Little Girl Gone Page 4

  “I took you off the streets. You were pregnant, hungry—”

  Madora saw such pain and disappointment in his expression that she almost stopped the car. She wanted to slap Linda silly for making this good man unhappy, for being too stupid to realize that without him she would be lying dead somewhere.

  Although it was against Willis’s rules, Madora knew it would be safe to take Linda into the house for a shower. She was too weak to run away. Willis had said he’d be working an extra shift at Shady Hills Retirement Home when he finished his business with the attorney and not to expect him before six or seven that night.

  Madora handed her a clean sheet. “Wrap this around yourself and then stand next to me. I’ll help you walk.” She folded a cotton dish towel and tied it as a blindfold.

  By the time they reached the house, Linda was bleeding. Maybe from inside, maybe the stitches. Madora didn’t know about such things. A trail of blood followed them into the bathroom.

  “Stand in the shower, lean against the side, but don’t turn on the water.”

  It might not be safe for her to shower if she was bleeding. Possibly she shouldn’t even be standing.

  “You’re not going to pass out, are you? I can’t carry you back to the trailer, and if Willis—”

  “I… can… Okay.”

  Once upon a time in another life Madora had fallen out of a tree and torn a gash in her forearm. A doctor with a tiny anchor tattooed between his index and middle fingers had stitched it up and told her to keep it dry. That night her mother had covered it with a plastic bag so she could take a shower. A plastic bag didn’t seem feasible under the circumstances, but Linda had to be cleaned up; Madora knew that. And the stitches should probably be kept dry. She was in the realm of guesswork now, going on instinct enhanced by her desire—her need—to help Linda because she owed it to the baby to care for his mother. She felt connected to the girl now, as if through the boy they were related.

  She ran back to the trailer and got one of the sanitary napkins Willis had left there. In the kitchen she tore a clean plastic bag from a roll and cut two long strips about ten inches wide, not an easy thing to do until she figured out a way to pull the plastic against the sharp edge of the scissors. In the bathroom Linda stood in the shower stall, resting her forehead against one metal side. Madora handed her the napkin.

  “Put this between your legs,” she said and then helped Linda cover the pad with the plastic strip and tie it to another strip that went around her waist. “Now put your hand over the pad and don’t let it move. You gotta keep the stitches dry.”

  Showering was a slow process, turning the water on and off, filling the bucket, gently soaping the girl’s long legs and rinsing away the blood and sweat and other fluids from her thighs, sponging beneath her arms and under her small breasts.

  “Can you bend over a little? I’ll wash your hair.”

  Linda was fair-haired but her baby was dark. His hair might fall out and grow back blond. Somewhere Madora had learned this often happened. His new parents might not want a blond baby. They would be disappointed. Her stomach tightened. She could not bear that his new parents—whoever they were—would be anything but thrilled by him. She wanted them to love him in the way she wanted to be loved herself. Completely, without qualifications, forever and ever.

  She dried Linda carefully and gave her another napkin to stanch the blood and a pair of her own panties, which hung on the girl like bloomers. She hoped the stitches were still good, prayed the bleeding would not go on and on. She could clean up the blood on the floor and shower stall, but Willis would be suspicious if he saw torn stitches. He would guess that Linda had been out of the trailer. She hadn’t seen much, just the inside of the shower. Not enough to identify where she was being held.

  That evening while Willis showered and changed, Madora stood at the stove stirring the Dennison’s chili, listening to the drum of water against the sides of the shower, dreading that Willis would see a drop of blood she’d missed or a long silver-blond hair caught in the drain. The shower sounds stopped and she heard the whir of the hair dryer. A few minutes later Willis came into the kitchen wearing a pale blue shirt that looked beautiful against his olive skin. He wore his hair long and loose, held back by a bandana around his forehead. After five years, his beauty still struck her as hard as it had that first night. He was a buzz-cut Marine back then, a Marine medic she mistook for her guardian angel. When he took her hand, she had asked him, “Did Daddy send you?” And he answered that he had, though later he said it didn’t happen that way.

