The Lost Girls Read online

  I opened my mouth to repeat my outraged defense of our property rights, but I remembered thinking, that first day, that the Millers might own much of this forest. If that were true, the Hundred Tree might not be Lilith’s and mine at all, but Matthew’s. I couldn’t let him tell me that, so I changed my strategy. “Won’t your mother be looking for you?” The terse way she’d called him when she saw us skipping rocks had made it clear she didn’t want him playing with me.

  Matthew laughed an odd laugh. “She’s not my mother.”

  Despite myself I was intrigued. I’d never heard that Mr. Miller married a second Indian woman after the first; in fact, I didn’t think anyone else at the lake knew this. I imagined telling Lilith later, with just a hint of the smugness that comes from having superior knowledge. If she’d come with me, she could have heard it for herself.

  “Who is she, then?”

  “My grandmother.”

  I scoffed to cover my disappointment. Then I wondered, where was his mother? I’d only seen his grandmother working in the lodge, and like all the lake children, I’d always called her Mrs. Miller. No one ever corrected us.

  Matthew saw my curiosity. He debated with himself for a moment, then gave me a sideways glance. “I’ll tell you the story,” he said, “if you let me in your hideout.”

  No way was I letting him in the Hundred Tree. But I’ve never been able to resist a good story, so after some internal debate of my own I offered a compromise: we could sit on the ground beside the tree. He nodded, and we sat on the dry, brown leaves.

  It was a terrible story, and therefore quite good indeed. Matthew’s father had been the son of the Lutheran minister in Williamsburg, a good, God-fearing boy. Then he met a girl who lived among the impoverished remnants of the Chippewa who hadn’t moved to the White Earth reservation south of here. Her father was a tribal leader who’d resisted the relocation, and he didn’t want his daughter marrying a white man any more than Mr. Miller’s parents wanted him marrying an Indian. They got married anyway, and both were disowned, moving in exile to our lake.

  I’d known all this, more or less, but when I started to tell him so, he cut me off. “Something went wrong when I was born,” he said, and I leaned forward—I could guess what was coming. He drew back, and I thought he might stop, but he dropped his eyes and continued. His mother was as proud as her father, so when Abe was born she hadn’t called the white doctor or the Indian midwife. She’d done it alone, with only her husband to help her. She would do the same with Matthew, even though she had a fever when her pains came. At first Mr. Miller gave in, but after hours of fruitless labor his wife was so weak he became afraid, and he went down the lane, pounding on the door of Dr. Pugh’s lake house in the middle of the night, for it was summer and the doctor was there. But Dr. Pugh didn’t answer the door.

  When Matthew’s father got back to the lodge, his wife no longer knew him. The nearest hospital was in Bemidji, over poor roads in the dark, so he put her and Abe in his wagon and went to her family in Olema, the Indian town on the far side of the lake. But his father-in-law blocked the door. His daughter had forsaken her people, he said, and she couldn’t come crying for help when that choice brought hardship. Go to the white man’s doctor. It’s too far, Mr. Miller said. He begged his father-in-law to come see his daughter where she lay delirious in the wagon. He wouldn’t come; he was too hard a man; but there were tears on his wife’s face, so to her Mr. Miller said, please, tell me where to find the midwife. She won’t help you, said her husband, but under his words she whispered an address.

  The midwife was a fat woman with long gray hair who smelled like gin even at four in the morning. She did her best, but Matthew’s mother died on a bloody blanket on the linoleum floor just before dawn, her new baby screaming in her husband’s arms and her firstborn crouched by her head, his hands twined in her hair, as though he could keep her in the world just by holding on.

  Matthew’s father buried his wife and returned to the lake with his sons. In his grief and ignorance, he struggled to care for them until one day, not long after, he opened his door to find his wife’s mother. She walked to where Matthew lay wailing on a cot, picked him up, and never left. She’d raised and schooled him and Abe, and worked by their father’s side ever since. She’d saved them, Matthew said. She never told them what her husband said when she left, but by coming she joined them in their exile: she hadn’t seen her husband or any of her people since.

