Lost and Found (Spunes #3)

Prologue

One Year Ago

Bea

I am absolutely certain I’ve seen that painting before.

All grays and shades of blue, melancholic aside from the two girls sitting on a grassy hillside overlooking the ocean.

They are smiling at one another, bright and sunny on an otherwise gloomy day painted around them.

The vast expanse of the water stretching out beyond the shore is probably meant to be a metaphor of some kind.

The sea can be so many things at once. Large enough to contain multitudes, terrifying and vast. Probably, this painting is meant to convey that our lives contain multitudes, too.

We are allowed to have moments of joy in spite of the terrifying and vast uncertainties ahead of us, it says.

It says it’s okay to smile and laugh in the infusion unit while you sit beside your exhausted, sick friend—an unfathomable, churning ocean before her.

I close my eyes against the sharp sting, trying to hold the memories at bay.

Those same blues and grays in the tint of her skin and the circles under her lashless eyes.

Chapped lips cracking into a weak smile at me.

I half expect to open my eyes and find hard linoleum underfoot instead of the plush carpet I know my (even plusher) chair currently sits on.

I inhale deeply and let the scents of the law office ground me in the present.

Faint traces of leather and some sort of designer fragrance—a far cry from the sterile smell of the hospital.

And I know when I open my eyes, my best friend will still be dead.

And yet. Same fucking painting.

A man who looks exactly like my cartoon brain’s version of a lawyer walks in. Clean-shaven, sharp suit, hair with a perfect gray stripe, gelled within an inch of its life. I spare him a brief glance before my eyes are drawn right back to the picture.

“You like it? I bought it off a street artist in BC,” he says.

“Parts of Canada really are just like a miniature Europe, you know.” His laugh is phony when he looks at me, but my doubt must’ve made its way to my face, because his smile disappears in an instant.

“That’s . . . a lie. Sorry,” he adds in a rush.

“I don’t know why I said that?” He appears to be genuinely confused now.

By the lie, or by his willingness to admit it, I’m not sure.

“My secretary ordered it from one of those surplus home goods websites, I think.”

People have always told me things. Always confided their secrets.

It’s the eyes, my mom always said. Like brandy backlit by the sun, she added when I got older.

Like maybe they make people drunk in their own way, make them eager to share.

I once thought it was just one of those things mothers said, but then I met Merritt Young in fifth grade.

She knocked me flat on my back with a tetherball to the gut, then kneeling over my wheezing body, she cried, “I’m sorry!

It wasn’t an accident. I wanted to beat you and got pissed off!

I’m still sorry, though!” The instant I heard pissed leave her ten-year-old lips, that new girl in school went from being some exotic enigma to the coolest person I’d ever met, and we were inseparable from that moment on.

That is, until three weeks ago, when her battle with breast cancer came to a quiet, anticlimactic end. A barely discernible rasp, her hand slackening in mine. The vibrant soul with whom I shared my best memories ceasing to exist between one blink and the next.

“I think,” Lawyer says, “I have to admit, I think I might be a little nervous. This is the first time I’ve ever had a—a delicate conversation of this particular nature, and I’ve been a lawyer for twenty-seven years.

” He looks at me like I should give him some credit for this, but I have no clue what I’d be crediting him for.

I try to smile but think my brow is the only thing that lifts.

He smooths his tie down with a shaky hand, and we sink into another awkward silence.

I am still trying to puzzle together what this meeting is about and why I needed to drive two hours out of town rather than rot in bed like I’d planned.

Surrounded by a respectable pile of snacks that I may or may not eat, three beverages, and something distracting blaring in the background, ideally. Loud enough to drown out my thoughts.

“Right. Well. I suppose I should just launch right into it, then?” Lawyer hedges.

“I think that’d be good?” I say, uncertain. My voice feels rusty. “What’s your name? You’re who I spoke to on the phone?” Dale, or Dell, or Denny?

“Kenneth Chadborn.” Damn, I wasn’t even close. Maybe my entire brain is rusty. Along with the rest of my personality. All of me fell into a state of disrepair when Merritt died.

Kenneth clears his throat a couple of times before he begins. “To start. I want to say I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Marshall.”