  “You were so out of it, Madora. You couldn’t put two words together.”

  “I like that shirt,” she said, handing him a beer from the refrigerator. She waited for him to tell her where he’d bought it, but he didn’t want to talk, and as always, she took her cues from him. She laid a spoon and paper napkin on a plastic mat, a souvenir of Arizona with a photograph of a lightning storm over the Grand Canyon. He sat down and crumbled a handful of saltine crackers into the chili bowl.

  “Some avocado or something’d be nice here. You got any cheese?”

  “We’re out of everything. I can go to the market tonight.” There was a used-book store in Arroyo that stayed open until ten. On the rare occasions when she went into town alone, she liked to stop there and browse through old magazines; but it had been many weeks since Willis let her use the car alone, and she was not sure how to approach the subject with him.

  He said, “I’ll bring stuff home tomorrow. Make me a list but not too long. I’m running short.”

  “Did the lawyer pay you?”

  “You think I drove all the way to Carlsbad for my health?”

  She ducked her head.

  “I’m going to medical school. You forget that? It’s going to cost plenty. We need to save every penny.”

  “I know that, Willis.”

  “Sure you do. You’re a good girl, Madora.” He pushed his chair back and pulled her down onto his lap. “You took care of things for me. I knew I could trust you.”

  She laid her head against his shoulder and inhaled the musky scent of his aftershave.

  “I couldn’t get along without you, Madora. You know that, don’t you? You’re like the air I breathe.”

  The scent and the caress of his voice spread a soft warmth through her.

  “Let’s go in the other room, okay?” He lifted her into his arms. She waited for him to say something about the weight she’d gained, but he held her as easily as he would a child. “I don’t think I can go another minute without a piece of you, little girl.”

  “What about—?”

  “Her? Forget about her. That one’s not going anywhere.”

  It was almost midnight when Madora slipped from bed and pulled on a cotton shift. Holding her sandals, she closed the bedroom door against the sound of Willis’s soft snores and went into the kitchen. As she passed through the living room, Foo jumped off the couch and romped toward her, one ear flopping lopsidedly, his backend twisting in anticipation of his delayed dinner. Madora poured kibble into his bowl and put it down for him. She turned on the carport light and went outside to check on the animals in the menagerie. When she reached in to give the hawk-shocked rabbit a handful of pellets, the terrorized creature cringed against the far end of the cage.

  She walked behind the house and let herself into the trailer. Foo obediently lay on the ground by the cinder-block steps. The interior of the trailer was inky, and Madora used a flashlight to see her way to Linda’s bedside.

  The girl lay on her back, her clean hair tangled on the pillow. Sleeping soundly thanks to the pills Willis had given her when he got home from work. Faint lines etched her forehead, and Madora was touched by a wistful sadness. A girl of sixteen should have a silky, unfurrowed brow. As she slept, she seemed to chew on something and dreams danced beneath her swollen eyelids. Imagining that she dreamed of pain and of the baby she had never seen, Madora’s sorrow grew to an ache that spread through her body.<
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  Poor unlucky girl. Madora knew what it meant to be young and lost, frightened of everything and pretending to fear nothing.

  She filled a plastic water bottle from the jug on the table and placed it where Linda could reach it. She locked the trailer again and walked back to the house, meaning to return to bed; but she was wide-awake and taut with emotion. At such a time she would have liked to have a TV, but theirs had stopped working months ago; and though Willis said he would fix it or buy a new one, he did not like to be reminded. A radio would have been company, but reception at the head of Evers Canyon was all static.

  The night was long, the day ahead even longer.

  She looked in on Willis. He slept soundly, needing his sleep more than she did. He had another full day ahead of him, a few hours at Shady Hills Retirement and then visits to the private clients who doted on him and told him he had a healer’s touch and should be a doctor, not simply a home care provider.