  During this story Matthew’s eyes never left the leafy ground. I could see that once he started, he regretted bartering this miserable tale for a few minutes of my attention beside the Hundred Tree. In those days I was a stranger to empathy for anyone but Lilith, but I felt it for him as he sat under the great oak with his stained clothes, thin face, and lank hair. He must have been very lonely, to follow a girl he barely knew into the forest and pander his family’s tragic and private history in exchange for her company. So I gave his tale the weight it deserved: I listened with grave attention and, when it was done, I let it have the forest to itself for a while.

  During that silence I thought about Dr. Pugh, who did tricks with his stethoscope and always had a candy to ease the pain of a shot. I imagined him listening to Mr. Miller pounding on his door, begging for his wife and child. I knew my neighbors thought little of the Indians who lived in our county, but surely he wouldn’t refuse to treat one, in an emergency? I thought, too, of taciturn Mr. Miller, who spoke to the fishermen who stayed at his lodge with quiet formality but never had much to say to us, even though he made the meals we ordered and served the ice creams we ate all summer long.

  Matthew was watching me, trying to gauge my reaction. “I’m sorry your mom died,” I told him.

  He shrugged, and I could see his armor slip back into place. “It’s not like I knew her. It was worse for Abe. He’s never been right, and sometimes I wonder if that’s why.”

  I asked him when his birthday was, to change the subject just a little. August 30, he said, which was right before we would go back to Williamsburg. He would be thirteen, a man according to the Chippewa. I told him mine was September 23, and I would be twelve. We smiled, pleased to confirm we were, indeed, almost the same age. Then we eased out of the sticky place his story had led us into a discussion of the rite-of-passage ritual he would have undergone were he with his mother’s people.

  We talked for a long time, about this and other things, first sitting and then lying on the carpet of leaves. I learned most of the books I’d read were his. His favorites were Ellery Queen mysteries, which his father gave him every birthday and Christmas, and he kept them in the room he shared with Abe, never abandoning them to the lending library. He asked me what it was like to go to a regular school, and I said I thought he had it better, doing his lessons at home, even though I could tell from his wistful tone he thought differently. As we talked I forgot, for a while, the night before and that Lilith had left me this morning. Above us the old tree spread its branches protectively once more.

  When at last we stood to go, reluctant but hungry, Matthew said if I liked, some other day he could show me more secret places in the forest. He looked down as he said it, almost as if he were shy. Sure, I said, and we walked back together through the trees.

  Back at the house, Mother was in the kitchen, making our lunch. Emily sat at the table, and in the glow of the pleasant morning I’d spent with Matthew I found the decency to feel bad about the way I’d treated her before. I wondered if she’d gone to see the kittens without me.

  I leaned on the counter, watching Mother spread butter on the thick white bread. She gave me a smile and asked where I’d been, by which I knew she meant, what had I done without Lilith all morning? Instead of telling her, I asked whether she’d known Mrs. Miller was Matthew and Abe’s grandmother. She went back to buttering the bread. Yes, she said; the mother died when the youngest boy was born, and the grandmother showed up after.

  “Why do we call her Mrs. Miller?”

  “W
e don’t. We’ve never known her name, so we don’t call her anything.”

  “All the kids call her Mrs. Miller.”

  “Well, she must not mind it, then.”

  “Why wouldn’t she mind it? It’s not her name.”

  She frowned. “Who told you all this?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her Matthew had, but at the last moment I changed my mind. “Some of the other kids.”

  “You shouldn’t gossip. It’s none of our business.”

  I crossed my arms. “It’s awful what happened to them.”

  She turned to face me, something she so rarely did that I had to stop myself from taking a step back. “Awful things happen all the time. Even to good people who don’t deserve them.”

