If You Find Me (20 page)

“About what, exactly?”
We wait while an eighteen-wheeler pulls out of a parking space and ambles toward the on-ramp.
“I never hurt you or your mother.”
I shake my head, disbelieving. “Mama said!”
“Well, your mama lied to you! That’s your mama. C’mon, a smart girl like you? Think! You know what she did to you. My whole world fell apart when she took you!”
I want to believe him. I ache to. But I can’t hurt like that again. I justcan’t.
“She took us to save us from you!” I spit the words, sounding more like Mama. Less like him.
“She took you because I filed for sole custody. Your mama was sick. I tried to get her help, but she refused. One night, she left you in the car and couldn’t remember where she’d left it. It took a day and a half to find you. You were three years old and hysterical. You don’t remember?”
I shake my head against the words, screaming inside, not knowing what to believe.
Saint Joseph!
“I moved out of the house, hired a lawyer, and the court awarded me sole custody. Your mom must’ve found out. She stole you that afternoon.”
My father’s voice cracks.
“When I went to your baby-sitter’s house, you were already gone.”
“Clarey,” I whisper.
“You remember her? Clare Shipley. A friend of your mama’s. She had no idea Joelle was going to run. It was the worst day of my life.”
I look at my father, really look, and see the broken part of him, broken by Mama, like she’d broken all of us. I remember what Mrs. Haskell said. She had no reason to lie.
Kidnapped.
Ryan’s flyer, making paper noises in the wind.
“Everyone was looking for you.” His eyes are slanted at the tips, just like the girl’s in the flyer. “I registered you with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and put up posters for years. I even went on the news a bunch of times.”
We didn’t have a television in the woods. Would I have seen him if we had?
“That day we found you, it finally made sense. She’d hidden you away in the middle of nowhere, in an eight-and-a-half-thousand-acre forest. Even if someone had seen you, who’d be suspicious of a family gone camping?”
I think of how many people we’d seen when we lived in the Hundred Acre Wood.
A few hikers. Drug dealers. Men who liked kids. No one who could help.
No one, in all those years.
My father turns my face to his, forcing me to look him in the eye.
“Aren’t you happy at the farm? Haven’t we been good to you?”
His question is like the seed to a planet-size ache. He wants to give me back all that I’ve lost. I don’t know how to let him.
“Life isn’t like this! It’s not real!”
“What do you mean?”
“No one gets hugs and new clothes and all this good stuff for nothing.” I mimic Mama’s voice. “ ‘Everythin’ gets paid for in one way or another, girl, and flesh is more plentiful around here. Young flesh pays more. So git goin’!’ ”
Now he knows that, too. But he doesn’t flinch.
“This isn’t what life is like.” My voice breaks. My words aren’t saying what I mean, but I don’t know how to explain it clearer. I think of Jenessa the way she is now, like a pink-cheeked crocus pushing up through the snow. I want to be wrong more than anything in the world.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper.
“Says who? Who says what’s real? What your mama did was unreal. She doesn’t have the last word on real. Maybe I do.”
My shoulders shake. I make sounds a person could never make on purpose.
“Families aren’t like what your mama did to you. Or what she had you do.”
I hide my face in my arms and sob.
“I can’t erase those years, Carey, and God knows I’d give my life to make yours and Jenessa’s whole again. I can’t give you back all the time she stole from us. That’s the hardest thing to reconcile.”
Tears slide down his cheeks, their path determined by the lines and wrinkles in his face. My tears continue to fall, but for all of us—him, Ness, myself, and even Gran.
“All I can hope is that the lean years made you stronger, and that you’ll get through this like you got through that. But no matter what happens, you and Jenessa always have a home with me.”
I break down completely, and when he reaches for me, I let him. He holds me to him and we cry together, holding on for dear life. I breathe in the smoky smell of his sheepskin coat, rough against my cheek. The h word measuring my humeris fans its wings into a D.
Dad.
I close my eyes, trying to remember him from before. It’s so hard.
“I can’t remember much from before the woods,” I say, hiccuping through my tears. “Not you, not living indoors, not tap water or light switches or bubble baths. Not even Christmas.”
He holds me tighter, his stubbly chin resting on my head.
“Give it time. It’ll come back when you’re ready.”
He rocks me back and forth, back and forth, as long as I need it.
Then: “So, anymore secrets?”
“Ryan Shipley.” My words are muffled by his coat. “He’s my best friend.”
“I reckon he is. You were like two peas in a pod once upon a time.” He chuckles.“You’d better bring him by the house, then. Been a few years since I’ve seen that boy.”
“Yes, sir.”
It’s true: Ryan’s my best friend. But what I don’t say is that I love him. From the tips of my chunky hair to the wiggle in my clean toes, I love him. My stomach squirms like worms (in a good way) just thinking about him. And I reckon when love’s in short supply, you know it all the more when it finds you.
“See,” my dad says, grinning.
“What?”
“You remember some things.”
“Some things I don’t want to remember.”
“That’d be normal, I guess. But some things you need to remember. Or how else will you know who you are?”
I turn to him. I have to say it out loud. For the girl in the woods.
“My name is Carey Violet Benskin. My mama kidnapped me when I was five years old.”
“You have no idea how many people were looking for you, sweetheart.”
“And I was just over yonder, in the woods,” I say wistfully.
“Might as well have been a whole ’nother world,” he replies.
This is our world, now, our own special bubble. He drives with one hand on the wheel, his other arm around me. I snuggle against him, flesh, blood, and bone, our combined breath fogging the side windows.
I think of the writing on the camper wall, just above the baseboard, scrawled by my six-year- old self. I saw it when I retrieved Gran’s watch; up until then, I’d forgotten all about it. If you find me, take me home, I’d written. Like I knew, somehow, this day was coming.
I don’t remember Melissa greeting us in the driveway, nor my dad carrying me up the stairs to my room, taking off my coat and shoes, hat and mittens before slipping me under the covers and leaving me to a dreamless sleep.
I just know when I wake to the roosters crowing and the sun warming my cheeks, everything has changed.
I told.
And it’s only the beginning.

