The Secrets of Lost Stones

by Melissa Payne

Maryellen’s casual mention of her mom stabbed at her heart. She was searching for a response when Jeremy stood and motioned for Star to join him. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I should get you home.”

  Maryellen and David followed them to the door. “It was so nice to meet you, Star.” She gave her a quick hug. “Let Jess know about school. I’d love to have you join our classroom.”

  “Thank you for dinner . . .” Star wanted to say more, but her thoughts filled with school and Maryellen’s offer to come here on a regular basis, even if for a short while. She knew that most kids hated school, even the ones with families and nice school clothes and new backpacks every year. But she’d never hated it. Because when she’d been bouncing around foster homes, it was the only routine she could count on, the only place where she knew what to expect. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “I would love to come to your school!”

  Maryellen laughed. “That’s a first, huh, David? A teenager who wants to go to school.”

  “Unheard of,” David responded.

  “You’re welcome here anytime, Star,” she said, and the warmth of her words touched her eyes.

  Luke pushed through the door. “You forgot to tell me why you have funny hair!”

  Star laughed. “I guess because I can,” she said.

  “You have cool parents.” It amazed her that families like his existed in the same world she’d grown up in. Would her life have been different if her mom had lived? She swallowed, looked out the window.

  Jeremy pulled the van to a stop in front of Lucy’s house. “Maryellen and David Foster are about as ordinary as you can get.”

  “Ordinary to you,” she said quietly, then, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She studied a fingernail. Star couldn’t remember what normal was anymore, but she was pretty sure that dinner with Jeremy’s family was as close as she’d ever get. “Just thank you.”

  Jeremy coughed. “No thanks necessary.”

  She reached for the door.

  “Star,” he said, and his voice was more serious than normal.

  “Yeah?”

  His eyes turned skyward, and he blew out a breath. “I used to go to public school.”

  Star thought about the way Maryellen had looked at Jeremy when she talked about homeschooling. “When?”

  “Two years ago.” His jaw tightened.

  The way he sat hunched over the wheel made her pause. She waited for him to continue.

  “Small town, right? So of course everyone knew—or thought they knew—that I was gay. I hadn’t even admitted it to myself until my freshman year. Then this new kid moved into town, and suddenly my world exploded. I had a friend, a boyfriend even, and for the first time I could be me. I didn’t think I’d ever be so happy. Still, we met in secret until some dickhead from school saw us kissing, and like all repressed, close-minded, and scared pricks, he took it personally. School became a nightmare. And instead of staying, instead of not giving a fuck, I got sad and depressed and turned into a quivering, pathetic shell. I was a mess. I withdrew from everyone, even my family. I had convinced myself that the truth was worse than death.”

  Star’s knee jiggled up and down. “You were going to hurt yourself?”

  He nodded but didn’t look at her. “My parents didn’t know what was wrong, but they could see how I’d changed. They suggested Mom homeschool me for a year or so.”

  The van grew silent, dark, except for the sliver of bluish light coming from the half moon. She rubbed her arms.

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Jeremy,” she said.

  “I do. I could have stayed. I could have waved my freak flag and painted my car with rainbows. I could have at least tried to be me without running away.”

  “You’re happy now, though, right?”

  Jeremy sighed. “That’s not really why I brought this up. It’s because of Lucy and Ben.”

  “What is?”

  “Lucy sent Ben to the waterfall.”

  Star shook her head, trying not to get frustrated, but Jeremy was speaking in riddles. “You’re sounding like those meth heads again.”

  “Have you been up to the waterfall?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “That’s because it’s too steep for Lucy to climb. There’s a trail that leads up to a narrow metal bridge that spans the dam. They installed a gate with a lock on it after me. But I wasn’t the first.”

  Star opened her eyes wide, stunned. “How did she know?”

  He shrugged. “How does she know anything? She just does. She called Ben and told him something bad was going to happen to me. He didn’t even question her; he just ran out there as fast as he could.”