  That silenced me. I’d never heard her offer an opinion on fate or, even indirectly, on God, and at first I was outraged that it was the opposite of Father’s lessons about how our free choices and intentions dictated God’s rewards and punishments—a lesson he had, just last night, reiterated to Lilith while Mother listened behind Emily’s door. Then I thought about Matthew and his family, and for the first time I tried to apply Father’s teachings to someone other than myself or Lilith. What might they have done to bring down such tragedy? It would have to be Mr. or Mrs. Miller who was the sinner, and the sin must have been huge, to demand a life in payment. Would God really punish someone in a way that took away an innocent child’s mother? It seemed so cruel. Yet it had to be so, because if Mother was right, it would be fate that had done it, unconcerned with deserts or consequences, and that would be worse. I shook my head, trying to find the words to ask Mother how she could believe such a thing. But she turned back to the plates, and in that motion became again the cloudy-eyed woman I’d always known, so much so that I wondered if I’d imagined her vehemence of the moment before. “Call your sister for lunch,” she said.

  To my surprise, Lilith was in our room, and she looked perturbed when I came in. “Where were you? I looked everywhere for you.” She had makeup on. Pink lipstick and pale blush, colors suited to Betty’s fair coloring.

  I was pleased that she’d come looking for me, and I started to tell her where I’d gone. Then I thought about Matthew, stretched out in the leaves beneath the Hundred Tree, talking about Ellery Queen and Chippewa vision quests. I shrugged. “Just around.”

  Justine

  That night the snow began. It began gently, and Justine didn’t notice it as she climbed the stairs with Angela for bed, but when she woke she could tell by the pale light that snow had fallen and was falling still. Through the window the flakes were so dense they hid the lake behind a curtain of white. She remembered the talk in Ray’s and how she’d planned to stop at the Safeway. She leaned her head against the cool windowpane.

  Angela was still asleep in Lucy’s double bed, wearing one of Justine’s sweatshirts. The night before, when Justine and Angela had come upstairs, Justine had eased open the girls’ door to give Melanie a grilled cheese sandwich, since she’d missed supper. Melanie was in her bed, reading one of the Emily books. The books had sat on the floor of Lucy’s bedroom since Justine had read them, but before she could wonder when or why Melanie had gotten one, Melanie shoved the book under her covers and froze her with a look as cold and black as the winter night outside. Angela pressed close to Justine, not wanting to sleep in this room with this sister, so Justine put the plate on the dresser, closed the door, and took Angela to bed with her. She was glad to do it. In the weeks between Francis and Patrick, Angela’s small, warm body in her bed had been one of her few comforts. But this time, even with Angela beside her, she didn’t sleep until nearly morning.

  All night the image of Melanie huddled on the sofa haunted her. She had never struck her children. After enduring Maurie’s volatile moods she’d wanted to be a different kind of mother: calm, predictable, knowable. So all through Francis’s slow disappearing, the heady early days with Patrick, and the tension that seeped into the apartment after he moved in, she made sure to show her daughters the same face, unruffled and constant as the Pole Star. It was one of the few things she thought she’d done right. That, and keeping Francis with them as long as she had.

  Though if she were honest, it hadn’t just been she who’d done that. Francis had loved Melanie best; in fact, she might have been the only one of them he loved at all. He used to play his guitar after dinner while she stood on the coffee table and sang her little-girl songs, and sometimes he’d let her play, moving her fingers to shape the chords. He said she had music in her, and Justine could believe it, watching them there in the living room. For a while, she thought Francis would stay for Melanie, but in the end even she hadn’t been enough to hold him. Now they were adrift in a cold country, while the man who’d replaced him scoured phone bills to track them down. By morning, the only comfort Justine had found was in her resolution to leave this place, start over somewhere else, and do it right this time.

  She put her ear to the door of the girls’ room. It was quiet.

  In the pantry she took stock. Cereal and half a loaf of bread; they would have breakfast. Two cans of SpaghettiOs: lunch. She counted six of Lucy’s frozen dinners, a box of spaghetti, and a jar of marinara. The milk was getting low, but they could make it last a couple of days if they used it just for cereal. They also had a few packets of microwave popcorn, a package of Fig Newtons, a half-empty box of saltines, a tin of tea bags, and peanut butter. Outside the snow fell fast and hard, and the wind had picked up, a breathy moan that echoed from the rafters to the basement. Justine wondered again who would plow the road.

