chapter nineteen
“Claire! Come back, Claire!”
My words echo over the landscape, as if the wind has taken them and turned them over and over like tumbleweeds. I have been
so careful not to make any loud noises outside for weeks that I instantly wish that I could call my shout back and swallow
the words whole.
I should have known she’d run. I knew what she’d lost. And what she’s found. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure
it out. She lost family, and she found me.
I aim for the alleys. I have a guess where she’d run.
It’s already dusk, and shadows lie layered over shadows. If I’m lucky, I’ll find her fast and we’ll be home before it’s truly
dark. If I’m not . . . Images of the feral dogs spring into my mind, their teeth, their growls, and Claire’s small body. I firmly
banish those images. If I’m not, then I’ll find her at Peter’s apartment on the oversize plush chair with her imaginary tea,
and we’ll return home in the morning.
Ahead, I see them: the narrow apartment buildings. Crowded close, they remind me of bodies on a bus, shoulders mashed together.
Dodging junk piles, I run toward the buildings, and then I plunge into an alley.
The alley is as dank and dark as I remember it.
The brick walls lean in toward each other, cutting off the last vestiges of daylight.
I feel buried in twilight. Beside me, a rat scurries past, and the cardboard boxes shift and rustle.
I pick up what could be the same trash can lid that I had tossed weeks ago. The weight of it makes me feel better.
Walking as quickly and quietly as I can, I retrace our steps toward Peter’s apartment. My shoes stick to the muck on the ground,
and the stench pervades my nostrils until it swims in my head. Clatters and snuffling and squeaking and a thousand tiny sounds
make my skin prickle. I listen for the dogs.
The air is damp and chill, as if I were a thousand miles from the desert. I can’t see stars overhead. The sky is a black sliver,
as if the street were inverted above me. I walk through the shadows and hope this is the right direction.
I hear a door shut, and I freeze. Voices, ahead. I duck behind a dumpster as two men pass by beneath the yellowish glow of
a streetlamp. Also behind the dumpster, a mutt watches me from beneath a cardboard box. His fur is matted around his face.
Mud has dried on him. He has a collar. He watches me, but he doesn’t move.
Heart thumping hard, I wait until I am certain the men are gone before I creep out.
I quicken my pace. Every shadow leers at me, and I hear my heart beat louder than my footsteps. My breath sounds rough, and
my eyes ache from staring so hard to make sense of the layers of darkness.
But at last, I see the stairwell, lit by the dim glow of a bulb. I run the final few feet and leap-run-fall down the stairs.
I land against the door, smacking it with my palms. I knock.
No answer.
“Please, Peter,” I whisper at the door. “Please be here.” Images flood through my mind again: Claire alone in an alley, found by the dogs, found by the men, not found at all.
I tell myself that it’s only my overactive imagination.
Claire’s a survivor. She’s tough and fast and smart.
But she was scared. Scared kids don’t think straight.
She could have run straight into danger.
I remember that Claire had a special knock. Slow twice, three times fast . . .
I am rewarded with footsteps, and the door swings open. As soon as Peter sees me, he laughs, joy filling his voice and ricocheting
off the brick walls of the apartment buildings. “A surprise! And it’s not even my birthday. Perhaps my unbirthday surprise?”
“Claire?” I call. His laugh dies as I push past him into the dark hallway, through the curtain, to the star-filled room. He’s
decorated the tree with Tiffany’s nooses. He follows me.
“Lauren, are you all right?” He reaches toward me, doesn’t touch me, lets his hand fall to his side.
“I thought she’d come here.” I spin in a circle, scanning the fairy-tale room. Broken marionettes lay on a shelf. The button
jar is overflowing, and one chair is covered with candy wrappers, laid flat like quilt pieces. The Christmas lights swirl
in a spiral pattern. “She’s not here.” I hear my voice. It’s shrill, not like my own. “You have to help me find her!”
“Claire can take care of herself,” Peter says. “She’s a resourceful girl. Why do you think you need to find her?”
Because of the dogs. Because of the dark. Because of the Missing Man. Because . . . I don’t see the words coming. They burst
out of me without passing by my mind. “Because I have to be able to save someone I love!” And suddenly, I am crying. Great
heaving sobs that hurt my ribs. My face feels as though it is about to crack. I am crying so hard that there are no tears,
only heaving racking sob noises.
Peter strokes my hair. His arms are around me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest as I sob against him. He doesn’t speak,
and I am grateful for that.
