The Secrets of Lost Stones

by Melissa Payne

  “Thin enough?”

  “For the ice-melt barrel to fall through, of course.” She winked. “It’s been a long winter, so there’s a fair amount of money riding on when it falls through the ice. Quite the to-do up here every spring.”

  Jess rubbed the back of her neck. In her experience, there were no days off, no holidays, no sick leave, and definitely no celebrating a barrel falling through the ice when she could be working. She gestured around the store. “Yours is the only store open in town. Why aren’t you watching the ice melt too?”

  Lucy’s smile stretched the folds of skin around her mouth. “Because it’s Wednesday, dear. I only open the store on Wednesdays.” She turned back to the pile of papers, pulling one page loose from the stack. “Here it is!” She lifted a pair of reading glasses from a chain around her neck and settled them on the bridge of her nose. Her finger ran down the page, paused; she read, “It’s good when a batter does it on the field, but not on the road.” Her eyes met Jess’s, huge and shockingly blue behind her black-rimmed glasses. “Well?”

  “Um . . .” Jess stumbled over her words. Lucy spoke as though they were longtime acquaintances picking up halfway through a conversation. It made her head spin.

  Lucy frowned, looked down at the paper again. “Hmm. Multiword. We’re not ready for that one yet, are we? Let’s see.” Her finger ran down the page. “How about this one? Eight letters. Having nowhere to live.”

  Her smile warmed Jess, like how a grandmother must make her grandchildren feel, deserving of attention.

  “I know this one,” Lucy said. “Homeless.”

  Jess watched as her gnarled fingers carefully wrote each letter inside the boxes. The paper shook, and Jess wasn’t sure if it was from the old woman’s excitement for the game or an unsteady hand. Whatever the cause, it made Jess want to reach out and help.

  Lucy squinted down at the puzzle, then raised her eyes from the paper to look at Jess. “Four letters. The sun, for example.” She hovered her pencil over the paper, waiting, Jess assumed, for her to come up with the answer.

  Jess pulled at the sleeve of her shirt, touched by Lucy’s enthusiasm for the game and for Jess’s participation, even if she was a total stranger. Mr. Kim hadn’t been a crossword puzzle enthusiast, but he had loved his bonsai trees. They had covered his room and were his favorite topic of conversation. Jess had a bonsai tree too—one that someone had given to her son—and beyond all odds the damn thing still lived. It was why she had connected so easily with Mr. Kim. She thought of the trees in her car right now. Her own plus the two from Mr. Kim’s collection that she’d been able to save. Seeing his prized trees in the garbage had given rise to an anger so deep inside it had taken even her by surprise. It was the reason she’d been fired and why she was standing here trying—and failing—to answer crossword puzzle clues. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I’m not very good with word games.”

  Lucy tapped the eraser side of the pencil on top of the counter while she silently studied Jess. After a few seconds, Jess grew uncomfortable.

  “Maybe you’re not the right one,” Lucy said quietly. “But so often it doesn’t make sense until later.” She squinted. “There’s something about you, though. Something familiar.”

  The woman seemed not entirely in her right mind, and Jess couldn’t bear the thought of a worried family member or caregiver looking for her. She opened her mouth to ask again whether there was someone she could call, but a word bubbled to her lips and she blurted it out before thinking. “Star!”

  A slow smile spread across Lucy’s face. “What’s that?”

  It was quite possibly the only thing she remembered from sixth-grade science. She pulled her ponytail tight, crossed her arms. “The sun is a star,” she said. “That’s your answer.”

  Lucy scribbled the word into the boxes. “Well done, Jess.” She gestured toward a small round table underneath the storefront window. “Have a seat. I’ll bring you one of my famous blueberry muffins and a cup of coffee.”

  Jess started to protest, but Lucy had already disappeared behind a curtained doorway in the back of the store. She stood for a moment, unsure what her next move should be, then shrugged and took a seat at the table. As the day wore on, it seemed unlikely that she’d be leaving anytime soon. Might as well have a cup of coffee and something to eat.

  She gazed outside. The fog had completely burned off, exposing a deep-blue sky. Snowcapped mountains ringed the town, and at the end of the short main street, Jess glimpsed a concrete dam with what appeared to be a mostly frozen lake above. She grunted. Didn’t look like the barrel was falling through anytime soon.