  “Oh,” was all she could manage.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Oh.”

  She looked up at him. His story gave wings to the stubborn bit of hope that lived deep in her heart, and now it fluttered painfully against her chest. She kneaded her thighs with her fists, tried to squash the idea that Lucy really cared about her, like she did Jeremy. It couldn’t be true. “So Lucy found us both,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “Looks that way, Tuesday.”

  She wanted to say something more, but she couldn’t find the words. Instead she reached over, lightly touched his hand, and gave him a small smile before climbing out of the van.

  Jeremy rolled down the passenger-side window. “School starts at eight. See you tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  JESS

  “Have you found it?”

  The question wormed into her mind, becoming part of her dream. Have you found it? The last word morphing to fit the nightmare. Have you found him? She stood in the middle of a darkened city street as white snowflakes danced in the air, melting into wet pools that reflected back the blinking red traffic light, the only sound her labored breath. She searched the empty road, her chest expanding when she saw the boy in the red sweatshirt standing on the sidewalk. But this time she could see him clearly, down to his caramel-colored curls. His hands reached for her, eyes wide, mouth stretched into a scream. She lunged forward, tears freezing on her skin, heart pumping painfully against her ribs. She could save him; she could finally save him. As her fingers nearly touched the round curve of his cheek, she jerked to a stop. She cried out, tried to move her legs, but her feet were encased in ice so cold it burned.

  Mama! he screamed, and she turned to find the banana-yellow hood of a car hurtling toward her. Slush flew silently from beneath the tires, the driver’s face obscured behind an ice-crusted windshield. Relief shot through her veins. This was right. At last she smiled. She was exactly where she should have been.

  She opened her arms wide and braced herself for the impact.

  “Have you found it?” The car evaporated with Lucy’s voice, taking with it the blinking light, the street, the snow, and lastly, the boy, smiling at her now, and then he too was gone.

  Jess slowly opened her eyes to sunlight flooding her room. The dream faded, leaving her with an aching loss that made her want to close her eyes and go back to sleep.

  Lucy stared at her from the doorway. It was odd for the older woman to be awake before her.

  “Good morning, Lucy.” Jess rubbed her face, pinched her cheeks, and tried to wipe away the heavy drowsiness that clung to her eyelids. The skin of her face felt tight and dry. It had been the worst kind of dream. The kind she couldn’t remember but that left her with a desperate, painful longing for her son. She sank her head back into the pillow, closed her eyes, and breathed until the ache subsided enough for her to face a new day.

  She opened her eyes again and for the first time noticed the sun angling in through her window the way it did in late morning. Had she overslept? She reached for her phone to check the time and cried out. A heart-shaped rock sat on the nightstand beside her phone. She jerked her hand away as though burned, and a tremor passed through her body. Lucy obviously collected the heart-shaped rocks too; it wasn’t an uncommon t
hing for people to do. But between the local boy who was making a pastime of scaring her and the rocks she kept finding, reminders of her son seemed to be everywhere, and it made reality flimsy and unreliable.

  Trying not to touch the rock, she slid her phone off the nightstand—ten forty-five. Her eyes widened. The last time she’d slept past five thirty she’d been five years old. She threw back the covers. “I’m so sorry I overslept,” she said, and, struck by a thought, glanced once more at the rock. “Lucy, did you put this rock in my room?”

  But Lucy swayed in the doorway, her eyes dull, mouth pulled down in a frown. She looked up at the ceiling, then down at her feet and wiggled her toes. “What rock?” she said.

  “This one here, on my bedside table.”

  Lucy shook her head and smiled, but there was something vacant about it that set Jess’s alarm bells ringing.

  She slipped into a robe and hurried to Lucy’s side. “You must be hungry. I’ll fix you breakfast right away.”

  “No need.”

  “I think you need to eat.”

  “I already have. Star made me breakfast before she left.”

  Jess sat heavily on the edge of the bed, trying to catch up with the events of the morning. “Star made you breakfast before she left. Okay. Where did she go?”

