If You Find Me

by Emily Murdoch

  She doesn’t seem to notice the way her daughter scowls at us. Under Delaney’s gaze, my neck heats up, then my cheeks. Delaney smiles for the first time as she notices.

  “I’ll go get the girls’ things.”

  My father lopes off to the truck, and I think of the garbage bags and cringe. We’re out of our element, like fish flapping round a bird’s nest, and I can see this fact doesn’t escape Delaney. She looks glad.

  I clomp up the steps, stopping by the door to remove my boots and then Nessa’s shoes. I line them up neatly to the right of the welcome mat, then look to Melissa.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Carey. Wasn’t that thoughtful, Delly?”

  Delaney shrugs, using her heels to slip off one sneaker and then the other, picking them up and taking them with her.

  We enter the house, Nessa’s eyes like saucers, flitting from the crackling fire inside to the couches draped in crocheted blankets, like the kind our gran knit. Nessa’s eyes linger on the china figurines on the mantel, not knowing they aren’t toys. I know, because Gran had some of her own. Just in case, I make a mental note to lay down some ground rules that’ll keep Nessa out of trouble during our stay.

  “Get out of here, you mangy mutt!”

  Shorty, padding along behind us, cowers on the stairs as if Delaney’s words were smacks. Nessa gasps in delight and lets go of my hand, walking over to the dog, her arm extended. Shorty sniffs her fingers, his tail sweeping the wood. Nessa plunks down next to him and throws her arms around him like a long-lost friend. She smiles widely as the dog licks her cheek.

  “Good thing baths are on the agenda. Doesn’t she know better than to let a dog lick her face?” Delaney watches Jenessa with disgusted fascination. This time, I shrug.

  Delaney turns to her mother. “What, now she can’t talk, either?”

  “Delly, please.”

  Nessa rests her cheek on Shorty’s head, gives him one last squeeze, then scrambles to her feet. I hold out my hand and she takes it, and we ascend the stairs together. Delaney sighs loudly, like we’re so much trouble. I bite my tongue, my own patience just about exhausted.

  “Just take us to our rooms, please,” I say, daring her to hear what I’m not saying, too.

  On the second floor, the wood shines hard as glass. A long, thin strip of bloodred carpet with tangled vines embroidered along the borders stretches down the length of the hallway. Delaney stops at the first two doors, opposite each other, motioning toward one and then the other.

  “These two are yours.”

  She leaves us standing there watching her hair swish across her back until she disappears behind the last door at the hallway’s end.

  I look at Jenessa, who stares down the way we came. To my surprise, she whistles—I didn’t know she knew how—and Shorty barrels up the stairs and down the hall, his front legs sliding on the slick surface. We smile at each other when he slows down and proceeds via the rug, his bright eyes trained on Nessa.

  Tentatively, I reach out and pat his head, noting his fur, soft as velvet. But it isn’t my attention he wants. Nessa plops on the rug, giggling. She scratches up and down his back, sending his front leg paddling.

  Shorty shadows us from one room to the other. My room, and we know it’s my room by the things in it, is like nothing I’ve ever seen. There’s a bed—a real bed—and it’s huge. Nessa fingers the stitches of the patchwork quilt, a scarlet background with different-colored patches flecked with wildflowers and little suns. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and I, too, have to touch it to believe it.

  There’s a shelf on the long wall, already crowded with books, and a china figurine resembling the one downstairs perches in the middle of a white doily on the bureau.

  On the opposite wall is a sampler behind glass, framed in dark wood: Home is where the heart is.

  “Now let’s go see your room.”

  I lead her into what seems like another world.

  ONLY PRINCESSES ALLOWED! announces the plaque on the wall, and Nessa claps her hands in delight. The place is done up in pink and white, with buttercup yellow walls. She, too, has a wall shelf crowded with books, and her own patchwork quilt of pale pink behind squares of butterflies. Her arms reach up toward a little curio shelf high on the wall, where a china dog stands guard over a china girl, the figures cleverly out of reach of a six-year-old’s less than nimble fingers.

  “We’ll take them down later so you can see, but these kind of dolls aren’t toys, Ness. They’re made out of something like glass— remember when I dropped that mason jar and it shattered all over the camper floor?”

