The Lost

by Cole McCade

  All she needed was Elijah, she thought…and this might almost feel like how she’d always imagined a real family would be. No maids, no nannies, no cold sterile rooms and men who were everything she should trust but nothing she could believe in.

  Just people who cared for each other, in their own strange and awkward way. She closed her eyes and lifted Tybalt into her lap, cradling her bony, fuzzy warmth close and burying her face between her ears to breathe in the dusty-sweet scent of her fur. Could she really stand to run away from this? Once upon a time, it would have been easy to say yes. But this wasn’t a story, starting with once upon a time.

  And her once upon a time was quickly turning into her once upon a heartbreak.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AFTER BREAKFAST, HART SHUT HIMSELF in the bathroom without a word; only a lingering look for Leigh, significant and heavy with questions she refused to answer. The door closed, followed by the muted rainfall rush of the shower. As soon as he was out of sight, Leigh set Tybalt on the floor, tumbled to her feet, and yanked open the kitchen drawer where she’d hidden Hart’s pills under a stack of stained oven mitts and pot holders. The bottle looked untouched. She shook the pills out in her palm and counted them; seventeen. She should’ve done that before, but she’d remember this time.

  “He’s looking better, isn’t he?” Gary brushed against her side as he brought his empty plate to the sink and rinsed it off. “Might only need to stay here a few more days.”

  “Maybe.” Leigh shook the pills back into the bottle and capped it again. “I’ve seen junkies in detox before. They’ll plateau while their bodies try to regulate, then hit the bad shakes again.”

  “That how you think of him? Just a junkie?”

  I don’t know what to think of him.

  “No,” she said, and pushed away from the counter to fetch her plate and slot it into the dishwasher. “But it doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “You’re always saying that. It doesn’t matter. What does matter?”

  “Nothing.” Leigh scooped up her backpack and headed for the stairs. “Nothing at all.”

  She’d thought Gary would let her go. For once, Gary needed to just let her go—but he called after her, words grabbing her leash and yanking her back.

  “Will you come back tonight?”

  She paused, one hand curling against a few strands of the beaded curtain, and looked over her shoulder. “Why?”

  “You said it. He’s plateauing. He might need you again tonight to keep him on an even keel.” With a flat look, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. “You want me to dump him on Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy will just give him the pills.”

  “Exactly.”

  She closed her eyes, grinding her teeth. “Yeah…fine. Four p.m.?”

  “Sure,” Gary said. “Where you going?”

  “Out.” Out where she didn’t feel the walls closing in on her like a damned trap. Out where people didn’t ask things of her, things that bound her up tighter in these restraints. She didn’t want people to need her.

  Because then she might start to need them.

  She climbed over the box, but barely made it down a few steps before Gary came after her, catching her wrist and dragging her back a step. She started to snarl at him, until he pressed something into her hand, cool and dry and smooth.

  Bills. A rolled up wad of bills, the outermost a twenty. She looked up, a protest on her lips.

  “Take it.” He cut her off, scowling fiercely, and folded her fingers around the money, gripping hard enough to hurt. “Goddammit, Leigh, take it. He’s too fucking proud, so let me give you something for this. Maybe nothing matters to you, but this matters to me.”

  Why? she wanted to ask, but her tongue swelled to fill her mouth and clog her throat until the only words she could manage were a dazed, “Sure, Gary. Okay…okay.”

  He let her go without a word. She backed away, down the stairs, and nearly ran out into the bar and into the street, the bills clutched against her chest and over the too-fast, too-hard beat of her heart, every erratic thump throbbing in her skull. This was the second time he’d forced her to accept his money, forced her to accept that damned paternalistic need to take care of her, like throwing money at her would fix everything and make her a nice respectable girl who wanted nice respectable things. She stared down at the roll of bills, then groaned, slumped against the brick wall, and tucked it away inside her hoodie.

  Soon she’d have enough money that it wouldn’t matter how much he gave her. She’d pay him back, and then some. Just…leave the money where he’d find it, then take off, giving him no choice but to accept it. By the time he realized what had happened, she’d be gone from Crow City.