At last, I can breathe again.
“She’s dying,” I say.
His grip tightens around me, and I realize he thinks I mean Claire.
“My mother. She’s dying.” I’ve never said that word out loud. I’ve said she’s sick, that she needs me, but not that word,
dying. “Claire ran from the Missing Man because she isn’t lost anymore and I still am. I thought she’d come here.”
“And lo, the prodigal savior returns to take again from me,” Peter says. He has a mocking grin on his lips, but there’s no
laughter in his eyes. His hands are still tight on my arms, almost enough to bruise. “If you had found what you lost, would
you have left Claire?”
“I’d have made sure she was okay.”
“You could be happy here,” Peter says. “You have a home. You have family. You have safety, food, water, shelter. I have given
this all to you.”
I don’t know what to say. His eyes are intense, and I am too close to him. I can feel his heartbeat through my shirt. His
skin is warm. He’s looking at me as if he wants to kiss me or devour me and hasn’t decided which. “Will you help me find Claire?”
He releases me, and I stagger backward. Throwing my hand out, I catch my balance on the tree. The nooses sway from the impact,
and the Christmas lights twinkle and shift. He says softly, “‘If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.’
When you came to my door, I thought—” Cutting himself off, he turns his back to me and faces the tree with the tiny nooses.
“She wouldn’t run to where he can find her,” he says. “She’d run to where she’s more lost.”
He waits for me to understand. After a moment, I do. “The void,” I say. He knocks the nooses with his finger, sends them swinging
faster. I know I’m right. “Can you bring her out? I . . . I’ve found things. I’ve never found people.”
“She chose it.”
“Knowing that you’d find her,” I say. “She trusts you.” I take a deep breath. “So do I.”
He looks at me, and his eyes look sad. He favors me with half a smile, a twist of his lips. “But you trust the Missing Man to send you home, even after he betrayed you and left you. You want to leave.”
“Everyone here wants to go home,” I say.
“I am home,” he says.
“Please, Peter.” I reach out and put my hand on his arm. “Help me.”
He stares into my eyes. I can feel his breath soft on my face. He leans his forehead against mine. “I know what you’ve lost,”
he says. His voice sounds broken, as if the words cost him.
Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe. My hand shakes. It’s still on his arm, and I know he can feel it shaking. My whole
body trembles. “Where is it?” My voice is a whisper.
He taps my sternum, his fingers close to my heart. “It isn’t in the void. It’s in here.”
“Can you be less cryptic?” I ask.
He smiles but there’s sadness in the smile this time. “I can’t. Fairly certain it was a mistake to tell you that much.” Lightly,
his fingers brush my cheek. “Really, you don’t seem like you should be interesting. What is it about you? You’re just like
everyone else. Can’t wait to leave me.” His lips lightly brush against mine, and then he grips my arms and kisses me, his
body pressed tight against me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest through the thin cotton of my shirt. I kiss him back, sinking
into his arms, and for an instant, my thoughts scatter and there’s only this moment right here.
But then I break away. “Claire.”
“I’ll find her, if that’s what you wish.”
“It is,” I say firmly, though my lips still tingle and my head is spinning.
Leaving me, he sprints out of the apartment without another word.
Sitting in one of the chairs, I stare at the tree with nooses.
Then hopping to my feet, I pace. I think about Peter, about Claire, about the Missing Man .
. . I have to tell Victoria and Sean that he’s returned.
Also Tiffany. And the others. They can go home now.
Or move on. Or whatever. And then Claire and I will join them.
I raid Peter’s closets, searching for a reasonable disguise. I find a knit hat and a hoodie. I pull it on and tuck my hair
into the hat and use the hood to shield my face in shadows. It’s not perfect, but if I slouch like Colin and if I don’t make
eye contact . . .
I can’t simply stay here and wait. I have to move. I have to go. I can’t . . . I just can’t.
My mother is dying.
Hands jammed into my pockets, I shuffle down the sidewalk and try to look inconspicuous. I haven’t been to the center of Lost
since I was driven out, and Main Street hasn’t improved much. All the buildings look one hard breath away from crumbling into
rubble. Piles of garbage lean against them. The sidewalk concrete is chopped and full of weeds that choke every available
crack.
I already regret coming.
I see kids in the alleyways, perched in and around dumpsters and on towers of cardboard boxes. In one alley, they’ve constructed
a wall of old doors and signs. A few of them watch me.