  Back in the kitchen, she unplugged the phone. She wasn’t going to call Patrick. They were leaving; there was no point. And now, if he called Lucy’s number, he’d get no answer.

  When she heard Melanie on the stairs her stomach tensed. She’d already laid out bowls, spoons, and the cereal, so she turned to get the milk as her daughter came in, saying, “I let you sleep. There won’t be any school.”

  Melanie didn’t answer. Justine put the milk down and sat in her chair. For a long time the wind and the clink of Melanie’s spoon were the only sounds. Then Justine ran one hand across the old table, a gathering gesture. “Melanie, listen. I know you’re not happy here. None of us are. So we’re going to leave. We’ll find a new place, where we can start over.” The air inside the kitchen shifted. It was just the wind, Justine told herself, but she had that odd feeling again, that the house was paying attention. “Grandma’s coming for Christmas, but right after that, we’ll go. We’ll find the right place for all of us. I promise.”

  There were dark smudges beneath Melanie’s eyes. The corner of her mouth twitched as she gave a small nod, and for a moment it was as though a veil parted and in the harsh lines of her daughter’s face Justine saw not truculence but misery. She wanted to kneel beside her and gather her into her arms, but the fierce angles of Melanie’s shoulders, of her elbows and wrists, kept her in her seat. She realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d put her arms around her. She looked away, out the window, where the air was as white as bone.

  Angela came in. Her legs were thin beneath Justine’s sweatshirt. She crawled into Justine’s lap and settled her head into its accustomed place on Justine’s shoulder. Justine pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Across from them Melanie returned to her cereal.

  The worst thing about the storm, worse even than the drafts and the nearly bare pantry, was the fact they couldn’t leave the house. Justine thought longingly of the Paul Bunyan Mall, its warmth and bustle. She’d have to turn on all the radiators on the first floor. At least if it were warmer they wouldn’t have to stay in the kitchen; they could watch television. Television would fill the silences. “Do you want to turn on the TV?” she asked.

  The girls looked up from their cereal, and Justine saw they, too, were dreading the long hours with only their mother and one another for company. She felt a familiar sadness as they took their places on opposite ends of the sofa, wearing th
eir coats as they waited for the radiator to kick in. Other snowbound families, she was sure, were sitting around fireplaces playing cards or board games, making memories they’d share later, around other fireplaces. In the flickering light of the television her daughters’ faces were gray.

  After she got dressed she sat on her bed. Outside, the wind had a whine to it now, as if a pack of wolves was baying in the distance. Were there wolves in these woods? Probably; the woods seemed endless, primeval. Her latest mystery lay on the table, the plastic library cover shining dully in the filtered light, but the storm’s energy enervated her; she couldn’t read.

  She looked at the box of Emily books, on the floor by her feet. Easy enough for Melanie to pick one out, really, though she couldn’t imagine what had motivated her. She wondered which one she’d read. One of the earlier ones, with the young girl’s unadorned sentences? Or a later collection, still simple, but ornamented with images from an older woman’s memory? The lake curved to the horizon like the back of a spoon. Fireflies swirled like golden smoke in the trees. Images she herself remembered, from the summer she’d spent here.

  She picked up the photograph of Lucy and Lilith from the bedside table. She studied their faces, Lucy’s tilted up to Lilith’s and Lilith’s turned to the camera. It was the only photograph of any of the Evans sisters in the house, and she wondered why that was. Lilith’s jewelry box was on the table, too—the box that didn’t hold the engagement ring from the soldier who died before he could marry her. What had their lives been like, those two surviving sisters, growing from youth to old age in this house and raising a child in the shadow of tragedy? Why had they stayed? This had been their summer home; what happened to the house they must have had in town?

  She wondered if Maurie would have been different if she’d been raised somewhere else. Or if she’d had a father. Would she have spent her life running from place to place, from one man to the next, if the soldier had returned to help raise her? She thought of her own father, whose name she wasn’t sure Maurie knew. And of Francis, who walked away from his children without a backward glance. Of all the Evans girls’ fathers, who hadn’t left even their names behind for their daughters.