“Thank you.” It comes out a whisper. I keep waiting for it to get easier to respond to that line, or to come up with something that feels more appropriate than thank you. At least this time, I’m not shocked by the quick flare of anger at the empty words.

Empty, just like the text bubble will remain when I send a message to her phone. Empty like her room in my house. Full of her things but devoid of her.

“Well, as I’m sure you know, prior to beginning chemotherapy, Miss Young opted to have her eggs frozen in order to prevent any damage to them while undergoing treatment.

The bank can keep eggs frozen for up to ten years, but in cases where the donor passes, there is the option to donate them, dispose of them, or .

. . to will them to someone. She has willed those eggs to you. ”

Now it’s my head that goes empty.

I can feel my mouth opening and closing in shock when he sifts through the papers on his desk and passes me an envelope. “I did not know that,” I croak. I knew she’d had her eggs frozen but not—not the rest of it.

“Oh,” he says.

“Yeah,” I flatly reply.

I knew when she got her first period and about the time she stole a Butterfinger from O’Doyle’s when we were ten—even went back with her to fess up and pay for it later that day.

I knew when she named her favorite Pillow Pet Silas, after Silas Byrd, in seventh grade so she could practice making out with it.

I knew all her small and light secrets, and her deepest, darkest ones, too.

When she cheated on a test and when she dinged someone’s car in a parking lot and drove away.

When she slept with someone else’s boyfriend in college.

But she never told me this. Why?

It’s not as if you didn’t hold on to some secrets of your own, my subconscious replies.

Visibly coming to some internal decision, Kenneth rolls his shoulders and presses on.

“Eggs can be frozen for up to ten years, but the cryopreservation center’s policy is to hold on to them for two years postmortem.

Unfortunately, Miss Young’s estate does not include the funds to pay for the cost of storage, but they are willing to give you a few months without late penalties, as long as you eventually get caught up.

They are also willing to forgo the fee for disposing of them should you decide you don’t want them. ”

“Hold on,” I say. “How much is it a month?” There is too much information coming at me at once, and I don’t think I’m doing well absorbing any of it. “And . . . and why wouldn’t she just donate them when she knew . . . ?” Knew she was going to die, I can’t say.

“The storage fee is five hundred dollars a year or fifty dollars a month,” he says. And I realize he can’t answer the second question, anyway. That Merritt planned it like this, she didn’t donate them because she wanted them to go to me.

I flinch like I’ve been slapped when it clicks. When I think of Merritt plotting a future she wouldn’t be part of. He mistakes it for something else.

“I get it. Normally when I tell people they’ve been left something in a will, it’s not something that costs them.

” Whatever my face does makes him double back.

“I mean, it’s nothing to shrug at, considering the cost of the IVF you’d have to do if you chose to utilize Miss Young’s eggs, in conjunction. ”

“How—how much is IVF?”

He trills his lips. “Depends on what your insurance covers. When my wife and I did it, years ago, most policies didn’t cover anything.”

I want to tell him that I’m a hairstylist on the edge of a small town.

I built an extensive client list within two years, so as long as I work consistently, I do a little more than fine for myself; however, I pay out of pocket for my insurance and therefore have the most affordable, egregiously mediocre insurance available.

But there is something more urgent gaining volume inside me, crying out from somewhere deep in my chest. A piece of Merritt, it says.

I could bring a piece of my friend back into the world.

Something beautiful and miraculous and mine—all concepts I can’t fathom at the moment.

“You don’t have any idea on cost range?” I ask.

He hooks a finger into his collar and pulls at it like this conversation is choking off air.

“I believe it’s anywhere from ten to twenty-five thousand, with a great many factors in between.

” He clears his throat forcefully. “Like, would you also need to pay for donated s-sperm, or would you have a partner in mind? And, of course, there’s always the chance that it could take more than one round.

Then, beyond that, there’s the cost of OB care during pregnancy.

Delivery. All the . . . all the stuff you need for a baby.

” His eyes go downright haunted. “It’s been years, but. There’s a great deal of . . . stuff.”

There would also be a piece of Merritt.

“—stroller, car seat, crib, clothes. My oldest had bad allergies and had to go on a special formula that cost us a couple hundred bucks a month. And god, diapers.”

A piece of Merritt.