  Ness nods slowly, transfixed. She isn’t hearing a word I’m saying. “How do you think they knew about the pink? I’ll leave my door open, okay? I’ll be right across the hall if you need me.”

  But when I leave to go to my room, she’s right there with me, clambering up on my bed and bouncing up and down in her bare feet.

  There’s a door on the short wall. Inside, it smells like cedar, wiggling loose another memory I haven’t accessed in years: the cedar chest Mama kept her keepsakes in before the woods. Her recital photographs, of an angular young girl with what Mama called a “shag” haircut; her snapped violin strings, which she compulsively collected; a scrapbook of newspaper clippings; letters from Gran mixed up with ancient cards from my father.

  This closet is empty. I set the hangers swinging, their tinkly skeletons bumping one another from a metal bar that stretches from end to end.

  “Nessa, look! A whole little room just for clothes—I reckon it’s bigger than the camper!”

  I turn to her. My sister sits propped like a life-size doll against the headboard, snoring softly. Shorty, curled up flush against her body, eyes me.

  “It’s okay, boy. I don’t mind.”

  His eyes close. It’s been another long day.

  Gently, I take a crocheted blanket, the only object in the closet, from the top shelf. Nessa’s feet are dirty again, but it’s honest dirt, as Mama would say. She smells sweaty, but it’s a sweet sweat. I cover her with the blanket, hoping it’s okay to use it. My sister’s never been good at sticking to plans or schedules.

  “Shouldn’t she be taking a bath first, before you put her to bed? Her feet are filthy.”

  “Only because the woods got into her shoes. She took a shower this morning.”

  Delaney stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “This isn’t her room.”

  “It is if she wants it to be.” We’ve been sharing all our lives. “I don’t mind if she wants to stay here with me.”

  “My mother won’t like having Shorty on the bed. That mutt’s lucky he gets to sleep inside the house in the first place.”

  Delaney moves aside as my father lumbers through, dropping one of the garbage bag on the floor against the wall.

  “I put the others in Jenessa’s room,” he says softly, smiling at the sight of Nessa and Shorty snoring together. “I saw lots of pink, and Pooh books. I guessed that was Jenessa’s bag.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Delaney takes in the garbage bag, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  “She’ll be fine until tomorrow. The bath can wait,” my father adds, giving Delaney a hard look. “And I’m sure Melissa won’t mind about Shorty.”

  “What’s wrong with her, anyway?” Delaney glances from Nessa to me, her eyes hard.

  I make sure my words bite back.

  “There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s sleeping. She’s tired.”

  “No. Why she can’t talk, I mean.” Delaney scrutinizes my face, as if expecting me to lie.

  “She can if she wants to. She just doesn’t want to, most of the time.”

  “My mom’ll have something to say about that.”

  “Don’t you have homework to do, Del?” My father says on his way out, but it’s more a command than a question.

  I worry, imagining Nessa being made to talk and the hissy fit she’d throw if she was pushed
into it. There’s no making her do something she doesn’t want to do, especially when she’s right. They’re her words. It’s up to her to use them. Or not.

  Delaney ignores him.

  “Why do you call your own father ‘sir’?”

  She’s getting on my nerves, but at least she’s forgotten about the garbage bags.

  “Mama says it’s a sign of respect to call grown men ‘sir,’ and women ‘ma’am.’ ”

  Delaney scoffs, like I’m the last person who’d know, coming from where I do.

  “Well, I call them by their names—Mom and Dad. They’re family, not strangers.”

  To her, maybe.

  Inside, I hurt in that empty puzzle piece way. It’s obvious she thinks he’s her father, not mine, even though we share the same blood. Maybe she’s right. I wonder if she knows he used to beat Mama and me, and if he’s ever beaten her. Only, it’s not the sort of thing you ask a person, especially a stranger.

  “I guess we’re stepsisters. That’s what my mom said. Although I don’t know if I want to be stepsisters with a retarded girl.”

  “She’s not retarded.”

  My voice betrays nothing, even though the white heat, jagged as lightning, jumps through my veins. I know girls like Delaney from a few of my books. Bullies, who like to tease. Mean-spirited girls who laugh when other girls trip or cry.

