Lost (23 page)

“A baby! A
girl
,” Mom said. “She’ll have your eyes.”

“Stop, Lydia. You’re going to make her psychic. We had a deal about the kids.”

“It’s not an exact thing,
Gav
. They’d have to be trained after. Without it, it’s hit or miss.”

“It would be our luck to have a
hit
. No
powers,
honey. You promised.”

“Fine. Sorry. Sorry.” The first was to him.
The second to me.

He fluffed her pillow then stuffed more behind her head. “Hey, little baby. It’s Daddy. Can you hear me?” he said to her belly.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“
Mamma’s going to be very careful and not move an inch for nine months.
Oh, well, eight.” They laughed and Mom tried to get up. He wasn’t joking. “Seriously. I want you to be careful with my little bitty baby. I’m so happy. I’m going to have a family. I mean …you’re obviously my family,
Lyd
. But … a baby! I thought it would be years from now.”

Mom’s face blanked and she touched me again. “No! Gavin! Julian!” she screamed, like I’d made her forget about her problems for a second before they came rushing back. Mom flapped around in bed, and Dad pinned her to the pillows. “She’s going to die. You too! Oh, God! He’s not going to stop until he takes everything I love from me. I have to … go back. I have to … stop this.”

Dad shook all over, trying to speak several times with no success.

“You wouldn’t do that to me,” he said. “You wouldn’t leave me. No, no, no, you can’t…” Mom grabbed his face and kissed his trembling lips. “Swear you won’t. I’ll die. I’ll die if you leave. And what about my baby?”

The mention of their new child made her frantic, like worry had passed from him to her like a virus. And now it was his turn to calm
her
again.

“Relax,” he said. “You’re not breathing. Please. She needs you to breathe.” She took a loud breath, like I’d suddenly become the only reason for her to do that. “Everything will be fine,
Lyd
. As long as we’re together.”

He kissed her, and pressure crashed into my chest.

Water streamed down my arms out of nowhere, a little more than a trickle at first, then a pour. Soon, it gushed from my hands and hair, making a puddle on their floor. I heard the rest of the water before I felt it rush around my ankles. They didn’t seem to notice their house going under, too busy easing down from panic and plotting their next move.

The water flooded the house and rose to my chest in seconds. “Mom!” I screamed. She still couldn’t hear me. Another wave rushed into the room and submerged me completely. I gasped, stupidly, for air that wasn’t there. The world turned to nothing but blue, deep blue, and white lights.

I was drowning.

Probably by Julian’s hands, and it was my own fault. I saw a shadow over the water as I sank deeper, closer to the light. I watched my last breath bubble to the surface and let myself sink. I grabbed Sophia’s necklace but dropped it. The sun wasn’t highest in the sky to make a wish.

It was over.

“Christine,” Mom said, sounding very far away. “Get out of the pool, baby. I don’t want to have to tell you again.” The figure above the water, a blurry Mom, pointed a finger at me.

I guessed I hadn’t opened the portal. I hoped she would think of a humane way to punish me for trying.

My feet reached the bottom of the pool. I pushed up and gasped for air. “Out. Now,” she ordered.

“I’m sorry.”

I wiped the excess water from my face and blew my nose to unclog it. I opened my eyes. We were not in New Orleans. Not outside. She stormed away from what had to be our indoor pool in jeans and a yellow tank top. Normal clothes. The mom I knew never wore normal clothes and colors other than black.

“Mom!” I said. I hopped out of the pool. She didn’t turn around.

“This is not negotiable. Pool time is officially over.” I grabbed the towel sitting on one of the three lounge chairs. “Dad made his usual July 4
^th
meal. I’ll bring you a plate.”

I covered my mouth to muffle the scream. I’d changed the past and caught up with time.

I pulled off my boots so I wouldn’t track footprints through the house and wrapped myself in the towel. I didn’t know my way around our home, so I scurried out of the room to catch her.

“Mom!”

“Christine, I’m too tired to fight about this. You know I hate when you disappear and I find you in the pool. And you were doing the floating thing again. I know you’re mad, but that’s not an excuse to give me a heart attack.”

I followed Mom up a winding staircase. The next floor clued me in to how huge our house was.
A palace really.
The halls were endless and the ceilings were impossibly high. I dripped on the marble floor as Mom continued to ignore me.

“Mom.”

“No whining.”

A painful sigh pushed from my chest. Did the new Mom not love me like the old one did?

She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyebrows drew together. “Why do you look so sad? It’s just the pool.”

“I just wanted to say hi. Maybe hug you,” I whispered carefully, realizing I didn’t really know the woman in the hall with me.

“Hi, baby,” she said and opened her arms. I ran and tackled her, dripping all over her normal clothes. “Did you hit your head in there?”

