Ellie put her hands on her hips and stared at her. It was a cop-assessing-the-situation look. “I haven’t seen an airport sprint like that since the O.J. commercials.”
“I had to go to the bathroom.”
“You should see a urologist.”
“It’s not that. I . . .” Julia felt like an idiot. “The flight attendant recognized me. She looked at me as if I killed those kids.” She felt her cheeks heat up, knowing she should say more. Explain. But her sister couldn’t understand a thing like this. Ellie was like one of those pioneer wives who could give birth in the field and go back to work. Her sister knew little about being fragile.
Ellie’s hard look softened. “Fuck ’em all. You can’t let it get to you.”
Julia wished she could do that, but she’d always needed to be accepted. As a shrink, she knew the hows and whys of her need—how her popular, in-the-spotlight family had somehow made her feel marginalized and unimportant, how her father’s withheld love had made her believe she was unlovable—but knowledge didn’t soften the need. She wasn’t even sure how it had come to matter so much. All she knew was that her profession, her ability to help people, had filled the frightened place inside of her with joy, and now she was scared again. “It’s not that easy for me. You can’t understand.”
Ellie leaned against the pale green tile wall. “Because you think I’m only slightly smarter than an earthworm or because I have nothing in my life worth losing?”
Julia wished suddenly that she had a better memory reservoir. Surely there were times when they’d played together, she and Ellie, when they’d counted secrets instead of slights, when laughter had followed their conversations instead of awkward pauses. But if all that had happened, Julia didn’t recall it. What she remembered was being the “smart” sister, the “weird” one who grew too tall in a petite family and wanted things no one else understood. The mushroom in a family of orchids. She’d always been able to say the right things to strangers, but the wrong thing to her sister. She sighed. “Let’s not do this, El.”
“You’re right. Come on.”
Before Julia could answer, Ellie headed out of the bathroom. Julia had no choice but to follow.
At the car—an ugly white Suburban with wood-grain door panels—Ellie stopped at the back door just long enough to toss her purse in, then she strode around to the driver’s side.
Julia struggled with her suitcase. It took her two tries to stow it. She slammed the back door shut, then went to the passenger side and climbed into the front seat.
Ellie backed the car out of the stall and headed for the exit. The minute the engine roared to life, the stereo came on. Some guy with a twangy voice was singing about the pocket of a clown.
Neither one of them said anything. As the landscape changed, going from city gray to country green, Julia began to feel like an idiot for sparring with her sister. How was it that, even after all these distant and separate years, they immediately fell into their childhood roles? One look at each other and they were adolescents again.
They were family, as specious as that connection sometimes felt, and they ought to be able to get along. Besides, she was a psychiatrist, for God’s sake, a specialist in interpersonal dynamics, and here she was acting like the younger sister who wasn’t invited to play with the big kids.
“Why don’t you tell me why I’m here,” she finally said.
“I’ll tell you at the house. I have a lot of photographs to show you. I’m afraid you won’t believe me otherwise.”
Julia glanced at her. “So it is a rescue mission. There’s no real reason I’m here.”
“Oh, there’s a reason. We have a little girl who needs help. But it’s . . . complicated.”
Julia didn’t know if she believed that, but she knew that Ellie did things in her own way and in her own time. There was no point in asking further questions. The better course of action was a neutral topic. Small talk. “How’s your friend Penelope?”
“She’s good. Raising teenagers is killing her, though.” Ellie immediately winced, as if realizing she shouldn’t have paired teenager and killing in the same sentence. “Sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it, El. Teenagers are difficult. How old are they?”
“A fourteen-year-old boy and a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Tough ages.”
Ellie smiled. “The girl—Tara—keeps wanting to pierce body parts and get tattoos. It’s making Pea’s husband insane.”
“And Penelope? How’s she handling it?”
“Great. Well . . . unless you consider her weight gain. In the past year, she’s gone on every diet known to man. Last week she started smoking. She says it’s how the stars do it.”