  “School.”

  “Right.” She had mentioned it last night when she came home after dinner with Jeremy’s family. Jess had felt a rush of happiness for Star, especially after seeing how excited she’d been, but a gnawing worry had developed at what it meant. Jess was afraid that Star was getting too attached, that they all were. She shook her head; right now she needed to focus on Lucy. “Why didn’t she wake me up before she left?”

  “You were sleeping,” Lucy said in a tone she might use for a petulant toddler.

  “I know, but by now Star knows I don’t sleep in.” She rubbed her face, yawned, and tried not to think about the rock. Lucy must have put it there. After the one in the library, Jess had already found several others in Lucy’s room, even some in the sitting room. Maybe Jess could convince Lucy to keep them all in one place instead of scattered around the house.

  “Seems to me like you needed to sleep in.” Lucy turned to leave, and that’s when Jess noticed something else wrong. Lucy still wore her nightgown, her skinny ankles protruding from beneath the hem. The woman never left her room without being fully dressed from head to toe.

  Jess followed her. “Are you okay?”

  Lucy looked up and down the hallway, her hands held suspended on either side of her as though her limbs disagreed on which way to turn. “She had to go back for it.” She walked into Star’s room, poking her head underneath the bed, pulling out drawers, opening the closet door. Then she retreated, pushing past Jess and into the hallway, where she stood again in the middle, hands held out on either side.

  Jess turned back for her phone, her fingers tingling with a growing concern. The older woman’s behavior was odd, even for Lucy. Should she call Ben? Didn’t he mention something about finding her outside in her nightgown once?

  “Where is it now?” Lucy moved back into Jess’s room and looked under the bed, pulled out the top drawer of the bedside table, then turned, still frowning, and left the room. “She came back for it.”

  A dull ache began to spread behind Jess’s eyes. She’d make Lucy a hot cup of tea and see if that might calm her. “Let’s go downstairs.” She took Lucy gently by the elbow.

  But at the stairs, Lucy halted. “I need to check the calendar,” she said, wobbling unsteadily on her feet.

  Jess rubbed at her forehead, her concern momentarily overpowered by a rising staccato in her head. “Let’s check the calendar, then, but please take my arm on the stairs.” She hated how her words came out clipped and irritated, but she still felt disoriented from the dream, and Lucy’s rambling only added to the feeling that she was a step behind.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Lucy gripped her arm hard.

  “She thinks it’s her fault because she went back for it,” Lucy said with an urgency that made Jess’s heart skip a beat.

  Nothing she said made sense, yet Jess couldn’t ignore a nagging suspicion that Lucy spoke about Star. She opened her mouth to ask, but the woman had walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table, her shoulders rounded forward.

  In the overhead light Lucy’s skin looked pale, her face sad and defeated. Jess winced. She’d come to think of the older woman as strong and capable of just about anything. It wasn’t easy to admit that Lucy’s age was catching up to her.

  Jess took a seat at the table. “Can you describe what it is you’re looking for?” she said gently.

  Lucy’s blue eyes widened, and she leaned across the table to reach for Jess’s hand. “Where’s your mother?” she asked.

  The muscles in Jess’s face felt like they’d turned to stone. She hardly thought or talked about her mother. Maybe Lucy thought she was talking to Star? She rubbed at the back of her neck. Lucy must not have slept well the night before. “Why don’t I make you some tea? Afterward you can go upstairs and rest for a bit.”

  Lucy pursed her lips. “I asked you a question, Jess,” she said.

  Her mouth turned dry. “My mother.” The word stuck in her throat. Joann had been her name. Was still her name. “My mother kicked me out when I got pregnant at sixteen.”

  Lucy’s brow furrowed, and she began to twist and untwist her fingers. “No, no, no. I didn’t mean your mother. I meant you.” She snapped her fingers. “I saw the picture of your little boy, the one in your room.”