She pulled back, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “Oh,” I said, realizing my error. I wasn’t the baby she had to watch and love from afar anymore. Seeing each other would be nothing special now. “No. I didn’t hit my head. I’m fine.”

“Good. Go dry off before you catch a cold.”

“Okay.”

She turned and walked away, and I caught up with her again, following her because I had no idea where I was going. “Was okay code for
piss off, Mom, I’ll do what I want
?”

“No.”

“Then why are you walking away from your room?” She threw her hands up like she’d given up on figuring me out and turned down yet another hall in the huge house. I headed in the opposite direction.

I really needed a map.

I strolled down the hall aimlessly and saw the most beautiful thing in the world.
A family picture on the wall.
Mom was holding me and Dad was behind her. I was only dressed in a diaper. We looked so happy.
So normal.

There was a picture mounted on the wall every few feet. My baby pictures, mostly. Tears streamed from my eyes. I had baby pictures!

One was too precious not to take off of the wall and kiss.

Mom and Dad were smiling at the camera with a little ghost between them. They’d cut holes in a sheet. I could see the smile in my deep brown eyes through them.

“I went trick-or-treating. This is crazy,” I said.

I wept as I found pictures of Mom and Dad alone. They were mostly kissing and staring at each other. Being the Lydia and Gavin from the diary.

I roamed, crying and in awe, until I came to a door. I opened it and walked into the room. There was a crib in the center.

“Do I have a sister?”

I turned on the light. There were pictures everywhere. Of Mom and me as a baby.
Dad kissing my little toes.
Unless my sister looked exactly like the baby in Mom’s memories, this was my nursery from a long time ago. Just preserved.

The next room was for an older child. An older me, I guessed. Dolls lined the shelves, neat and probably untouched for a decade. They’d preserved my childhood room, too. “Okay … this is more like the Mom I know,” I said. “A little obsessed with me.” I sighed, very relieved.

The next door had a handmade KEEP OUT sign taped to it. I guessed it was my current room. I creaked it open with my eyes closed. I expected to see pictures of Nate and my friends – I had my fingers crossed for Emma and Paul. It wasn’t so farfetched. Nate was my soul mate and we should always find each other, and if Mom knew Sophia, we’d probably know Paul and Emma.

I opened my eyes and felt around for a light. I flipped it on. There were no pictures, and Sophia obviously wasn’t our maid. Clothes and trash covered every inch of the floor. And the walls were covered in scribbles. It looked like I’d taken a black marker and tattooed swirls and stars everywhere.

“I guess that’s cool.”

I took off my wet clothes and threw them on the floor, with everything else I discarded apparently. I assumed my clean clothes were the pile on the bed. I sniffed a shirt. It had a sour, corn chip smell to it. I didn’t dare sniff anything from the pile on the floor.

“Gross.”

I took off Sophia’s necklace and slushed through my room to the bathroom. I gagged. It was worse than the bedroom. Molded towels hung from the shower curtain and about ten one-piece swimsuits were draped on the side of the dingy tub. And I’d doodled on the walls in here too.

I reached to turn the shower on, but there were no knobs.

That made me feel
a little better. I didn’t actually use this bathroom.

I found a clean one at the end of the hall. I showered and tugged on a shirt and a pair of pants I’d found on my bed. Apparently, I was into fashion design or something in this life. My sweatpants looked purposefully ruined with bleach, and I’d cut the shirt so that it hung from my shoulders. The bottom was fringed.

“I guess this is trendy,” I said, frowning at myself in the mirror.

I ran around our huge home, looking at our family photos on the wall and listening for my parents. I followed the smell of grilled burgers and found them in the kitchen.

My heart burst open. It was official. It was worth it. Maybe I didn’t have pictures of my friends – and I hadn’t given up hope – but as I stared at Dad feeding Mom, laughing and kissing, I knew I’d done the right thing. Dad looked mostly the same, minus the arm of tattoos he had in our old life. He only had a few scattered on his forearm and one peeking out of the sleeve of his shirt.

“Hey,” I said.

Dad put up his hands like he was surrendering, and Mom moved away from his lap. “Sorry, pumpkin. Thought you were in for the night. Mom was going to bring your plate up in a minute.”

“That’s okay. I’ll eat with you guys if I’m not intruding.” They both gawked at me like I’d sprouted a third eye. “If I’m interrupting, I guess I’ll go back to my room. Or trash pit,” I said, wanting to gag at the thought of eating in there.

“You’re not going to yell at us for ruining your dinner?” Dad asked. I shook my head slowly. “No …
oh my God, guys, go to your room or I’ll kill myself?
” he said, in a whiny voice, without one stutter.

“That’s not funny, Gavin. Don’t tease her like that,” Mom said. Gavin? She could call him that again. I could die happy now.