  And out into the wild world where she belonged.

  * * *

  She spent the day in the library again, curled up in a chair with The Witch of Blackbird Pond. The library copy was new, its cover paper laminated in plastic, and it crackled under her fingertips with a sort of too-plain crassness that made her wish for the soft threaded binding of Hart’s copy. She remembered the first time she’d read the book years ago, a school library hardcover with that pinched look at the edges where the paper folded over at the corners, pillowy and disappearing behind the glued-on interior paper. The cover had been blue, just like Hart’s. And there’d been a girl with a faraway look, as if she was seeing something far from the life she’d found herself in but had never chosen for herself.

  She read about the keen still days of September, the mellow warmth of an October sun, burning maple trees and glowing oaks and fields like a carpet of jewels and all the wonderful unexpected things that happened in October days. And when she read she snatched at the dream that had comforted her for so long. It was faded and thin, like a letter too often read, she thought of her notebooks and the hundreds of little letters she’d written to herself, read over and over again as if they would somehow show her the way to what she craved, what she ached for, what she sought night after night in bed after bed.

  When she reached the last page, she closed the book and let it rest on her thighs, letting the words, the thoughts, the images sink into her and become a part of her, as much a part as her blood and breath—until she felt them in her fingertips when she dug her notebook out and dashed sharp words across the page.

  I feel like I live in the keen still days of September, but I don’t know how to find my way to the mellow warmth of an October sun.

  October suns burn slow and red. Red hazy drops against a blurring orange and gold sky. That feeling…I don’t know how to find that feeling in myself.

  I’m all black and gray inside, with just a little touch of blue.

  I’m winter, not even the last lingering warmth of September. I’m a river frozen over, black and reflecting back slivers of an ashen sky in the leaden days of January, when even the rain can’t find voice to cry.

  Wonderful unexpected things don’t happen in January.

  January is for sighing, and waiting out the cold.

  She read the words over and over, and hated herself for the bleak awful truth of them. She was neither beautiful nor lofty, neither heroically lost nor heroically found.

  She was just…lost, period. Lost and hateful and horrible. She’d been proud of that for so very long, but suddenly she wasn’t anymore. And her eyes stung as she flipped to a new page, pen hovering over the pale blue lines like parallel veins, then scratched out:

  Someone like him is wasted on me.

  And if she let Hart get too close, she’d only infect him with the ruin of her emptiness.

  * * *

  In the park, she sat on the swing with her camera hidden inside the overlong sleeve of her hoodie, and watched Elijah bounce on the see-saw opposite a little sandy-haired boy with a pug nose and freckles. The other boy giggled and shrieked and threw his hands up until he nearly flew off, but not Elijah. Elijah only smiled his quiet smile, as if his happiness was a secret. His smile was
Leigh’s smile, full of ancient knowledge that could only be passed from mother to son not through words, but through birth.

  And as he kicked his feet against the dirt and pushed off to send the see-saw swaying, she wondered once again what was stopping her from just taking him and running.

  Once the idea had her, it wouldn’t leave her be: worrying at her with jagged little teeth, gnawing pieces off until it was eating her by inches. She could trade hard cocks and grasping hands for Dora the Explorer and afternoons in the park with peanut butter and banana sandwiches cut into little quarters—and God, if she could make fucking scrambled eggs she could make macaroni and cheese. Little boys were simple things with simple tastes, and didn’t need chef-made watercress sandwiches with goose pâté crackers. They just needed to be loved, and sometimes love was as simple as tater tots and homemade hot dogs and drawings on the fridge.

  The money from the ring could keep them going for a good long while, supplemented by waiting tables or tending bar. She’d never had a job in her life, but she could learn. It would be enough, at least, to get an apartment that wouldn’t be all that swanky but wouldn’t share one wall with a crack house and the other with an underground brothel, either. She could put him in school and help him understand why two plus two was the same as two times two, and send him off with little bagged lunches that he’d probably trade with someone with better lunches from a mom who could spoil them more. She could be a mother, and maybe she might not even fuck it up.

