeping against his chest. There was another visitor at the aunt’s table: Thomas Blake, Sam’s dad. His attention veered Maggie’s way.

  Maggie trained her gaze on the table. She wished her mother wouldn’t talk so much, wished, too, she’d known these people would be staying so she could have complained of a headache beforehand and hidden in the loft.

  After her day with Kate, Maggie just wanted to be alone.

  Mom and Aunt Wren had gotten back a few minutes ago. Sam arrived hard on their heels; his father, not long after. An arranged gathering, Maggie figured. Sam must have phoned the others at some point during the afternoon.

  Maggie’s hour of babysitting had turned into four. The child spent the end of their time together sobbing and screeching for her dad, only quieting when the sisters returned. With relief, Maggie handed Kate over to the aunt. Sam’s pickup appeared a moment later.

  No one had said much since gathering at the table. Now Mom rose and went to the cupboards to collect dishware. When she began filling glasses with water, Maggie stood to help but got a “No, no, stay put.”

  Aunt Wren sat with her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, as if her thoughts were too heavy to mull without some scaffolding to prop them up. Thomas’s folded hands on the table were white-knuckled. Sam, miserable-looking, shook his head at the floor. And Maggie—knowing she didn’t have anything to do with whatever had happened to bring these people together and certain the situation wasn’t any of her or Mom’s business—was about to mumble about the make-believe headache and the possibility of taking her supper to her room, when Sam said, “Thanks for watching Kate, Megan.”

  “Maggie,” Mom corrected, arranging plates around the table.

  “Sorry. Maggie.” He ran a hand down his daughter’s hair. “Didn’t realize it’d take me so long to accomplish nothing.”

  “That’s all right,” Maggie lied, and inched into a hover above her seat. “Think I’ll—”

  “Here you go.” Mom forked a helping of chicken onto Maggie’s plate. Then, just as if Maggie were Kate’s age and needed mealtime modeling, her mother smacked her lips and said encouragingly, “Yum.”

  More heat flared under her skin. “Thanks.” Thanks for making me feel like an imbecile.

  The aunt, still holding her head, tilted up her chin and smiled across the table. “She forgot your bib.”

  Maggie sighed.

  Wren leaned back in her chair. “The police have anything to say?”

  Sam laughed shortly without smiling. “Oh, they know all about Linnie, but they haven’t come across her recently. Officer McPherson was nice about it—asked if I wanted to fill out a report.” He raised his hand, a helpless gesture. “I said I didn’t think so. She’s twenty-one. If an adult leaves willingly, she’s not exactly missing.”

  “You checked with Jess?” Thomas asked.

  “Yeah. No clue.”

  Mom stacked three spring rolls on her sister’s plate and put a small, covered container next to the arrangement. “Hoisin sauce.”

  The aunt gave the plate a disbelieving look. “Now she’s doing it to me.”

  “Eat.” Mom slipped a folded napkin under her sister’s fork. “Any other friends she might have said something to?”

  “Friends. I wouldn’t use that word to describe them.” Grudgingly, Sam added, “Except Caleb.”

  Thomas smiled a little. “Caleb’s cool.”

  “Caleb,” Wren repeated hopefully. “Of course. You checked with him?”

  Sam nodded.

  “No word?”

  He shook his head.

  “What about Allie?” his dad asked, holding the rice container but doing nothing with it.

  “Hasn’t seen Linnie all week.”

  “Ashlyn?”

  “Same.”

  The father set down the container and asked quietly, “Kyle?”

  Sam made a face. “I even called him.”

  A silence fell. Maggie easily recognized its tone: awkward embarrassment. Seemed like she caused this feeling wherever she went last year. Tell us what happened—tell us everything, the people who were supposed to be helping her would say. Then afterward, in expression if not words, Shit, did you have to tell us everything?

  She forked a piece of broccoli and dragged it across her plate. Adults raised kids to tell the truth, speak up, spill the beans. But they didn’t mean it. Not always. A lot of times, people shied away from confessions—worked hard, in fact, to dismiss or ignore them. What they really wanted to hear was a confirmation of what they believed in or hoped for or needed. Maggie thought about Sam’s assessment of his daughter: never afraid. How often had he reinforced that quality in his daughter? You’re a tough one, aren’t you, Kate? Maybe it was his way to make sure she’d be more like him and less like her mother. Whatever Linnie was or wasn’t, Maggie couldn’t say, but she guessed resilience wasn’t her strong suit.

  Mom broke the lull. “Want me to hold your daughter so you can eat?”

  Her mother’s offer made Maggie glance at the sleeping kid and inwardly shudder. Better you than me.

  “Thanks,” Sam said, “but I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  Neither could anyone else by the looks of it. Aunt Wren gave his arm a pat. “Try not to stress. This isn’t the first time she’s … gone away for a while.”

  Sam ran a hand over his head, went back to his eyes, and rubbed them hard. “Never like this, though—packing first, and not just a comb and her toothbrush. A picture of Kate. It freaks me out.”

  Thomas put both hands flat on the table. “I think it’s time you and Linnie called it quits.”

  Sam glared at his father. “How the hell can we? She’s missing.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s not working, buddy.”

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut, a person either closing down or taking a hit, absorbing it. Maggie couldn’t tell which.

  More gently, Thomas said, “You can’t keep doing this.”

  “I owe it to her.” Sam put his face in his daughter’s hair. Softly, “You know how I feel about this one. She means everything to me. But look at what having her cost Linnie.”

  “We could say the same for you,” Thomas said.

  “Well, n
ot exactly,” Wren said slowly. “At least Sam was able to finish high school.”

  “Linnie could have gotten her GED,” Thomas snapped.

  The aunt raised an eyebrow. The two friends’ expressions—one skeptical, one defensive—made Maggie think there was an old argument behind their exchange.

  “You’re handling your responsibilities,” Thomas continued. “Linnie isn’t.”

  “She just … can’t,” Sam said.

  “She might be able to if she got the proper help. Not your kind. Professional help.”

  A short laugh. “With what money?”

  “You know I’d chip in.”

  “Again? I don’t want you to.”

  “This isn’t about what you want. It’s about Linnie and what she needs. You’ve set her up as a kind of mission, like if you’re patient enough and supportive enough, you’ll erase all those years she spent in foster care.” Thomas dropped his gaze and traced a gouge in the table with his thumb. “Sometimes I think this has to do with your mom passing away.”

  Sam flared his eyes. “Thanks for the insight, Dr. Blake.”

  Aunt Wren, in an obvious effort to ease the tension, said lightly, “Technically, he is a doctor.” To Maggie: “Thomas teaches at Allenport College.”

  “History,” Sam said. “Not psychology. I don’t need a therapy session.”

  “Everyone could benefit from therapy,” Mom said.

  Maggie felt her mother looking at her but pretended she didn’t.

  “Especially Linnie,” Thomas muttered. “Therapy, rehab, something, for Pete’s sake.”

  Sam shook his head, defeated. “Linnie’s troubles are beside the point. I have to consider what Kate needs. She needs her parents. Both of them. A child deserves that. I’m just trying to make it happen.”

  Mom shrugged. “Well, that’s true enough.”

  At the same time, Sam’s father and Aunt Wren shook their heads. “Not in this case,” Thomas said.

  The aunt cut her sister a sardonic glance. “You don’t really think that.”

  Mom straightened. “Believe in the benefits of a child having two loving parents? Absolutely, I do. And I’m sure I have the backing of countless studies.”