  It was a beautiful place, though; she’d give the town that. Her visits to the mountains had been limited to a handful of field trips in elementary school when they’d studied Colorado history. She could never afford to ski or take time off work to camp or hike; the gas to get there alone cost more than her mother made in an entire day. Those activities weren’t for people like Jess and her mom. She’d lived her entire thirty-two years within the same fifteen-block radius in Denver, poor and always one job away from losing everything.

  She sighed and turned from the rugged beauty outside. This morning it had felt like a plug had been pulled inside her, and she had finally realized just how tired she was. Tired of pretending that losing her son hadn’t leached the color from her life or turned her numb. Those years after Chance was gone, every child reminded her of him. A little boy on the RTD bus, his caramel curls dancing above the seat in front of her. A boy at the grocery store on a late-summer night in Chance’s favorite Transformers pajamas. He was everywhere for her, and it nearly shattered her. She’d become a robot, unable to talk to anyone, drowning in the memories and haunted by one thought: it was her fault.

  Her fault that her eight-year-old son had been in the path of a car whose driver either didn’t see him or didn’t care. Her fault that he’d died cold and alone and in his Transformers pajamas.

  Afterward, there had been a few friends who’d tried to help her through her grief. Like her neighbor Marissa, who brought her dinner every single night in small Tupperware containers until Jess, in a moment of gut-wrenching anger at everything and everyone, screamed at her to stop. Or her old friend Juanita from the group home. They’d been pregnant together. Juanita’s little girl must be fifteen by now. Jess wrapped her arms around her stomach and rounded forward over the table. Juanita had invited her to church every Sunday until Jess finally told her she didn’t believe in God. Because if God existed, he would have taken Jess, not the boy with the soft brown eyes and the sweet heart who saw the good in everything and everyone. Besides, Jess didn’t deserve any of their attention. She deserved to be exactly where she was—alone.

  The earthy aroma of brewing coffee filtering in from the back room brought her back to the present, and Jess breathed it in along with the sweet smell of blueberries. Today her head seemed filled with ghosts.

  There was a light touch on her shoulder, and Jess turned to look behind her, expecting Lucy, but she found only the empty market. “Lucy?” she called, and stood. Memories and the guilt attached to them created a giant sinkhole below her feet that threatened to swallow her whole. She had to move forward and stop thinking about the past.

  “Almost ready, dear!” Lucy answered from the back room.

  Jess glanced outside. The sun had already begun to slide behind the tallest peak. She looked toward her car, half expecting to see smoke still pouring from under the hood of the boat-size sedan that was about as old as her and rusted through in several spots. Her shoulders slumped. She’d never have enough money to fix whatever had just killed her car. She thought she recalled seeing an RTD bus stop sign on her way down the main street. Her best option was to dump the car and grab a bus back to Denver, start from scratch—but her stomach knotted at the prospect. There was nothing for her there but memories and ghosts.

  Surely Pine Lake had a diner. Jess had been a waitress for much of her working life
, and those jobs always seemed to be available. Maybe she could get a job here, build back her savings at least to the point where she could make a real plan. She rubbed at her face. Where would she stay? She eyed the car, shrugged. She’d lived in a car once before; she could do it again. A bulletin board by the front door caught her eye—surely there would be job openings listed there. Flyers covered the board. Most of them advertised local music, pet sitting, and other services, but a plain white flyer pinned to the top of the board caught her eye.

  LOOKING FOR A CHANGE? OR A SECOND CHANCE?

  YOU CAN FIND IT IN PINE LAKE!

  CAREGIVER NEEDED FOR OLD, SLIGHTLY DAFT WOMAN WITH POSSIBLE DEMENTIA!

  RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE: HOUSEWORK, COOKING, ERRANDS, AND DOCTOR VISITS!

  EXPERIENCE A BONUS, BUT SENSE OF HUMOR A MUST!

  ROOM AND BOARD, USE OF CAR.

  MUST BE WILLING TO RELOCATE!

  Jess read it again. No name, just the letter L scrawled across the bottom of the page in delicate handwriting.