  Jess slumped with relief. Lucy had taken her picture downstairs that day. And she must have been looking for it this morning when she got confused. Jess softened. Ben had been right about Lucy’s episodes—they were increasing. She bit her lip. It was a subject she’d need to bring up with Lucy, but not today. “You must have taken the picture downstairs by accident. Don’t worry; I found it and put it back.”

  Lucy shrugged. “He has your smile.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Not that I see it much.”

  “See what?” The headache from earlier began a drumbeat against her skull.

  “Your smile.”

  Her lips felt thick. “I don’t have a reason to smile anymore.”

  “Neither does he.” Lucy rested her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. “You’re a good mother.”

  Jess curled her fingers into claws. “Was. I was a mother,” she said through clenched teeth. A good mother would never have left her son alone. A good mother would have been there when he needed her the most. Jess had once been a mother, but she had never been a good one.

  “You still can be.”

  Jess stood frozen to the spot. Was Lucy talking about Star? Star needed a mother, but that part of Jess’s life was over. Chance had died cold, alone, and scared; she didn’t deserve to be in that role ever again. Jess pressed a hand to her cheek. Her skin felt clammy and cool. “I had a son and he died, Lucy.”

  Lucy settled back in the chair and picked up her reading glasses, resting the plastic rims across the bridge of her nose. Lying on the table, folded over into a rectangle, was her crossword puzzle. Her eyes lit up when she spied it. “There it is!”

  “Your crossword puzzle?” Lucy’s behavior was alarming. Could she have had a stroke?

  Lucy peered at Jess over the rim of her glasses. “It’s a tough one, multiword, but I think you might be ready for it now.”

  Jess reached out and put two fingers across Lucy’s wrist. Her pulse was strong. If Lucy was experiencing the onset of dementia, Jess had learned that sometimes it was better and less stressful for them to just play along than to keep trying to convince them otherwise. “How many letters?”

  The paper rustled. “Three words, nine letters. It’s good when a batter does it on the field, but not on the road.”

  Jess remembered the puzzle question from her first day in Pine Lake. She opened her mouth to remind Lucy that she didn’t know the
answer, but then it came to her in a wave of nausea that turned her stomach inside out. The floor tilted beneath her feet, and she clung to the table, taking in small sips of air. “Hit-and-run,” she said.

  Lucy slid her glasses off, her eyes soft. “Oh dear.”

  Jess covered her face with her hands, trying to breathe in before she passed out. She felt Lucy’s hand on her fingers, patting gently.

  “Is that how he died?”

  She stood with such force she smashed her knee into the table. Shock waves of pain rushed up her thigh, and her eyes stung. Lucy stayed seated, hands folded on the table in front of her, head tilted to the side.

  “What did you say?” Jess said through her teeth.

  “I’m so very sorry, dear. I had no idea.” The lines and wrinkles around Lucy’s bright-blue eyes were wet with tears.

  Jess felt her body deflate at the tenderness in the old woman’s voice. “Of course you didn’t know, Lucy. I’ve never told you. It’s not something I talk about with anyone. That crossword puzzle just shocked me, I guess.”

  It was silent for a few minutes, and despite the absurdity of the morning, it was a comfortable silence that helped Jess regain her composure. After a while Lucy took in a deep breath and stood. “I need you to run an errand for me,” she said.

  “Of course. What do you need?”

  “It’s something for Star, actually. It should be . . .” She twisted around, glanced toward the calendar. “Ah yes, just check the calendar.” She picked up the paper and the pencil lying beside it, readjusted her reading glasses, and turned back to her crossword puzzle.

  Jess stood in the middle of the kitchen, digging her fingernails into her palms. Her dream from the night before flashed through her mind, and she nearly crumpled to the floor. She’d give anything to go back to that night and choose Chance instead of work. Jess scratched at her wrist until she felt a raw pain spiral across her arm. But she couldn’t go back—she studied her wrist—and she couldn’t give up. Her only option was to move forward until she couldn’t move forward anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE