Little Lovely Things, page 27
The moon belonged to Jay. The beautiful gas giants were hers, but they weren’t real without a telescope, so what did it matter? She pictured a new planet in the sky. One close to the earth, but that no one else could see. Her own planet, dark and eerie. She worked somber blues and heavy purples in a circle. But this monster planet wouldn’t fit on one paper towel. She opened another towel and ran her hand in a big bold circle, creating an outline that now swallowed the first. She filled the interior with continents frozen in place like the seas and craters on the moon, only shadowed with menacing shapes. It took a good ten minutes until she was satisfied. With a final stroke of a crayon, she gave the ugly planet a thin ring sketched in icy gray.
Mrs. Holder shifted in her seat, setting her fingers in a crosshatched tent over her chest. She looked tired.
Little Bird steadied a pencil stub in her hand and paused before signing her work. She stretched toward the window again. The sky outside was losing its stars; lights on the horizon made it an unreal orange. Little Bird, that’s what she’d write. But instead, her mouth filled with a soft round A.
Andrea.
She sounded it out. But somehow it didn’t seem right. So she began to write Colleen, staying within the comfort of the looping l’s, but then dropped her pencil in abandonment, because both felt wrong. Tears came freely now, filling her cheeks and trembling chin as if running away from her eyes. These, she couldn’t hide. Mrs. Holder came over to the bed.
“I know this is difficult,” she whispered softly and took hold of Little Bird’s hands. “The police are still trying to contact your parents.”
Little Bird pulled away. This was all beginning to feel like a scam of some sort. How was this different from the lies Moira had told? Jay’s earlier words were nothing but a muddle of confusion. Who were these people that the sheriff, the doctors, Mrs. Holder thought they were looking for?
People who’d allowed her to be stolen, that’s who.
Parents. Mom and Dad. The words slid around Little Bird and carried off through the hall. She wouldn’t take ownership of them. They didn’t belong to her. She shook her head to erase that stupid fantasy family on the porch of that perfect house. An embarrassment. She was a selkie, remember? A child of no one. She dropped all the crayons in the tin box and then shoved them onto the floor where they bounced and split and scattered like frightened mice. She then lifted her drawing up between her two hands and began to tear it, working one satisfying rip after another, each piece smaller than the one before, until a pile of shiny bits of a shattered planet grew on the tray table.
“Please, honey…” Mrs. Holder’s eyes brightened with tears.
A sudden bellowing in the hall outside the door spun Mrs. Holder around.
“Take it easy, man…” It was possibly the orderly’s voice. Followed by something about crutches. “Please, mister…”
“I need to see her.”
Jay!
Spilling off the bed like seaweed pulled from a rock in high tide, she bolted past Mrs. Holder and yanked the door open. There stood Jay, all bandaged like the combat troopers she’d seen in old World War II movies, leaning heavily against a crutch.
“Little Bird!” Jay shouted and lowered himself as she ran toward him. She fell into the space he’d made for her in the crook of his free arm. He squeezed her against him and whispered into her ear. “Tiyospaye.”
She looked up, questioning.
His face beamed as he smiled. “Extended family.”
Everything, the overbright hallway, the sighing Mrs. Holder, the orderly in his scrubs, all disappeared, and the world was now filled with Jay.
And nothing else was real. Nothing at all.
Chapter 25
Claire
The clock read 5:19 a.m. when Claire was startled awake by the shrill insistence of the phone. The sound felt like an invasion in the quiet house. She moaned, opening her eyes into slits, mildly irritated.
It rang again.
Who could be calling at this hour?
She lifted onto her elbow. A crimp in her neck brought her forward. She rubbed one eye and glanced around. It took a moment before recognizing her old living room wrapped in shadows. An empty wine bottle sat on a side table next to the chair where Glen was still asleep, sprawled like an overfed cat. Gretchie remained in a pile, plopped next to him on the floor wheezing in deep slumber.
Glen didn’t move.
R-r-ring.
She leaned over the edge of the couch and lifted the receiver, leaving a moment of silence before speaking.
“Hello?”
Right then Claire changed her mind. She had no business doing this in Glen’s house. When she moved to hang the phone up, a voice came on the line.
“Hello?” It was a woman. “Claire?”
The tone was clear and urgent. Hearns!
Claire bolted upright. “Juanita?”
“I’m being patched through by Detective Ferguson with the Michigan State Police. He’s at Elmcrest Hospital near Benton Harbor.”
Claire remained silent. Hearing Hearns’s voice after so long scuttled all sense of context.
Juanita cleared her throat. “The detective asked me to make this call. He believes that they may have”—she hesitated, and then spoke boldly—“found Andrea.”
What? Claire slumped in resignation. A vision flashed through her mind of a partial skeleton in a shallow grave, the bones singed clean, whitened with age. She glanced at her sleeping husband. His face. His hands. Peaceful. These words would now destroy that peace. “Dear God.”
“Claire.” Hearns was close to breathless. “You don’t understand.”
A thin cord of panic choked Claire. What was there to understand? She’d wake Glen and they would weep together over this terrible wound torn open.