  “Excuse us, please,” I say.

  She plants her feet and her eyes narrow. Hawk eyes, I think. Untrustworthy. Preying on the small and the weak.

  “I said, please leave!”

  Delaney snaps her beak closed and flounces out the door. I sink onto the bed, sag there on the edge, trying to catch up with my new life. In the woods, a person has all day and night to process things. Out here, it’s different. There’s no time.

  “She’s not so bad once you get to know her,” my father offers, sticking his head in as he passes.

  I wonder how much he’s heard.

  “It’s been hard on her, too, all these years. It’s my fault really, so get mad at me, not her, okay? Door open, or shut?”

  “Shut, sir.”

  I exhale. Blink back the wetness that threatens to spill. My stomach drops at least as far as we’ve traveled away from our woods. What if I can’t do this? What happens then?

  Shorty utters a low whine and slips out from under Nessa’s arm, crawling toward me on his belly until he’s pushed his body all the way up against mine. He rests his graying head on my knee with a sigh and gives my skin a tentative taste. I bend forward and sniff. He smells like soap, like something with jasmine, which reminds me of Mrs. Haskell’s hair.

  I let the tears flow, hot as the creek in summertime. I don’t know beans about civilized living. My mind feels crowded, like a room with too much furniture, until chair arms and couch legs poke me, cushions and pillows conspire to smother me. There’s no room to move. To think.

  I stare out the window, the glass dark and fogged with our collective breath. In my mind I hear my trees whistling in the wind and my heart melts into a puddle because I’m no longer there to whistle back. One missing Mama and a dwindling supply of canned goods is a molehill compared to this.

  I lean over and wrap my arms around Shorty, a kindred spirit if ever there was one. Us, two creatures plucked from the wild. One lost leg. One lost girl. I scrutinize my jeans, zeroing in on the jagged hole below the knee where I’d snagged on barbed wire coming back (empty-handed) from fishing. No wonder Delaney snickered at us. We look exactly like what we are: poor kids. Kids discarded.

  “Come in,” I reply to the knock on the door. I sit up and quickly dry my tears.

  “Now what?” I groan, seeing Delaney’s face in the doorway.

  “Catch,” she says, tossing me a crocheted blanket. “I didn’t think you’d want to wake your sister by pulling down the covers. You can use this one for yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  She stares at the garbage bag, her expression different this time.

  “What’s this?” Delaney says, toeing the violin case leaning against the bag.

  “A violin.”

  I almost choke on the v word with the planet-size history curled up inside it, like an embryo bursting its mottled shell. It’s a history that could break me if I let it, spilling out my middle like Gran’s jam cake when you first cut into it.

  We exchange glances.

  “Can you play it?”

  I take her in: her perfect, shiny dirty-blond hair, her embroidered jeans speckled with twinkling jewels, her socks so white, there’s no doubt creek washing wasn’t involved.

  “I’ve been playing since I was four. Mama—my mother—taught me. She was a concert violinist.”

  “That’s what my dad said. He said your mother could’ve been famous if she hadn’t gotten mixed up in—”

  “I’m really tired,” I say, and this time, Delaney blushes. “I still have to settle me and Nessa in—”

  “Oh. Okay.” She pauses. Then: “Do you need any help?”

  I think of my stuff, Jenessa’s stuff, right fitting to be stuffed in garbage bags when a person really thinks about it.

  “Uh, thanks, but I got it.”

  She clicks the door shut and I’m alone in a foreign land, this kingdom called New Bedroom, so clean, it makes my brain squeeze. As I sort through my things, I’m careful not to spill the bag onto the rug. I twirl the stem of a stray leaf between my fingers, then press it against my cheek. Home. Shorty hoists himself over to Nessa and goes back to sleep.

  “Good dog,” I say, and he opens one eye to let me know he knows.

  The door clicked shut with a sticky sound. I sniff. Paint. They actually painted for us.

  It’s easy to unpack. There isn’t much. Soon, my few items shiver together on hangers, while the lower closet shelf remains forlorn and mostly empty, except for Mama’s scrapbook and my sketch pad. I place the violin case on the toppest shelf, wishing no one knew about it.

