The Lost Girls

Justine-2

Still, all that next year, Justine hoped they’d go back. Maybe it would become a tradition that they went to the lake every summer. Other people had traditions like that, she knew. But she never brought it up, and when summer came and went with no mention of the lake she wasn’t surprised. After all, Maurie never went back anywhere. When they left a town she wouldn’t even let Justine look back at it. ‘Shake the dust off,’ she’d say. ‘Shake the dust of that town off your feet.’ She’d take her foot off the gas and shake both feet and Justine would, too, even though she never wanted to leave, no matter where they were.

‘When did Grandma Lilith die? You never told me.’ Justine wondered what Maurie had done when her mother died. Had she gone back then? Would she have broken her rule to see her mother buried?

Maurie ignored her. ‘The letter was from some lawyer. Turns out Lucy had some jewelry of Mother’s she wanted me to have. And he wanted your number.’

‘Why?’

‘Well. Apparently she left you that house.’

‘She what?’ Justine had to tighten her fingers to keep from dropping the phone.

‘Not that it’s worth much, stuck up there in the middle of nowhere.’ The ice clinked again. ‘She always wanted me to come back. Your mother misses you, she’d say. But my God, it was awful growing up in that place. Nobody lived there, just the summer people who didn’t give a crap about some local girl. I got out as soon as I got my driver’s license.’

It had never occurred to Justine that the lake house was where her mother grew up. Maurie rarely talked about her childhood, and as an adult she was such a creature of the road that Justine had always pictured her screaming her way into the world in a caravan somewhere, a modern-day gypsy. ‘Minnesota,’ was all she’d say when anyone asked where she was from, somehow making an entire state sound like a bus stop. Now Justine remembered her lying on the porch swing at the lake house as the sun, silty with motes, spilled through the front windows onto golden pine floorboards. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, her face was young, and she laughed with her mouth wide open.

But Lucy had left the house to Justine.

The elevator chimed. Phoebe, the office manager, was back from lunch.

‘Mom, I have to go,’ Justine said. ‘Do you have the lawyer’s number?’ She wrote it down and slid the phone back into her purse just as Phoebe opened the office door. ‘Angela’s sick,’ she said to her, without meeting her eyes. She’d never asked to leave early before.

Phoebe sighed. She didn’t much care for Justine, but she had a fatherless child of her own, so she said she’d cover the desk. Justine walked out without looking back.

In the apartment she paced, holding the phone in one hand and the lawyer’s number in the other. Finally she sat at the kitchen table, pulled up her knees, and closed her eyes, as she did during her morning minutes. Only this time she couldn’t hear the silence. Instead she heard the low hum that came from the refrigerator, the fluorescent lights, the clock on the wall.

The apartment was crappy, of course. The walls were scuffed, the carpet was matted, and the sliding door was held shut with duct tape. Still, it was the only place she’d lived since she stood with one hand in Francis’s and the other on her belly, where the secret clot of cells divided and grew, and told her mother, who’d decided to give Portland a try, that she was staying in San Diego. She was eighteen, Francis nineteen. They’d picked it because it was the closest place to the ocean they could afford. Eight blocks, so not that close, but when she stood on the balcony at night with Melanie in her arms Justine could hear it whispering beyond the low-slung buildings that made up their neighborhood. The night they moved in they drank champagne out of paper cups in the empty living room. The worn nap of the carpet was soft on Justine’s shoulders as they made love, and she’d sworn she’d never leave. That her child would grow up in one place, whole.

She opened her eyes. Patrick’s coffee cup, half empty, sat on the table.

She dialed the lawyer’s number. Just to find out what was going on. To see if her mother had her facts straight, which wasn’t a certainty by any means.

The lawyer’s name was Arthur Williams. He and his uncle before him had handled the Evans sisters’ affairs for decades, he said. Lucy had died three weeks before, in her sleep. It had been sudden but peaceful, and her neighbor had found her the next day. His voice was soft, the consonants that bracketed the broad vowels crisp.

Justine pressed the handset against her ear. ‘My mother said you wanted to talk about Lucy’s will?’