  The house smelled of the day’s heat and chili and dog. She couldn’t draw a full breath and went back outside. Overhead, the moon was only a sliver; but far from city lights, stars illuminated the landscape enough to see by. Madora walked around the front of the house and leaned against the Tahoe, thinking of nothing much. Her mind was empty, a bucket under a spigot waiting to be filled.

  Red Rock Road came to a dead end marked by a pair of posts and a reflecting sign of a vehicle with a red line drawn through it. Starlight dusted the miles of wilderness that lay beyond, turning rock and soil and scrub to pewter. Madora made a soft kissing sound, and Foo followed her up the trail to the rock that water and erosion had carved a seat in. Standing on his hind legs, Foo pestered to be lifted, and she arranged herself so she could hold him on her lap.

  Behind the trailer, an owl lifted out of a sycamore near the creek and cast a shadow along the trail as it flew silently into a scrub oak near Madora. The night was full of hunters.

  Linda was sixteen, younger than Madora had been when Willis rescued her. She was seventeen when she left Yuma with him; and if he was sometimes strange, if there were parts of him as tightly padlocked as the trailer, she accepted these things because his quirks and eccentricities were the price she paid for being loved and for being sure that at the end of the day he would always come home to her. He needed her as much as she did him; he had made that clear on a day she tried not to remember but could not forget.

  In a motel in Yreka, he sat on the edge of the bed and pressed a pistol against his ear, a pistol she did not know he owned. There had been a job he wanted, orderly in a hospital, good pay and more responsibility than an aide; but something went wrong and he got drunk and came home raving and crying. He made her swear she would never leave him, and she had done so willingly. How could he doubt her? He said he’d die without her; without her he wouldn’t want to live. And in response she said that she was nothing without him either. He had rescued her.

  Since that night nothing had changed until today when she held Linda’s small boy, and they looked into each other’s eyes. She had seen all that he was meant to be and do, the wealth of opportunities that lay before him; and he had looked into her heart brimming with love and known her in a way no one else ever had, not even Willis. There had been a click of recognition between them; and because of it, she was different than she had been twenty-four hours ago.

  Chapter 6

  Django finally dragged himself up off the floor, dressed for school, and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Robin ate meals so she could use the dining room as her office.

  “I didn’t know what you usually ate before school,” she said, sounding nervous. “Eggs? Or I could make pancakes.” She peered into a cupboard next to the refrigerator. “Oops, sorry, no pancake mix.”

  Eggs. Pancakes. He didn’t care.

  She broke three brown eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork. “I’ll drive you this morning, but you’ll have to come home on the school bus. One of the home health care providers from Shady Hills is meeting me here to talk about taking care of Grannie after her back surgery.”

  Django had never met his grandmother before yesterday. His mother had almost never mentioned her.

  “How come we never see her?” He was seven or eight when he asked the question. His friends often talked about visiting grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and cousins. These proofs of an extended family had been absent from Django’s life.

  “We didn’t get along.”

  “How come?”

  She tapped her index finger on the tip of her nose and he knew she was deciding to tell him the truth or not.

  “Doesn’t matter, Django, and it’s way too complicated to talk about on a hot day. Ask me again in the wintertime.”

  But he forgot.

  Aunt Robin served his eggs, and as he ate, he watched her wiping down the counter and putting the timer, the salt and pepper shakers, and a carafe of olive oil in a straight line along the top of the stove. She had a bookcase full of cookbooks. The only thing Django’s mother ever cooked was pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches. The rest of the time they ate in restaurants or either Mrs. Hancock or someone else—a caterer or a hired chef who made great food with low calories—fixed their meals. In the house where Django had grown up, the kitchen was large and brightly lit, shiny with stainless steel. Aunt Robin’s was dinky and dark and the appliances did not match. There was one window over the sink and old-fashioned track lights overhead. If Django had not known Robin Howard was his aunt, he never would have guessed it. She was like the kitchen. Something about her made him think of tight corners and not enough air. She wore her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back and tied with a black velvet bow, old-fashioned and boring. His mother had favored earrings that swung a little when she moved her head and sparkled in the light as her eyes did. He looked at his aunt’s earlobes and saw that they were not pierced. No rings on her fingers or bracelets.