“That and throwing up,” Julia said.
Ellie nodded. “How’s Philip?”
Julia was surprised by the swift pain that came with his name. If only she could say: He stopped loving me. Maybe Ellie could get her to laugh about her broken heart. As a shrink, she knew it would be a good move, that kind of honesty. It might open a door that had been closed for most of their lives. Instead, she said, “We broke up last year. I’m too busy—I mean, I was too busy—for love.”
Ellie laughed at that. “Too busy for love. Are you crazy?”
For the next two hours they alternated between meaningless conversation and meaningful silences. Julia worked hard to find questions that brought them together and stayed away from answers that caused separation. They barely mentioned their father, and stayed away from memories of Mom.
They came to the Rain Valley exit and turned off the highway. On the long, winding forest road that led to childhood, Julia found herself tensing up. Here, amidst the towering trees, she started to feel small again. Insignificant.
“I was going to sell the place, move closer to town, but every time I get close to listing it, I find another repair that needs to be done,” Ellie said on the way out of town. “I don’t need a shrink to tell me I’m afraid to leave it.”
“It’s just a house, El.”
“I guess that’s how we’re different, Jules. To you, it’s three bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen-dining-living room. To me, it’s the best childhood ever. It’s where I caught dragonflies in a glass jar and let my little sister braid my hair with flowers.” Her voice dropped a little. She gave Julia a meaningful look, then turned onto their driveway. “It’s where my parents loved each other for almost three decades.”
Julia wouldn’t let herself disagree with that, although they both knew it was a lie. A fable. “So, quit threatening to sell it. Admit that it’s where you want to be. Hand the memories down to your own kids.”
“As you may have noticed, I don’t have kids. But thanks for pointing it out.” Ellie drove into the yard and stopped hard. “We’re here.”
Julia realized she had said the wrong thing again. “You don’t need a husband, you know. Especially not the kind you pick,” she said. “You can have a baby on your own.”
Ellie turned to look at her. “That might be how it is in the big city, but not here, and not for me. I want it all—the husband, the baby, the golden retriever.” She smiled. “Actually, I’ve got the dogs. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my husbands again.”
Julia nodded. Time to change the subject. “So, how are Jake and Elwood? Still go straight for a girl’s crotch?”
“They’re males, aren’t they?” Ellie smiled and Julia was struck by how beautiful her sister still was. Though Ellie was thirty-nine years old, there wasn’t a line around her eyes or a pleating of skin around her mouth. Those startling green eyes shone against the milky purity of her skin. She had strong cheekbones and full, sensuous lips. Even her small-town, poorly layered haircut couldn’t dim her beauty. She was petite and surprisingly curvy, with a smile like a halogen spotlight. No wonder everyone loved her.
“Come on.” Ellie got out of the Suburban and slammed the door shut behind her.
Julia meant to move. Instead she sat there, looking
through the dirty windshield at the house in which she’d grown up. The late afternoon sunlight made everything appear golden and impossibly softened except for the fringe of dark green trees.
This was only the second time she’d been back since her mother’s funeral; then, she’d stayed only as long as she absolutely had to. Medical school had provided an excellent excuse. She’d said I have to get back for tests, and no one questioned her. In retrospect, she should have stayed. That time might have built a bridge between her and her sister, given them a common ground. As it was, however, the opposite had occurred. They had moved through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd separately. No one in Rain Valley had known what to say to Julia in good times; in bad, they were even more confused. All they’d said over and over again was how proud her mother had been of Julia’s education. By the third mention of it, Julia couldn’t stop crying. It hadn’t helped to see how much comfort Ellie got from her friends, while she had stood alone all night, waiting for her father’s attention to turn her way. Of course, she’d been disappointed. He’d been the star that night, the widower laid low by grief. Everyone held him, kissed his cheek, and promised that Brenda was in a better place. Only Julia seemed to see the lie in all of it, the act. When at last her father broke down and wept, everyone except Julia rushed to comfort him. She had seen even as a child what no one else, especially Ellie, ever had: that her father’s selfishness had crushed his wife’s spirit, just as he’d crushed his younger daughter’s. Only Ellie had flourished in the white-hot light of her father’s self-absorption.