‘Yes. You’re her sole beneficiary.’ This meant, he explained, that Lucy had left Justine everything she owned, except the jewelry she’d left for Maurie. The house was old and in need of updating, but it was unencumbered by any liens. Lucy had a checking account and an investment portfolio, too; he would fax her the details.

‘How much is in the accounts?’ Justine asked, then wished she could take the question back. It sounded like something her mother would ask.

The lawyer answered as though it were a perfectly acceptable question. The checking account had about $2,000, and the investments were mostly stock and worth about $150,000. ‘You might want to come and settle things in person,’ he said, ‘if there are things in the house you want to keep. Or you can contact a lawyer where you are, and we’ll handle the probate by fax. Then I can recommend a realtor to sell the house for you.’

He paused. Justine knew she was supposed to say something, but her head felt as if it would float straight up and away if she didn’t hold on to it. There was $150,000 in an investment portfolio somewhere in Minnesota. She and Patrick had $1,328 in their account at the Wells Fargo. The lake house had been the color of butter in the sun.

‘Can I call you back?’ she asked. Of course, he said.

When she hung up she took Patrick’s coffee cup to the sink. She washed it and dried it and put it in the cupboard. Then, from the storage unit in the basement, she pulled the faded blue duffel she’d kept from when she was her mother’s daughter. In it she put her jeans and the three sweatshirts she owned. Two pairs of shoes that weren’t sandals. Bras, underwear, socks, pajamas. Toothbrush, shampoo, hairbrush. She zipped up the bag and put it by the front door.

From beneath the sink she took a stack of brown grocery bags. In them she put the photo albums she’d made when the girls were babies and the more recent snapshots magneted to the refrigerator. From inside the refrigerator she took bread, peanut butter, and jelly. From the pantry, crackers, chips, and cereal. At two thirty Patrick called on her cell. She stood motionless in the apartment as he crowed about his day: two fax machines and a printer sold before his lunch break. When he asked what was for dinner, she told him they had leftover spaghetti. He asked her to pick up that garlic bread he liked on her way home. She said she would.

After they hung up she called the lawyer. ‘We’re coming,’ she said. He sounded pleased. He gave her directions and told her Lucy’s neighbor, Matthew Miller, would have a key to the house.

Her daughters didn’t have suitcases, so Justine took the pillowcases from their beds and filled them with their warmest clothes and shoes. Then she used more brown bags to hold their jewelry boxes with plastic ballerinas inside, stuffed animals, plastic horses, dolls with tangles in their hair. Barrettes and scrunchies, drawing paper and markers. She put the bags by the front door with the rest. It didn’t look like much, but it filled the back of the Tercel.

When she finished loading the car it was four thirty. She was supposed to pick up her daughters at the aftercare at five. At five thirty, Patrick would be home.

She put her apartment key on the kitchen counter and her cell phone beside it. She pulled a Post-it off the stack. The clock inched forward another minute while she debated what to write. Francis’s note had said he was sorry. She didn’t know if she was sorry. She didn’t know what she felt, other than a buzzing anxiety pegged to the sweep of the second hand around the clock face. In the waning November afternoon the living room furniture she and Francis had bought on layaway looked dark and strange, as though it had never belonged to her at all. A shiver ran across her shoulder blades. She’d forgotten how easy it was, to slip out of a life.

Dear Patrick, she wrote, the spaghetti is thawing in the refrigerator. She laid the note on the counter, smoothed it once, and walked out. Her feet on the steps were light. When she reached the bottom she heard her cell phone ring, faintly.

Later she wouldn’t remember driving to the school. But she would remember that her face felt like dried icing as she walked her daughters to a picnic table on the playground and told them they’d inherited a house on a lake that had a porch and a swing, and that it was in Minnesota, but that was okay, because they’d get to see things along the way, like the Rocky Mountains and Las Vegas, and it would be an adventure.

The girls stayed quiet until she was done talking. Then Melanie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wait. Are we moving there?’

Melanie was not an attractive child. At eleven she’d long since lost her baby fat, revealing severe features and a too-long nose that rode high into her wide brow and gave her a haughty air. Now her suspicious frown made her look small and cunning, like a fox.