“Thanks, Mom.” I grabbed a plate from the counter and sat at the table. They just stared at me. “What?”

“What’s with you?” Mom asked. “First the hug. Now this.” Dad gasped. “Yes, baby. There was a hug, a real one.” She held her hand to my forehead and checked for a fever.

“Mom, I’m not sick. I’m just happy today.” Apparently, I was never like this. I thought about the teenagers from my movies. They weren’t all that happy at home. They were bratty. And we lived in a mansion. I was probably spoiled and used to getting my way. “Get used to it,” I said. “I’m going to be happier, so don’t think it’s weird.”

Mom kneeled next to my chair, her eyes glossy and her lip out. “Really?” she whispered. I nodded. “So the talk with your Dad went well last night?”

I had no memory of the last night she meant, but if I’d had a talk with my dad last night, I was sure it had gone well.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were ignoring me, kid,” he said.

“Never.” I blew him a kiss. “I would never ignore you. I mean … I won’t anymore.”

“So you understand now?” Mom asked. I nodded, playing along. “I know you think everyone your age is going, but rules are rules.”

It sounded like all of my friends were going somewhere for the 4
^th
of July, and I wasn’t allowed to. Maybe I was grounded. Maybe my filthy room was the reason.

“It’s okay. I get it. I’ll just stay here and enjoy my family.” Her face turned up, in a shocked and appalled kind of way. “I mean it.”

“Oh, honey. That’s wonderful. You are making my day. You know I hate upsetting you, and you and I seem to fight every time I open my mouth these days. I’m so glad your Dad got through to you.”

I swallowed a mouthful of baked beans then leaned down to kiss her cheek. She broke down. “I’m sorry for fighting with you. I’m sure it was no big deal. I love you.” Dad joined her on his knees in front of me, equally as shocked. I kissed him too. “Love you, Dad.”

He pulled me out of the chair and they attacked me with hugs and teary kisses on the floor.
Yep … totally worth changing our lives for.
If I didn’t know Nate in this life, I’d hire an investigator to find him. This was perfection.

“I don’t want to push it,” Dad said. “But how about you join us tonight for movies? Like old times.”

My heart jumped. We had old times. “Of course,” I said.

Dad pulled me up and they joined me for dinner at the table.

After the initial allure of seeing them as a couple faded, it was sort of gross how much they touched. I didn’t think they noticed that I could see them pawing at each other on the other side of the table.

I took my dish to the sink and turned on the water. “Oh my God!” Mom said. “Is this really happening? Christine Cecilia Gavin, washing a dish?”

Dad picked me up at the sink and spun me around. He carried me to our living room, kissing my cheek the whole way.

“Pick the movie, pumpkin,” Dad said.

I turned around in his arms and stifled a laugh. Our TV was extremely dated. Big, but bulky, and we had a VCR and about a million tapes stacked on the wall.

“Um … I guess I’ll pick a classic,” I said. They were all
classic
. Apparently, we didn’t believe in DVDs, let alone Blu-ray.

“Classic comedy, classic drama, or classic Christine?” he asked.

“I vote classic Christine,” Mom said. Dad carried me over to another bookshelf.

“We have Christine: the early years,” he said, waving his hand around the first few shelves. “Then Christine: the comic. And Christine’s funny dances.” I laughed. They were both obsessed with me. Wonderful. “The last few are the
Daddy stop following me around with the stupid camera
years.”

“Sorry about those,” I said.

He smiled, and I chose a tape from the early years shelf. We settled on the sofa. Mom crawled into Dad’s arms before I could grab one of them. It looked like she’d done so out of habit.

The ancient movie flickered on the screen then took another moment to focus in on me blowing spit bubbles. Dad cooed at me from behind the camera. Mom was stretched out on the floor at my side.

It overwhelmed me. I tucked my face in my ripped up shirt, trying to hide the tears.

They’d filmed many different days on one tape. The first two that we watched were mostly my spit bubble performances. The rest of the early years were just as cute. I was a weird baby, and nothing like the nuns had described me at St. Catalina. I was loud, I laughed a lot, and I liked to play.

And just like I’d hoped, they obviously loved me on unconscionable levels, filming every second that I was awake and sometimes sleeping.

In the next video, Mom cooed at me as she hovered over my crib with the camera. I noticed construction sounds in the background.

“What’s that?” I asked as Dad kissed Mom’s ear. Equal parts adorable and disgusting.

“It sounds like Daddy,” Mom said. “You know he worked on the house for … Jesus, babe, how long?”

“Ten or so years to get it like this. We both did, my little helper.” She giggled as he tickled her. I ignored their PDA. Apparently, this dad worked in construction instead of touring as a backup guitarist.