Julia reached for the door handle and wrenched it hard, then stepped down. Everything was exactly as it should be in October. Maple trees were dropping their leaves, creating that autumn song that was as familiar to her as the rushing whisper of the nearby river. She heard her mother’s voice in that sound, in the falling leaves and crackling twigs and whispering wind. Softly, she whispered, “Hey, Mom.” Part of her even waited for a reply. But there was only the chattering of the river and the breeze through the leaves.
She followed Ellie across the marshy lawn toward the house.
In the glorious light, the old house appeared to be made of hammered strips of silver. The grayed clapboards shone with a hundred secret colors. White trim, peeled in places to reveal patches of wood, outlined the windows and doors. Rhododendrons the size of house trailers dotted the yard.
Ellie opened the door and led the way inside.
Everything looked as it always had. The same slip-covered furniture—pale beige with pink cabbage roses and faded green leaves—graced the living room. Pine antiques were everywhere—an armoire that was probably still filled with Grandma Whittaker’s doilies and table linens, a dining table scarred by three generations of Cateses and Whittakers, a credenza that was decorated with dusty silk flowers in ceramic vases. French doors flanked a river-rock fireplace; through the silvery glass panes, a ghostly ribbon of river shone in the sunlight. Ellie hadn’t changed a thing. It wasn’t surprising. In Rain Valley things and people either belonged or they didn’t. If they belonged, they were loved and kept forever.
Ellie shut the door. Just as she said, “Brace yourself,” two full-grown golden retrievers came thundering down the stairs. At the bottom, on the slick wooden floors, they skidded together and slid sideways, then found their footing. They barreled across the room and hit Julia like the Seahawks’ front line.
“Jake! Elwood! Down,” Ellie yelled in her best police voice.
The dogs were clearly deaf.
Julia gave them a giant shove and spun away. The dogs turned their lavish attention on Ellie, who threw herself into loving them.
Julia watched the three of them roll around on the floor. “Please tell me they sleep outside.”
Ellie sat up, laughing, and pushed the hair out of her eyes. The dogs licked her cheeks. “Okay, they sleep outside.” At Julia’s relieved sigh, her sister said: “Not! But I’ll keep them out of your room.”
“That’s as good as it’s going to get, I suppose.”
“It is.” Ellie told the dogs to sit. On about the twelfth command they obeyed, but as soon as Ellie looked away, they started to belly crawl toward the door.
“Come on,” Ellie said, leading the way to the stairs.
Julia dragged her suitcase up the narrow, creaking stairway. At the top she turned right and followed her sister down the hallway to their childhood bedroom.
A pair of twin beds, swaddled in pink chiffon, a pair of white-painted French provincial student desks with gold trim, a lime green bean bag chair. Trolls and Barbies lined the white shelving; dozens of blue-and-yellow Nancy Drews reminded her of nights spent reading with a flashlight. A faded, dusty poster of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones was tacked to the wall.
On her bed, a pair of cats lay sleeping, twined together like a French braid.
“Meet Rocky and Adrienne,” Ellie said as she crossed the room and scooped up the apparently boneless animals. The cats hung lazily from her arms, yawning. She tossed them into the hallway, said, “Go to Mommy’s room,” and then turned to Julia. “The sheets are clean. There are towels in your bathroom. The hot water still takes decades, and don’t flush the toilet before you shower.” Ellie stepped closer. “Thanks, Jules. I really appreciate your coming. I know things have been . . . bad for you lately, and . . . well, thanks.”