  “I see you found my advertisement,” said Lucy from behind her.

  Jess turned, held out the flyer. “This is yours?”

  Lucy nodded and set a cup of coffee and a plate with a large muffin on the table.

  “You think you have dementia?”

  A shrug. “Perhaps. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m old, and Phoebe thinks I need some help around the house.”

  “Phoebe?”

  Lucy took the flyer from Jess’s hand and crumpled it into a ball before dropping it in a trash bin by the door. “I’m closing up now. Let’s walk up to my house.”

  Lucy turned, and her long black skirts spun with her.

  Jess stood rooted to the spot. It was too good to be true—a job opportunity with a place to live. But after everything that had happened today, why would she second-guess a bit of good luck? Only minutes before she’d been considering sleeping in her car. “Wait,” she said.

  Lucy turned back and folded her hands in front of her.

  Jess rubbed the back of her neck. Did she really think she had a better option? “I, uh, I’ve worked in a nursing home facility for the last four years. I can provide references if you need them.” She pulled at the end of her ponytail. “Actually, I don’t know why I said that. I don’t have any references.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  Jess sighed. Might as well come clean. “I was fired for locking a resident’s relatives out of the building. I was—the resident and I were close. I mean, we talked, and I liked to listen to him.” Mr. Kim had deserved so much more than his arrogant son and self-absorbed grandson who visited no more than twice a year. “Anyway, Mr. Kim died one night.” She hesitated, her heart heavy with memory. “I didn’t know. No one thought to call me. So when I came in for my next shift, his son and grandson were already there, packing up his room and going through his things like they were having a garage sale. I could have ignored them except for one thing.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows, and Jess took a deep breath and hoped that her honesty would count for something. “Mr. Kim loved his bonsai trees like they were his children. They covered his room—literally covered the floor and any open shelf space he could find. But the day after he died, they tossed the bonsai into a huge black garbage bag like they meant nothing. He’d worked on some of them for years, and all that was left were broken pots and spilled dirt.” Her hands curled into fists. Her own anger had taken her by surprise that day, but the bonsai trees weren’t just special to Mr. Kim; they were special to her too. “I was sad to see how little they knew about him or cared. So I made them leave,” she finished lamely.

  “That’s it?” Lucy said. “You made them leave?”

  Jess felt her cheeks warm. “Not exactly. First I dumped the contents of Mrs. Harrington’s bedpan on the man’s head.”

  Lucy didn’t react, and Jess deflated. Honesty was a terrible policy. Too late to take it back. She straightened her shoulders. “I’ve also worked in housekeeping at a hotel in Denver. I cook, I’ve never had a speeding ticket, um . . .” She paused. Lucy’s face was smooth, indifferent. “Don’t you have any questions for me?” She had no hope of getting this job now, and it surprised her how suddenly she wanted it. How much she wanted something to change in her life.

  Lucy tilted her head to the side. “I think you’re the one who’s supposed to ask the questions, dear.”

  It was like no job interview she’d ever experienced. Lucy leaned heavily against the door, waiting for her. It was obvious to Jess that the woman probably did need a bit of caretaking. Maybe this was exactly what Jess needed too. Mr. Kim’s friendship had filled a small portion of the hole inside her, even if it was only for a little while. She missed him. “Do you have grandkids?” she asked.

  Lucy’s laugh was hoarse and scratchy. “No, dear. No kids at all. Life had other plans for me.”

  Jess relaxed. That was good. Chance would be a teenager by now, and it stung to be around kids that age. Any age, really. She closed her eyes, shook her head to clear it. “So you live alone?”

  “For now I do, but that can always change.” Lucy nodded as though decided. “I don’t use bedpans, so any visitors I have should be safe from you. The job is yours if you want it.” She pulled a set of keys from a pocket in her dress and walked out the door, holding it open for Jess, eyebrows raised expectantly.

  With a quick glance toward her sad car, Jess nodded and stepped outside. She helped Lucy lock the door and followed her down the sidewalk and up a hill behind the market. For the first time that day, a beat of optimism curled her lips into a small smile. She had found a job.