“This child is alive.”
What did she mean? The connection crackled. Hearns continued to speak but she became inaudible. Suddenly it occurred to Claire that this was some hoax, some cruel joke.
A man came on the line.
“Mrs. Rawlings? We will be running DNA testing against the records on file, but have good reason to believe that this little girl we have here is your daughter, Andrea.”
“Repeat. What you have said.”
This man was speaking gibberish. The time it took for neurotransmitters to flood Claire’s synapses, to form a coherent network of thought and recognition, was only milliseconds. But in Claire-time, it was an eon, the equivalent to the melting of an ice age. She felt a sob rising in her throat but held it back.
He began again.
“Wait,” she interrupted, “I need to get my husband on the line.”
She stood. But she didn’t move. It was as if her limbs were suddenly reviving after a cruel sleep-inducing spell and she was feeling them again for the first time. She set the receiver on its side and blinked. Then turned to the recliner.
“Glen.” Claire’s voice was a raspy whisper, not the volume required to truly wake someone.
He shifted and wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
“Glen.” Louder this time, but still tinged with the sense that Claire’s voice was coming from somewhere other than her own throat. She touched his arm.
Glen’s waking was full of startle, a Where am I? expression flooding his face. He sat forward attempting to focus.
“Claire?”
She switched on a lamp and knelt slowly next to his chair because her legs were still unsteady.
“It’s Andrea.”
He searched Claire’s face. “What?”
“Police.” She pointed to the receiver. “They think they’ve found her.”
If she could’ve crushed him with stones, it would not have been worse than the words she’d just spoken. He dropped his head into his hands.
“Glen.” Claire had no idea how she managed to keep her voice steady. “They think our daughter is alive.”
“What?” He pulled the recliner forward and leaped up.
Claire pointed to the kitchen. “Grab that line.”
He rushed to the phone, almost tripping over the now-roused Gretchie, then lifted the receiver to his face, as Claire did the same in the living room. They stretched the cords to their extremes so they could see each other, but only barely. Neither would risk losing this line.
The detective began mid-story, not knowing that Claire had provided no information to Glen. “Jay White, whom we’ve confirmed through Detective Hearns knows you, has provided a positive ID based on a photo he says you gave him.”
The detective continued to speak for several minutes, something about a woman kidnapper. An explosion. Jay and a rescue. But the words were a jumble.
All Claire could comprehend was the key point: Andrea, alive.
“What in God’s name?” Glen pulled at his hair. “Jay White? How could he possibly ID Andrea?” Glen shook his head in disbelief, the cord straining. At that moment, Claire detected the same panicked urgency as That Day when he had shown up at the gas station—insisting to the police, close to short-circuiting with fear.
“We have requested expedited DNA testing, but that may take a week at least…”
Hearns came on again. “Glen, they are doing a comparison of the old photo against a new one. But that, too, will take time.”
His eyes grew large with disbelief at hearing this voice. Hearns continued, “So many things line up. The involvement of a woman Traveller. Andrea’s age. We hope when you come she’ll recognize you.”
A woman! Claire fell to one knee.
Glen asked questions as they supplied information on the kidnapper, a name, Moira. Mixed in through all of this were directions to the hospital. Claire kept her focus on her husband. He stayed with them, getting more details. Claire didn’t speak. Instead, she drifted from the voices.
She had heard Andrea calling through the deep. Claire began to fill with something remarkable, as if she’d just swallowed a glowing bulb. The possibility that she was a mother again was real. Everything now had the quality of water—voices, thoughts, the surroundings.
Andrea is alive. Andrea. Our daughter. Alive.
Words moved and shifted like sweet liquid, nectar. They were delicious and Claire savored each one. She closed her eyes.
“Until the testing proves otherwise”—she returned to the conversation as Glen said—“this is all coincidence.”
Claire understood what he was saying. The possibility that this child was not Andrea was almost too much to bear.
“I’m sorry this is abrupt.” A different voice spoke now. “I’m Dr. Grimes.”
Claire was back again, in the moment.
“What is her status?”
She asked this as a question from one physician to another. It wasn’t as if she was speaking about her daughter. She didn’t dare to whisper the name Andrea. Those words were too potent right then, might somehow break this magical spell.
“She’s shook up,” the doctor said slowly.
“Does she remember anything about her past?”
“Doesn’t seem to. I think we are dealing with amnesia, but I don’t really know. She’ll need a full psych eval—beyond that I can’t say. We’ve never encountered anything like this before.”
A thin blade of fear sliced through Claire, down the center axis of her body. She couldn’t lose Andrea a second time. She was too dazed to absorb most of the information. All she knew was that she had to get moving to that hospital in Michigan as fast as humanly possible.
“This is…the whole thing…it’s…” Glen interrupted.
“I know, Mr. Rawlings. Can you both come? Here? Now?”
“It is, I believe,” Hearns spoke softly, “a three-hour drive. I will be coming too.”
Time, time, time. It was what they didn’t have. Andrea needed her mother. Now. Claire made a face at Glen, a pleading one. He locked eyes with her and nodded.