  Right now, as this painful love built up inside her until she held it like a jar ready to crack under the pressure…she didn’t think she could ever fuck it up, as long as she loved that solemn little boy this much. She’d keep him all for herself. Keep her dirty men away from him, keep him warm and clean and good where he’d grow up to be nothing like his father. Nothing like the filthy boys who wrapped women up in chains and tore their wings down to seeping stumps that leaked tears instead of blood. She’d never been a maiden, wasn’t old enough for a crone…but maybe, just maybe, as a mother she could be a goddess again, and find her own salvation.

  But she knew it wasn’t possible. Not when Jacob would throw every penny of his considerable fortune into finding them; not when there’d be Amber Alerts and FBI investigations. It wouldn’t take long to figure out the strange scraggly blonde woman who’d snatched Elijah from the park was once a pert, prim brunette named Clarissa Leigh van Zandt. The world would say she’d stolen her son not for herself, but to take something beautiful away from her husband to make up for all the beautiful things he’d ripped away from her.

  It was too late for her to ever have Elijah. But as the nanny gathered him up and carried him away, Leigh once again screamed inside, the words don’t take him away from me graven on her soul.

  Because in just a few more days, she would never see him again.

  She stole a picture of her little boy as the nanny settled him into the back of a predictably maroon minivan, tucked into his child seat with the seatbelt looped tight and the perky little redhead tickling him for a laugh he only rarely gave. Leigh thought most people would be unnerved by his wide-eyed, grave stare, too old for his pretty little face—but she thought it just made him more special, marked by those small things that made him hers even when she couldn’t be his mother.

  Most mothers probably thought that about their kids. Special little snowflakes. She smiled wryly as she tucked her camera away. She could play the wasted heroin chic princess all she wanted, drunk on ennui and addicted to the high of chaotic nothing…but some part of her was just like those soccer moms in the Rooks, with their cardigans and disapproving noses. Every last one thought their kid was a perfect little angel.

  Just like Leigh did.

  You can take the princess out of the suburbs, but…

  Snorting, she kicked herself on the swing a few more times, but there was no pull in it today, none of that desperate need to defy gravity. Gary was expecting her back soon—and wasn’t she being a good girl, living up to people’s expectations.

  She just hoped Hart would sleep through the night, and leave her alone.

  She took the long way back to the Jackdaws, walking with her backpack banging against her back and the toes of her boots kicking up with every step and her hands shoved into the pockets of her hoodie. She knew the streets of Crow City like a map of capillaries branching throughout its living body, but still she found a way to take side streets and offshoots she hadn’t walked before, just to see new things. Street vendors selling fry bread and lemon ices; shops with half-tilted signs and mannequins in the windows wearing bright beaded dresses in zig-zag patterns; gas stations with only one pump, promising lotto and ATMs in hand-written signs taped over the dirt-filmed doors.

  But she paused outside one shop—DISKOUNT DESINES in blinding orange on a vinyl banner—and looked up at a dirt-smudged mannequin that couldn’t seem to touch the pure, soft white of a layered, ruffled little muslin sundress, translucent and sweet and as innocent as she’d never been. It tugged at her with a quiet longing she hadn’t felt in some time, when all she’d ever needed was the bare basics to live. Walk on, she told herself. She needed only the clothes on her back and the few things in her backpack, and she never wanted to be weighed down by things again.

  Buy it, her subconscious whispered. You’re starting over. A new you. A new self. Something fresh and clean. Wash your sins away to leave yourself white and pure. That’s what Sister Mary Anne taught you, isn’t it?

  Pray. Pray for forgiveness, and be reborn.

  She couldn’t believe she was making a religious epiphany out of a cute dress.

  Christ. Hart had her so upside down she was overthinking everything.

  She pushed the thoughts from her mind and marched into the grimy, dimly-lit little shop. Clothing racks crammed in close until the entire tiny room was a sea of ruffles and colors and glittering fabric, most of it so gaudy it looked like the eighties threw up all over the floor. She didn’t see anyone behind the counter, but for all she knew a sales girl could be buried under the mountain of frills.