  CHAPTER TWO

  STAR

  Between the slats of her concrete bench, Star could see the outlines of city buildings stretching high above her, their jagged tips stabbing a dark-blue sky. It was May in Denver, but spring was slow to warm the ground. At this time on a Saturday morning, the streets were quiet, regular people at home and probably still snuggled under their comforters, asleep. She yawned, curled into a tighter ball, and rested her cheek in the cradle of her palm. With her spine wedged against the farthest solid edge under the bench, only her knees stuck out the open side. She dug out the bits of crust that had gathered in the corners of her eyes during the night.

  It was early morning, time to start the day. Except Star wasn’t ready to face the long hours ahead of her, not just yet. She slid her hand deep into her coat pocket and rubbed her finger across her rock, feeling it strengthen her resolve. After getting busted for stealing the dad’s stupid watch at her last foster home, Star knew that her next stop might be a state-run kind of place. Escaping the entire system for the streets had been her best option. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. They felt gritty and dry, sticking to the fleshy insides of her lids every time she blinked. Living on her own might be a slight improvement to foster care, but surviving the streets as a fifteen-year-old girl consumed her thoughts and fueled her nightmares, making sleep nearly impossible. It was wearing her down.

  An empty potato chip bag skittered across the pavement, and Star watched it skip and hop, crinkling lightly as it danced by her hiding place. The breeze that pushed it snaked under the bench and through the holes in her coat until her bones ached with cold. It stirred the air, peeling unpleasant smells off every surface: the stench of old cigarettes ground into the smudged concrete and the musty, slightly sweet odor that rose from her pillow of matted hair. Her stomach turned, and she shivered. One hundred and ninety-two days since she’d climbed out the bedroom window while her foster parents were sleeping, and she still wasn’t used to the stink of being homeless. She sniffed, buried her face into the crook of her arm. Better to stink than to live another minute as a foster kid. She was getting too old for it anyway. Nobody wanted a kid her age. Her last foster mom had frowned when she opened the door to Star and her caseworker. I thought we’d get a baby this time, she’d said.

  From behind her bench came the sound o
f the Sixteenth Street shuttle slowing to a stop with an electric whir. The doors opened, breaking the quiet with regular-people chatter. Saturday mornings brought the tourists along with the few commuters who didn’t get their weekends off. They thumped past her head in tennis shoes and dull leather work boots. She sighed. The buses were running. Time to get up. She waited for the sidewalk to clear, watching their feet as they scurried off to shop or eat breakfast or whatever the hell they had planned for a lazy Saturday. She shook her head, snorted. Clueless fucks, all of them, with no idea who watched them from under benches or in doorways.

  When their shoes disappeared from her view, Star yawned, stretched, and crawled out from under the bench. Her left foot had fallen asleep, and a thousand little bees stung her skin as it tried to wake up. She winced, sat down on the bench, and rubbed it hard until the feeling returned.

  A stooped figure in a wool coat approached her, pushing a shopping cart that wobbled over the pavement, two wheels jerking uselessly back and forth. Mel, the old man who slept in a doorway half a block from her bench. The one who, on a cold night this past winter, had pulled out a heavy coat from his shopping cart of treasures and slid it under her bench. She liked Mel, even if his trash bags did smell like pee.

  The cart gave a catlike shriek when Mel stopped in front of her. He stared at her, his face weathered and dirty, cracked lips sucked in over toothless gums.

  She gave a small wave. “Hi, Mel.”

  He squinted, then grunted. Mel wasn’t known for conversation; Star didn’t mind. She preferred this bench because it wasn’t far from the doorway he normally camped in at night. It was stupid, she knew, because Mel constantly reeked of alcohol and was never without a brown paper bag clutched in one hand. Still, just the fact of his presence made her feel the tiniest bit safe. He wasn’t a bad guy. She pulled the coat tight across her chest. She should know. There were plenty of bad guys here.

  Mel turned to his cart, stuck a hand inside one of the thin garbage bags, pulled out a long piece of fabric, and laid it beside her. A scarf. Or what had once been a scarf, anyway. She picked it up, poked her fingers through several big holes. Her throat grew tight; she smiled. “Thanks, Mel.” She wrapped it twice around her neck. “I love it.”