  “Don’t you ever wear jewelry?” he asked. “Your ears aren’t pierced.”

  “Well, they used to be but they closed over.” She fingered her earlobe. “I’ve got a box full of earrings I never wear.”

  “How come?” Django could not believe he was talking about earrings!

  “Not my style, I guess.” She rinsed his plate and put it in the dishwasher.

  “My mom had three hundred and ten pairs. I counted ’em once.”

  His aunt nodded, some opinion apparently confirmed.

  “Sometimes she’d get the Monopoly money and we’d play store with them.” He had been a little kid then, just six or seven.

  “Hurry now. I’ve got a busy day.”

  If he told her his mother had three heads and pointed ears, would she pay attention to him?

  “How come I have to go to school? I won’t know anybody, and besides, it’s June already. No one learns anything this close to vacation.”

  “I have things to do, Django. I can’t leave you here in the house alone.”

  “Why not? I’m twelve years old.”

  She smiled a little, and for a second he saw his mother in his aunt’s expression, and inside him something began to tear apart, a slow ripping pain in his chest.

  “I don’t need a babysitter.” He managed to get the words out, although he was coming apart inside.

  “I think I should be the judge of that, Django. Your mother was smoking in the toolshed behind the house when she was your age.”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “She almost burned the place down. If you’re anything like her, you’re better off in school, where someone can keep an eye on you.”

  Django stood up and pushed his chair into the table. The suggestion that he might be dumb enough to smoke had offended him; and even though he would have liked to know more about what happened to his mother on that occasion, he wanted to be anywhere but in the kitchen with his aunt. Even school in Arroyo would be better than this.

  She touched his shoulder, stopping him. “I’m sorry, Django. That sounded mean,
didn’t it? Really, I didn’t mean to be unkind.” She turned away, adding, “You’ll just have to be patient with me.”

  Robin turned on the car radio to discourage conversation with her nephew. Though what she and Django would talk about, she had no idea. All they had in common was Caro, and barely that.

  After graduating from San Diego State, Robin never had any doubt about what she wanted; and at that time, almost twenty years earlier, Arroyo was a perfect fit. It had been a small town on the move with a forward-looking city council and a town plan that assured her there would always be plenty of affluent residents in need of a good accountant. Like most things Robin did, the move was a measured decision based on research and facts. At the time, her mother still lived in Morro Bay, where she and Caro had grown up, and for a time she had thought she should go back there. But in the end, climate made the decision for her. Arroyo was inland, thirty miles from San Diego, and its warm, dry climate agreed with her.

  Caro had always wanted something that was out there, and right after high school she went looking for it while Robin put down roots in Arroyo and established her business. Caro and Jacky married on a beach somewhere in Australia and, of course, Robin was invited; but it was coming up on tax season and not a good time for her to be away. She sent her regrets and a small gift. She had no idea what to give a couple whose wedding was written up in People magazine.

  Sometimes she wished she had rearranged her schedule and gone to Australia. Maybe then she and Caro would have kept their relationship alive. She might have met the man of her dreams in Australia. Maybe, but not likely. There had been men, some lovers, but no one she wanted to spend her life with. She had stopped looking years ago, stopped hoping too. She was resigned to her single life and contented in it. And why wouldn’t she be, when she had challenging and absorbing work, enough money, and a small circle of good friends? Her life was good. She didn’t let herself wonder why she and Caro had stopped being true sisters. It was something she would never understand. Caro had taken her secrets to the grave.