Justine forced her voice to remain even. ‘It’s a house, sweetie. We’ll have a great big house just for the three of us, with a lake right out front. For free.’

‘The three of us? What about Patrick?’

‘I thought it might be good to be on our own for a while, just us girls.’

Melanie’s frown deepened. Angela looked stunned. Both girls’ arms in their short-sleeved shirts were thin and straight and brown from the San Diego sun. Behind them Justine could see other parents picking up their children. Taking them home for dinner, then homework at the kitchen table, maybe some television before bed. ‘I’ve got all your stuff in the car.’

‘We’re leaving now?’ Melanie’s voice slid up half an octave.

‘I know it’s sudden. But it’s better this way. A clean break.’

‘What about Daddy?’ Angela said.

Justine opened her mouth and shut it again. Francis had been gone a year, and they hadn’t heard a word from him in all that time. Neither girl had asked about him in months. After Patrick moved in, the picture of Francis and the girls at Coronado Beach had disappeared from the girls’ room. She’d thought this meant they were shaking him off their feet like dust, the way Maurie always told her to, the way she was trying to, but the hitch in Angela’s voice told a different story.

Melanie said, ‘Daddy’s not coming back, you idiot.’ She looked at Justine, her eyes flat. Justine muffled a flare of anger. Her eldest daughter’s sullen temperament and brusque manner often made Justine dislike her, something she felt ashamed of and guilty about. Besides, this time she knew it wasn’t Melanie she should be mad at. Toward the end Francis had hardly come home at all, but that hadn’t diminished his daughters’ love for him. The opposite, in fact.

Justine put her hand on Angela’s arm. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Mendenhall where we’re going, and if Daddy comes looking for us, she can tell him.’ This was a lie. She wasn’t going to tell Mrs Mendenhall anything. Mrs Mendenhall liked Patrick.

Angela’s eyes filled with tears. ‘What about Lizzie and Emma?’ These were Angela’s best friends, the three of them the most popular girls in the second grade.

Justine’s tongue tasted like metal. She remembered how she would come home from school to find her mother sitting at the kitchen table with her cigarette and her can of Tab. ‘Sit down,’ Maurie would say, and Justine would know they were leaving.

‘We can send them postcards when we get there, sweetie,’ she said, just as her mother had.

Angela looked back at the school. Through the open door of the aftercare center Justine could see children coloring and playing with LEGOs. Angela’s face puckered, and Justine’s simmering anxiety bubbled into panic. It was five thirty. Patrick was walking into the empty apartment right now. Would he come to the school? He probably would. A familiar, claustrophobic sense of failure mixed with her panic, making the world seem small and tight. What was she thinking, doing it like this? She should have waited until tomorrow. Kept the girls home from school, had them help her pack. It would have been easier on them. And easier for her to get them in the car.

Then Melanie stood up. ‘Angie, you know what? It sounds like fun to live on a lake. And Lizzie and Emma can come visit.’ Justine watched in mute astonishment as she continued, ‘Plus you’ll go to a new school and you’ll make all new friends. You’ll be the most popular girl in class because you’re so pretty. And maybe’ – she shot a dark-eyed glance at Justine – ‘you can get a kitten.’

Justine leaned forward. ‘Of course! We can have cats, dogs, whatever we want.’

Angela’s face was a study in misery. She’d wanted a cat ever since she was small, but Francis had been allergic, and Patrick, the farmer’s son, thought cats belonged outside.

‘Come on, Angie.’ Melanie reached out her hand. After a precarious moment Angela swallowed a throatful of snot and tears and took it. Justine tried not to show her limb-loosening relief as she rose to follow them.

An hour later they were on Highway 15. None of them said a word as they drove through the California dusk into the Nevada night. She could hear her mother’s voice, braying over the wind that whistled through the open windows of the Fairmont: ‘See any place that looks good, honey?’ In the rearview mirror the salvage from their apartment crowded the Tercel’s back bay, looming like a slag heap over the small forms of her daughters. She forced her eyes forward, to the yellow ribbon that unspooled before them.