“We are leaving,” Glen stated. “Now.”
They hung up, and he grabbed Claire into a crushing embrace.
“It’s her. I just know it,” Claire whispered. And then they stepped back and stood at arm’s length looking into each other’s faces. Glen’s eyes were soft and filled with fear and something he was now allowing—wonder.
“Let’s go.”
They dashed in different directions, grabbing whatever seemed to make sense—Claire’s purse, Glen’s keys. Claire forced one foot to follow the other to keep her grounded as her body seemed weightless. Gretchie wove between Claire’s legs and then circled the room in high alert.
Glen raced back toward the master bedroom.
“My wallet.”
“Your other shoe,” Claire called. Within minutes, they were heading out. But Claire abruptly stopped at the door. “Glen, something’s missing…”
“What?” He looked pained with urgency.
“We can’t go yet…”
Of course. She grabbed the phone.
“Claire. Calls come later.”
She held her palm toward him as she dialed, trying not to mix up the digits she knew so well. He sighed and cleared his throat as the phone on the other end rang. Once, twice, three times.
This is important, she mouthed. The machine started to kick on.
“Claire?”
“Thank God you answered.”
“Is everything—”
“Howard. No time to talk. They think they found— No, they found Andrea.”
She spoke quickly but with great precision. The hospital. Her daughter’s condition. A rapid-fire rendition of every detail she knew and what she didn’t. Thankfully, Howard heard enough to piece together what was happening. And he understood that, next to Claire and Glen, a child psychiatrist would be the most important person in Andrea’s life right then.
“Just go. I’ll be right behind. We can assess her there.”
“Howard.” Claire’s voice shook. “Her status, her memory, I’m so afraid… Please. Hurry.”
“She may not believe it’s you without evidence, something tangible. Bring something of hers, a keepsake, a photo, a stuffed toy maybe?”
“Howard.” Claire’s voice vibrated at some weird frequency, as if she were out of body. “They say there is no protocol for this.”
“Of course there isn’t. How can there be a protocol for a miracle?”
Claire sprinted down the hall toward the girls’ room. And then there it was. The layered light, darker near the floor and ceiling, softer near the windows, the same as it was five years before when she had crept through the house to check on Lily and Andrea. The memory of that early morning was stitched into her very skin like a birthmark.
There was no time to search through the boxes filled with items from the girls’ childhood, stored on a high shelf in the closet. Each moment spent not driving to the hospital was time being stolen from a deposit that was running low. Move, move, move was all Claire could think. She grabbed the bag with Jumpers’s carrot still on the dresser, along with a picture of Gretchie in a dog bone–shaped frame, taken when she was a puppy. At the other side of the room, she could see the shadowy outline of Butkus’s cage and the silhouette of a bird with his head tucked beneath a wing. Silent for once! She returned to the living room where Glen nodded and jangled the keys. Gretchie paced at the door, clearly uncertain what to do with this new energy in the house.
“You call Vicki and I’ll call the neighbors after we get there. Have them let G out.”
Call their daughter’s aunt…after we get there…sounded so ordinary, so matter of fact. Did not sound anything like a broken couple preparing to traverse into this amazing unknown. Just then, Gretchie reached her long legs onto Claire’s thighs. Claire bent and ran her fingers through Gretchie’s thick, short fur. “You, sweet love,” she whispered, Gretchie’s ears lifting, “are one perfect soul.”
And then they were off, weaving through the neighborhood and the side streets.
Through the car window, Claire was startled by the beauty of the sky—the purple wisps of the stratosphere melting into different shades of melon-hued pastels. Was Andrea seeing this same sunrise? What did Andrea look like, how would she act? Was she smart? Funny? And what would she think of Claire? What would she look like to this girl? They said she was shook up. What did that mean? Why hadn’t Claire asked more—she was a doctor, for God’s sake.
Please—don’t let her be hurt. Make her be okay.
Claire fought against her worries threading like beads on a string. God almighty, a woman. This was good, right? Less possibility of some terrible abuse. But what if she had actually become, in Andrea’s mind, her mother? She’d gotten away, was still out there able to threaten her daughter. Claire bit the inside of her cheek. No. She’d stay focused in the moment until they learned more. She placed her hand into Glen’s. Finally, they were flying onto the expressway. Heading east toward Michigan, crossing this great divide between their before and after lives.
* * *
The first time Claire saw her daughter was through a milky glass window and a half-open door. She was sitting at a table in a dirty shirt and cutoff jeans, hunched a bit as if trying to be smaller. Claire could only see her from behind. She had choppy hair, still the softest shade of brown mottled here and there with faded red streaks. Her feet, pulled free from stained tennis shoes, were visible beneath the table—the top one jammed into the bottom one, both bent into whiteness. Claire almost doubled over, as if tightened by a cord attached to her viscera. The social worker sat with her in the room. Claire had been told the woman’s name when she and Glen arrived, but it was now forgotten. Other than blond hair and chubby features, Claire didn’t bother to register her. Claire entered slowly through the doorway and then turned toward a slight shuffling sound. Jay! He was moving across the room on crutches, his leg in a cast.