  I cringe as I hang my coat on one of the hooks and catch sight of it in the full-length mirror on the inside of the door. It’s a navy blue winter coat patched at the elbows, the color worn out in places, no different from my jeans. I’d found the coat in the woods, the material reeking of wet leaves and cat pee, the latter a scent I couldn’t erase no matter how many times I’d washed it in the creek.

  “Don’t pay it no nevermind,” Mama says, her eyes harsh. “You got yourself a coat, a right warm one, just like I prayed for.”

  I wish she’d prayed for a store-bought coat, spankin’ new, with the faux-fur linin’fluffed, not matted, and all the buttons still on it. Not four out of six.

  “But you have a coat. A store-bought one with a zipper.”

  “Watch your tongue, girl. I’m the ah-dult. I’m the one takin care of you girls.”

  I don’t say it, but she’s not, not neither one. At least she sure don’t act like it.

  “Be grateful for what you got, Carey,” she says, knowin me so well that even hidin’ my eyes don’t help. “That coat hits right to your knees. We have no fancy airs to put on here. Warm is warm, no matter how it looks.”

  Or smells, I thought, resigned.

  But she was right. When winter set in, when Jenessa and I wore socks for mittens, we both had coats so we could play in the snow instead of remaining cooped up in the camper. We slept in the coats, too, so we didn’t shiver all night and wake each other up.

  I glance at Jenessa, breathing through her mouth, and Shorty, his ears squared as if awaiting further instructions, determined to make us a package deal. I don’t mind at all.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  I leave the door cracked and pad over to Nessa’s room. I unpack her toys and clothes, clothes that hold the scent of wood smoke from the fire I built the night before. Her own coat came from the Salvation Army, a pale pink cloth of some sort, reaching to her waist. I gather it up and breathe it in, but the ache only pounds harder.

  Soon, the closet shelves are lined w
ith her puzzle boxes and games, both Scrabble and Chutes and Ladders. A smudge-nosed, naked Barbie doll sits demurely, her legs dangling over the shelf’s edge. I line up Nessa’s sneakers on the floor below, and set her stuffed dog and one-armed teddy in the child-size rocking chair. They’ll look nice on the bed once they’re put through the washing machine.

  I fill an empty shelf across from her bed with her Pooh books, unable to count how many times I’ve read each book to her, the stories worn into my heart as much as hers.

  Her socks, underpants, and undershirts go into the bureau drawers. When I’m through, I fold the garbage bags into squares, my mind returning again to Mama’s letter like a tongue to a loose baby tooth. I can feel the paper in my pocket, close as skin when I move. I stuff the bags in the bottom bureau drawer, then go back to my room, closing the door behind me.

  There’s a clock on the little table next to my bed that says eight-thirty in spelled-out numbers. A person doesn’t even have to know how to tell time—it tells it for you.

  I marvel at the light switches; none worked in our camper, but they work here right fine. I flick the switch downward, and the room goes dark except for a beautiful cream-colored rectangle of porcelain plugged into an outlet. It looks like a sculpture, and I crouch down on the floor to see. Carved into its surface is a beautiful angel assisting two chubby children across a bridge. The angel’s wingspan reminds me of an owl’s, or an eagle’s, it’s so glorious.

  I curl up next to Nessa, Shorty on one side and me on the other, making a Jenessa samwich. The blanket Delaney gave me is clean, downy, and warm. It smells like flowers. I feel like a flower.

  My eyelids slip shut, lulled by the inhale and exhale of Shorty’s breath. First I say a prayer for Mama, though, that she, too, is safe and warm, her belly full up. And then I let go, a feeling so foreign after all those nights alone in the woods, a shotgun nestled in the crook of my arm. I let go like I haven’t since the white-star night, or perhaps since Jenessa was a baby. Ever since then, I’ve been a world of tired, clear down to my dusty bones.

  I fumble for my shotgun, but it isn’t there; my heart races as the shadows in the Hundred Acre Wood morph into hulking giants over twenty feet tall. Who, who? echo through the leaves, and an owl blinks down, and I answer, It’s only me. It is only me. Jenessa is gone. Frantic, I search the camper, the campsite, the curving shore of the roiling Obed River.