The Secrets of Lost Stones

by Melissa Payne

  I won’t, she’d said softly, but with a firmness she felt in her bones.

  Her mother’s lips had thinned with contempt, and she’d stared at Jess with tired, red-veined eyes, her cheeks sallow under the fluorescent light. Then get out.

  “I understand,” Jess said to Lucy past the tightening of her throat. “I’ve been alone most of my life.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Most?”

  Jess felt her shoulders tense. As close as she’d been to Mr. Kim, he’d never known about Chance. As their friendship grew, she wanted to share it with him, but having kept to herself for so long, she was out of practice. Besides, a part of her didn’t feel like she deserved his sympathy or his friendship. But there was something about Lucy, even having known her for only a few days, that put Jess at ease, made her want to pry open the place inside her where she put her secrets. “My mother kicked me out when she learned I was pregnant. I lived in a group home for a while after that.”

  Lucy tilted her head to the side, and her eyes were a soft blue that made Jess look away. “That must have been very difficult.”

  Jess nodded, swallowed hard, and noticed that Lucy didn’t ask about the pregnancy. For that she liked her even more. “What happened after your mother died?” Jess asked.

  Lucy cleared her throat. “This house and the market were all left to me.” Lucy looked down at her right hand, turned it so that the palm faced up, and traced a line with the pad of her finger. “But it was the loose ends that were the most difficult to handle on my own.” She lapsed into silence, her eyes trained on her palm.

  Jess studied the old woman. Lucy had mentioned loose ends frequently during the past few days and spoke about them as someone might when mentioning something troublesome. Like they were errant toddlers she couldn’t control. Jess had asked Lucy about it a few times, but she had waved her off as though the effort to explain was too much. Jess figured she’d get an answer in time.

  With a start, she noticed how Lucy’s mouth had slackened, and her eyes looked dull and watery. Jess moved quickly to her side.

  “You doing okay?” She pressed two fingers along the vein in Lucy’s wrist. Her skin was cool, smooth. “Lucy?” she said. “Can you answer me?” Jess reached for her phone, her fingers hovering above the emergency call button.

  “You don’t need to make such a fuss, dear,” Lucy said, and Jess exhaled with relief.

  “Why didn’t you answer me?” she asked.

  Lucy smiled. “I couldn’t hear you.” She bit into a piece of toast, and butter squished from the bread, glistening white on her lips. “It was very loud.”

  Jess stifled a sigh and tightened her ponytail until the corners of her eyes inched toward her scalp. The woman’s vagueness could be frustrating. “What was very loud?”

  “The boy,” Lucy said, and gestured toward the floor, raising her thin eyebrows comically.

  Something hit the toe of Jess’s boot. She yelped, pressed a hand over her racing heart, and looked down. A small rock, more like a pebble, lay by her foot. She knelt down to pick it up, but a sound from under the bed stopped her, and then the red-and-gold bed skirt bulged, emitting what looked like the tip of a small finger.

  Jess froze. Her throat went dry, and she blinked several times. But when she looked again, it was gone. She almost laughed out loud at her reaction. A mouse, of course, not a finger. Lucy’s fanciful talk had her seeing and hearing things.

  She got on her knees and carefully lifted up the bed skirt, resting her cheek on the carpet to look under the bed. The opaque blackness inside made her scalp prickle, but she shook it off and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. There was nothing under Lucy’s bed but the fuzzy carcasses of dust bunnies. She exhaled forcefully and let the bed skirt fall back into place. This old house had century-old doors and windows. Perfectly drafty and full of rodent-size holes, no doubt.

  Get mousetraps, she added to her mental to-do list, and picked up the small rock as she stood. She’d found a number of rocks around the house and figured they had been tracked in from outside. Once she’d stepped on one in her bare feet, and it had dug into the tender spot in the ball of her foot, making her cry out. She wouldn’t want Lucy to step on one too. The rock made a soft clunk when she dropped it into the trash bin. Maybe sweeping once a day would keep the floors clear of the small stones. Another item for her to-do list. Her chest tightened at the ease with which she planned her time caring for Lucy. Living in the old woman’s house and caring for her was a more intimate experience than working at the nursing home. And the last time she’d lived with and cared for someone had been when she was a mother. She pressed a hand to her heart and tried to push away her memories, but they were always there, like the phantom pain from a missing limb. Visions of Chance threatened to pull her apart at the seams. She inhaled and could nearly smell his skin after a bath, like soap and coconut shampoo. Her face was wet, and she realized with a shock that she was silently crying. “I’m sorry,” she said, and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “Allergies. Must be from the dust under the bed.” She finally met Lucy’s steady gaze and managed to give her a weak smile.

  Lucy took a sip of her orange juice. “There’s no shame in a good cry,” she said.

  The doorbell rang, and her shoulders slumped with relief at the echo of the heavy front door opening and closing.

  “It’s just me!” came Phoebe’s voice from the foyer.

  From what Jess had seen, the woman was one of Lucy’s closest friends. She stopped over frequently to visit or play cards. Phoebe was a Grateful Dead fan who seemed to think that most of life’s questions could be answered with a Dead song or a Jerry Garcia quote. Jess enjoyed her visits.

  A few moments later Phoebe’s smiling face appeared in the doorway, and she took her usual seat in the chair by the large window that overlooked the lake. She wore a tie-dyed winter hat over gray curls and her customary denim overalls. Her cheeks were ruddy from the cold temperatures outside. “Feels like spring today!” she said, rubbing her hands together.

  Jess shot a dark look at the bare aspen branch outside the window. “You call this spring, Phoebe?” It was May, but the light-green buds that had already started to show themselves in Denver had yet to make an appearance at this altitude.

  Phoebe laughed. “I love when flatlanders come up here. You sure know how to pick them, Luce. But I’ve already told you, Jess, please call me Ebee. Only my mother and Lucy call me the other.”

  The two women laughed as though sharing an inside joke. Although more than two decades and vastly different senses of style separated them, Lucy and Ebee were good friends. The witch and the hippie was how Jess had affectionately come to think of them. Yet they seemed to understand each other in a way that Jess had never shared with anyone in her life.

  She set herself to clearing Lucy’s tray; then she helped her out of bed and to the chair by the window and opposite Ebee. Lucy might not act her age, but after a night of sleep, she rubbed at her knees and fingers, her eyebrows knitted together. She never complained; Jess saw her fatigue in the way her back curved inward, as though to shield herself from the pain. Over the last few days, Jess had encouraged her to ease into each day at a slower pace, and Lucy seemed grateful for the routine.

  “Are you two planning another outing to Denver?” Jess asked. She had enjoyed being with the two of them, and their presence had taken some of the sting out of being in the city.

  “No,” Lucy said. “I think my trips to Denver are done for now.”

  Ebee raised her eyebrows. “Is that so?” she said. “You seemed to think she was the right one.”

  “I have a note,” Lucy said abruptly, and laid a white envelope on top of the table.

  Jess stood by the door of the bedroom, breakfast tray in hand, wondering at their cryptic conversation. She often had no idea what they were talking about and had decided to chalk it up to the fact that they had been friends for so long. With a sigh, she turned from the room.
/>   “Can you run an errand for me, Jess?” Lucy called.

  “Of course,” she said, and set the tray on a hallway table. “What do you need?”

  Lucy held up the note. “Please deliver this to the girl by tomorrow morning.”

  “The girl?”

  Lucy nodded. “Yes, of course, the girl.”

  Jess pressed her lips together to keep from vocalizing her frustration. It wasn’t fair to make someone as old as Lucy feel bad for her inability to express her thoughts. She took the envelope, flipped it over. Lucy had written a single word in her loopy handwriting across the front: Star.

  “It’s for the girl we met in Denver,” Ebee clarified.

  “The girl who asked you for money?” Jess asked, eyebrows raised. She thought of the girl Lucy had spooked yesterday and felt a twinge. Her clothes had been dirty and oversize, but it didn’t hide the fact that the girl’s frame was small, too skinny. “Her name is Star?”

  Lucy stared at her with a look that bordered on exasperation. “Yes, you figured that out already, remember?” Then she slid her reading glasses on and picked up her crossword puzzle as though the matter were closed.

  Jess looked helplessly at Ebee, who shrugged. “You get used to her after a few decades.”

  Jess gave Ebee a small smile before turning to Lucy. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give her money.” When Lucy looked sharply at her over her glasses, Jess added, “If she’s really homeless, it would be better to call social services, help her get into a home is what I mean.”

  Lucy sighed. “The girl needs to have that envelope, Jess, and you need to be the one who delivers it.”

  Jess started to say something but stopped. Lucy’s firm tone and stern look made her realize that for now there was no arguing with her. Besides, Jess didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this job. She thought of the gaunt angles of the girl’s face, the haunted, hollow look in her eyes, and shuddered. The streets weren’t safe, and at the very least Jess could offer her the numbers of a few shelters that provided safe places for teenagers like her.

  Lucy had picked up a pencil and was focused on her puzzle again. “Seven letters,” she said. “A kamikaze mission.”

  Jess moved toward the door, feeling dismissed, the note heavy in her pocket. “Lucy,” she said, “how will I find her?”

  Lucy looked up from the paper, her eyes a swirling blue. “Good question.” She tilted her head to the side. “Chocolate,” she murmured, and then she spoke louder. “She loves the smell of chocolate.”

  Jess flattened her lips. Not an exact address, but it did make sense. Most of the homeless, particularly the kids downtown, hung around the Sixteenth Street Mall. There were two chocolate shops on the mall, and Jess believed she remembered the girl being close to the one on the south end.

  “Suicide!” Ebee cried out suddenly. She slapped her knee and smiled at Jess, then Lucy. “Suicide,” she said again.

  The eraser of Lucy’s pencil bobbed up and down as she wrote. “Too easy for you, Phoebe.”

  Jess backed into the hallway, picked up the breakfast tray with one hand, and closed the bedroom door with the other. Her legs felt rubbery, weak, and she fought the urge to charge back in there and haul them both to a hospital or a home of some kind. Instead, she cleared her throat, gripped the tray, and headed downstairs, trying to ignore the way the skin across her wrists burned and itched.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  STAR

  She leaned against the brick garden wall by the chocolate shop with her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around her shins. The stubborn spring air hadn’t let go of winter’s chill, and a constant drip from her nose had created a split in the very corner of her nostril that made her eyes water. This morning she’d woken up to find it tender and bleeding. She’d used the scarf to dab at it gently, but her breath fogged in the cold air, and her nose ran freely, making it hurt even worse. The ground felt hard and cold through her thin leggings, and a dull pain had begun to spread behind her eyes. Today she felt weak and small and very, very alone.

  “Star?” A woman’s voice.

  She pressed her forehead into her knees, let her hair fall over her face, and breathed out. Her stomach somersaulted. She’d often wondered when social services would catch up to her, and on a day like today she felt extra vulnerable. But she’d sworn she’d never go back to being a foster kid. She’d been one since she was eight years old, and she was so fucking tired of the system, tired of the families who didn’t want a sad teenage girl with klepto issues sleeping in the room next to their precious blonde-haired daughter, even tired of the ones who at least pretended to care but, when shit got hard, didn’t actually care enough. She dug her nails into her thighs. Star was convinced that her mother would never have let the world fall apart the way her dad did. Sometimes at night she dreamed about her mom. Her memories were small pieces that didn’t always make sense: a whiff of cinnamon, the soft grittiness of soil between her fingers, her cheek resting against a pillowy chest. She’d been only five when her mom got sick, but the one thing Star did remember was how safe she’d felt back then. Safe and warm and loved.