Julia looked at her sister. If she’d been another kind of woman, or if they’d been different sisters, she might have admitted: I had no where to go, really. Instead, she said, “No problem,” and tossed her suitcase into the room. “Now tell me why I’m here.”
“Let’s go downstairs. I’ll need a beer for this story.” Ellie started for the stairs, then turned back to Julia. “So will you.”
JULIA SAT IN HER MOTHER’S FAVORITE CHAIR AND LISTENED TO HER SISTER in growing disbelief. “She leaps from branch to branch like a cat? Come on, El. You’re getting caught up in some country myth. It sounds like you’ve found an autistic child who simply wandered away from home and got lost.”
“Max doesn’t think it’s that simple,” Ellie said, sipping her beer. They’d been in the living room for the better part of an hour now. There were papers spread out across the coffee table. Photographs and fingerprint smudge sheets and missing-children reports.
“Who’s Max?”
“He took over Doc Fischer’s practice.”
“He’s probably just over his head with this girl. You should have called the University of Washington. They’ll have dozens of autism experts.”
“Yeah, God forbid someone smart should live in Rain Valley,” Ellie said, her voice spiking up. “You’re not even listening to me.”
Julia made a mental note to temper her comments. “Sorry. So, there’s more to the story than dirty hair and prodigious tree-climbing skills. Hit me.”
“She won’t speak. We think—Max thinks, anyway—that maybe she doesn’t know how.”
“That’s not unusual for an autistic. They seem to operate in a different world. Often, these kids—”
“You didn’t see her, Jules. When she looked at me, I got chills. I’ve never seen such . . . terror in a child.”
“She looked at you?”
“Stared is more like it. I think she was trying to communicate something to me.”
“She made direct, purposeful eye contact?”
“Hel-lo, I just said that.”
It was probably nothing, or maybe Ellie had it wrong. Autistics rarely made purposeful eye contact. “What about her physical mannerisms? Hand movements, way of walking; that sort of thing?”
“She sat in that tree for hours and never moved so much as an eyelash. Think reptile stillness. When she did finally jump down, she moved with lightning speed. Daisy Grimm claimed she ran like the wind. And she sniffed everything in this weird, doglike way.”
In spite of herself, Julia was intrigued. Perhaps she’s mute. And deaf. That would also explain her getting lost. Maybe she didn’t hear people calling for h
er.”
“She’s not mute. She screamed and growled. Oh, yeah, and when she thought we’d killed her wolf, she howled.”
“Wolf?”
“Did I forget that part? She had a wolf pup with her. He’s out at the game farm now. Floyd says he just sits at the gate and howls all day and all night.”
Julia leaned back and crossed her arms. Enough was enough. This had all been a ruse, another of her sister’s misguided attempts to save poor little Julia. “You’re making this up.”
“I wish I were. Unfortunately, it’s all true.”
“She really has a wolf pup?”
“Yes. And are you ready for the kicker?”
“There’s more?”
“She has a lot of scarring.”
“What kind of scarring?”
“Knife wounds. Maybe some . . . whipping marks. And on her ankle—ligature-type scarring.”
Julia uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. “You better not be pulling my chain. This is a big deal.”
“I know.”
Julia’s mind ticked through dozens of possibilities. Autism. Mental or developmental delays. Early onset schizophrenia. Those were the easy, purely internal answers. But there could be something darker here, something infinitely more unique and dangerous. It could be that this child had escaped from some terrible captor. Elective mutism would be a common response to that kind of trauma. In any case, the kid would need help. And not just any psychiatrist could handle this sort of diagnosis and treatment. Only a handful of people on the West Coast specialized in this sort of thing. Fortunately, she was one of them.
“She really touched me, Jules. I’m afraid that when the bigwig authorities get involved, we’ll lose her. They’ll warehouse her in some state institution until we find her parents. I don’t think I could live with that. There’s something so . . . broken and sad about this kid. I don’t know if anyone has ever fought for her. With you, we could make a case for treating her while we search. No one could deny your credentials.”