  “Hello?” she called.

  “Hello, little girl,” oozed from behind her.

  She whirled with a gasp lodged thickly in her throat, heart jumping and toppling over. A tall, thin man looked down at her: a looming scarecrow with too-long fingers, a waxed and calligraphically curled moustache, and a rubber smile that stretched an impossible U all the way up to his cheekbones. His crisp black suit was at least four decades out of date, the shirt ruffled with a white carnation fountain of fabric. His fingernails were long and creepily curved, too yellow, and clacked together as he steepled his fingers. He looked like a character from a fucking Stephen King novel, and Leigh wondered if she was about to make a deal with the devil for a goddamned dress.

  Or maybe she was about to buy a dress from a creepy pedophile who thought she was a teenager, from the way his small, beady eyes skipped over her.

  “Um.” She swallowed. “I’m…I was wondering about…the dress in the window.”

  “Of course, my dear.” He tilted his head. It moved like an owl’s, almost rotating horizontally on his neck. He reached out to finger the hem of the sundress. “This one, I presume?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “I thought so. I saw you through the window, with your pretty eyes full of longing. It suits you.” He smiled, ingratiating and full of teeth. “You needn’t look so nervous.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.” He laughed, then, the sound surprisingly full and deep and warm, gentle. “Am I making you nervous? I make everyone nervous. I’m quite accustomed to it, dear. When you spend the first thirty years of your adult life as the ringmaster of a circus of the bizarre, certain mannerisms do carry over. Alas, certain social mores just don’t adapt well to the everyday world.”

  Leigh flushed deeply. “I’m sorry. I just…”

  “It’s really all right, Miss.” His smile softened, and he rested one warm hand to her shoulder
. “Let me fetch the dress for you.”

  He waded through the sea of fabric, finding his way around the racks hidden under the frothy mountain without tipping a single one. Leigh wrapped her arms around herself and told herself to stop feeling like the biggest dick in the world. He was kind of creepy. He knew it. But she was still an ass, for jumping to instant conclusions about a kindly old man.

  She did that with everyone. One look and she thought she had them all figured out. She’d been wrong enough times lately that maybe she should really just…stop. Before she ended up with another ass who wouldn’t take no for an answer, or got herself too tangled up in mirror-glass eyes and a rough touch that made her pulse beat harder against her throat with the memory, as if trying to lick those bruises from inside with sweet-searing pleasure.

  The man slipped the dress off the mannequin as if undressing a lover, his long fingers—like curling spider’s legs—stroking its plastic curves and nippleless breasts. With a grand gesture, he turned and presented the dress to Leigh.

  “Here you are.” He folded into a deep, elegant bow, bending almost horizontal at the waist. Suddenly she saw him as he once must have been: tall and commanding and compellingly eerie in his suit and top hat, with his long hands gathering everyone’s attention on a tight tether and pulling them to the strange magnetism of his presence. He would have been bright and gaudy and bizarrely appealing, so far from this tired, aging echo, faded as a clown’s cracking makeup at the end of the night. As he straightened, he smiled once more and flicked an oily lock of dark brown hair from his high, narrow brow. “Did you want to try it on?”

  “That’s okay.” Leigh curled her fingers in the soft muslin and held the dress against her chest. It felt like cream, airy and cool. “Not sure where you’d cram a fitting room in here.”

  “I make do with what space I have.” He turned with a grand sweep of his fingers. “Come. I’ll ring you up.”

  He parted the aisles of tulle and chenille and taffeta like the Red Sea; Leigh floundered after him, nearly drowning in his wake trail of ruffles and forcing her way to the register. While he rung up the dress—manually typing in the bar code on the tag into a register so old it looked like a typewriter from the 1800s—she fished the wad of bills Gary had given her from her pocket and peeled them open to count them. Nine twenties. A hundred and eighty dollars. A hundred and eighty dollars just to sit there and glare at Hart for hours on end, and try to ignore the filthy luscious craving in the pit of her stomach, like dirty candy, when he looked at her like he wanted nothing more than to devour her.