  The woman cleared her throat, shifted her feet. Good, she’s uncomfortable. Serves her right. Star rubbed her nose across her leggings, dug her fingers into her legs. This woman would have to drag her back into foster care, because no matter how cold her ass got, Star was not moving from that spot.

  “I have something for you,” came her voice again, and this time Star thought she recognized it.

  She peered over her knees. The younger woman from the other day stood opposite her, brown hair pulled back into the same tight ponytail. She had a look about her that Star knew. An emptiness that made her eyes dull. It was a look Star saw often enough on the streets and before, when her dad was still alive. She shivered and pushed the thought of her dad out of her head. She was eight when he died, and unlike her mom, those memories had sharp claws that tore away at her. Right now she had too much to deal with.

  “I’m Jess,” the woman said.

  Star crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes. What did she care? “Unless you have a twenty and a soda, I’m not interested.”

  Jess turned her head and looked around and behind Star, like she was searching for someone. She frowned. “Where do you live?”

  Nosy, that’s what she was. “Lady, that’s none of your business.” She picked up her cup and got to her feet, taking a seat on the garden wall opposite Jess. “Your grandmother is creepy.”

  Jess chuckled softly. “You’re not wrong there. And you’re a bit of a smart-ass, huh?”

  Star raised her chin and gazed at Jess, unblinking. “You bet.”

  Jess opened her mouth, then shut it. She held out a small white envelope. “Here, this is for you.”

  Star didn’t move from her spot. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a note.” Jess stepped forward, placed it on the brick wall beside Star. Star noticed how she rubbed at her wrist with the fingers of her other hand, back and forth, like one of those worry stones. “It’s from Lucy, not me.”

  Star shrugged, ignoring the note beside her, even as a burning curiosity made it difficult not to ask Jess a billion questions.

  Jess smiled. “Lucy is unusual, Star. I can’t argue with you about that. But that probably makes whatever she says in your note worth reading.”

  Star thumped her heels against the brick wall, pretending she didn’t care, but a panicky feeling expanded inside her. What did Jess want? Or the old woman? What could they know about her? If they’d ever seen her caseworker’s file on Star, then they’d know she was prone to stealing, hard to love, and even harder to place. But a wrench in her gut told her that the old woman knew something else. Star’s chest tightened. There were worse things about her than what her caseworker knew. She tried to glance casually down the street, gauging how quickly she could run and disappear if she needed to. “How do you know my name?”

  Jess’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t—
I mean, not really. I just guessed at Lucy’s crossword puzzle . . . I mean . . . Lucy must have known it somehow.” For a second Jess looked confused, her face scrunched up like she was thinking too hard. It made Star want to laugh.

  “You must have told Lucy or something,” Jess continued. “Anyway, you left an impression on her, so she asked me to give that to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea. To tell you the truth, I’ve known her only a few days myself. But what’s the harm in reading it, Star?”

  Hearing her name spoken again in Jess’s firm but soft voice felt comforting in a way that made Star’s eyes itch. She trained her gaze on the ground, shrugged.

  Jess’s feet moved back and forth, but she didn’t leave right away. Star sensed she wanted to say something more. Jess sighed and stepped so close that Star smelled a light citrus scent. She picked up the envelope, and Star heard the scratching of pen on paper.

  “I don’t know your situation, Star, but if you’re alone and need help, I know a couple of shelters that only take kids. They’re safe places.” Jess set the envelope back down beside her, and from the corner of her eye Star noticed a couple of names and addresses written in black ink. And then on top of the envelope Jess placed a twenty, followed by another twenty.

  Star’s eyes bugged wide. Forty dollars!

  “Take care of yourself,” Jess said. “The streets are no place for a kid like you.” She hesitated, mumbled, “Or for any kid.”

  Jess’s boots disappeared from Star’s view. She lifted her gaze and watched her walk away, shoulders hunched, one hand rubbing the other wrist, back and forth, back and forth.

  Star pocketed the cash and picked up the envelope. A chill raced along her shoulder blades at the sight of her name written across the front.