A book is a living, breathing thing. It spends the first chapters of its life curled up in the mind, symbiotic with its creator as it grows fat and round. And then the book is born. If you’re lucky like me, by the time you turn the pages for the first time, your book will have been cradled by many sets of careful, talented, and capable hands.

To my amazing agent, Mandy Hubbard, thank you for too many things to list, and most of all, for believing in this book. I’m so glad our stars aligned, and I feel lucky for it every day. Bob Diforio, you’ve been a kind and guiding light through the entire pro cess. Words don’t suffice.

For my editor, Jennifer Weis, and assistant editor, Mollie Traver, much appreciation for steering me through this pro cess with precision and enthusiasm, and for honoring me with a true collaboration. My copy editor, Carol Edwards, made the novel sing with her deft touch. My deepest gratitude to everyone at St. Martin’s who had a hand in this book from start to finish. It truly takes a village.

Tasha Harlow, my fellow fearless flower, and Cate Peace, thank you for first reads and eagle eyes and pom-poms flying. Big thanks to all my writing friends across the Internet—speznas, caw caws, heart-shaped pupils, and lucky black cats to all of you.

To the agents and editors who cared along the way, and who go out of their way to help aspiring authors find their way, I owe you a debt of gratitude. For the love of books, go we.

For Piggy, who never hesitated to leave the warm spot on the bed to “come help with the book” in his loving terrier way, keeping me company from my lap as I pounded the keys into the wee hours of the morning, you and me, buddy. You and me.

To my husband, Jack, goes my love. Your unwavering encouragement and support have been the truest gifts. Thank you for believing that anything is possible . . . even castles in the air . . . especially castles in the air.