“I’ll be okay. Maybe not right away. But I will.” I know I’m echoing my mother, and it almost makes me smile and then it almost makes me cry. But I’ve cried enough for now.
He’s frowning at me. “Are you sure? I don’t like leaving you alone. And to take a trip so soon...”
“Just somewhere Mom and I meant to go. I’ll be fine. Please. Don’t worry.”
He smiles at me, a forced smile, but I appreciate the effort. “I always worry. They teach us that in medical school.”
I lean across the car and kiss his lips lightly. “I’m lucky I met you.”
“Then why do I feel like you’re saying goodbye?”
Because I am, I want to say. But I can’t bring myself to form the words. Maybe it’s cowardly of me. Or maybe it’s because I think he might stop me. “Don’t overwater the Christmas cactus. I’ve made that mistake before, and it wasn’t pretty.” I then open the car door and step out.
He calls after me, “I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”
I wave and then head inside.
Inside the apartment, it’s too quiet. I switch on the TV, exactly as Mom used to do. No particular channel. Just for noise. I sort through the mail, separate out the bills and the sympathy cards. I put the cards on display with the others on the bookshelves. It’s unnerving how many have pictures of calla lilies on them. I feel bad for the flower. It’s a perfectly striking, lovely flower that could be associated with movie stars on the red carpet, but instead it’s featured on sympathy cards over and over.
A moment later, I take all the cards down and sit on the floor with them. I fetch a pair of scissors, and I begin to cut, excising all the flowers and separating the words. When I have them in pieces, I reassemble them. I don’t have any blank easels in the apartment, but I don’t need one. I choose one of the paintings on the wall, a seascape, that I did years ago. It’s of the beach that Mom used to take me to, on the Pacific Ocean, where I first learned how to swim. I glue the bits of cards to the painting, assembling them so they become beautiful in their repetition.
When I finish, it’s late. I crack open one of the casseroles in the refrigerator and heat a bowl full of cheese, chicken, and broccoli in the microwave. I eat it in front of the TV, not watching what’s on, trying not to think too much. Finishing, I head to the bedroom, intending to change into pj’s and try to sleep.
In my room, on the bed, is a ragged stuffed rabbit with a shattered eye.
“Hello, Mr. Rabbit,” I say.
He doesn’t respond.
I sit on the foot of the bed, far from the rabbit. But the pressure on the bed causes him to topple over onto his side. Sideways, he looks at me with one black button eye.
“All right,” I say, “I’ll leave now. And maybe...maybe Claire will come with us.” If she wants to. If she’s real. If I can find her.
I don’t search for her right away.
Instead, I drag up a huge supply of empty boxes from the basement of the apartment building, and I box and label things as best I can: clothes, dishes, artwork, books. I toss all excess toiletries in the trash, and I leave unspoiled food in the refrigerator, hoping William will either eat or donate it. I fill the car with a supply of whatever food won’t perish on the drive, as well as two suitcases of my own clothes, books, toiletries, and mementoes. I also take some, but not all, of my art. I leave the sympathy collage on the wall. And I take one of Mom’s hardier plants, one that I think I can manage to keep alive. I strap it into the passenger seat, along with Mr. Rabbit.
The apartment isn’t perfectly clean, but at least William won’t have to sort through all my and Mom’s things. It should make his job easier, or the landlord’s, or whoever’s. Taking some more of the casserole, I sit in front of Mom’s computer, which I didn’t unplug yet, and I search online.
I don’t know Claire’s last name.
I don’t know her hometown, where she was lost.
But I know enough. As the search results scroll down the screen, I feel my eyes water. The screen blurs in front of me, and I blink fast to clear my vision. The Scottsdale local news was abuzz for several days about a young girl who’d been missing for three years, presumed dead, who took a bus by herself from Flagstaff and showed up on her family’s doorstep in a princess dress. One has a photo of her, my Claire, in front of her new elementary school. I stare at the photo, touch the screen as if I could touch her, and then I jot down the school address and stuff it into my pocket.
As sunrise tints the sky lemon-yellow, I lock the door to Mom’s and my apartment one last time. I look at the key and consider sliding it under the door, or under my landlord’s door, but in the end, I stuff it into my pocket. After all, there’s always the chance that I’m totally wrong about this and that even if I find Claire, we won’t be able to find Lost again, and then I’ll feel pretty stupid explaining to William or the landlord why I need the key and why my apartment is all boxed up.
My belief in Lost is firm. My belief in my own abilities to find it...decidedly less so.
I’m nervous as I get into the car. I put my hands on the steering wheel. They’re already sticky, even though the morning is still cool from the night air. I check the gas. It’s close to full. Enough to get me to Scottsdale and farther. I put the car into Drive. And I leave.
It’s six hours on Route 10 from Los Angeles to Scottsdale.
I drove this way before, must have, on my way to Lost, but I don’t remember it. The view out the window had been a blur. Now I watch each cactus and highway sign. I loop around Phoenix, ask for directions at a gas station, and find Laguna Elementary School in Scottsdale. I park on the street.
It’s a flat reddish-tan building, the same color as the dirt here. Two tall palm trees flank the entrance, next to two equally tall flagpoles. The playground is enclosed by a chain-link fence. Kids are swarming over it. I step out of the car and lean against the door.
The wind picks up crumpled paper in the street, bits of dirt from the grassless ground, and the shouts and laughter of the kids on the swings and slides. A group of girls is clustered on a stretch of black pavement. Hopscotch.
But I look for Claire to be one of the loners, like the boy on the swing or the girl curled with a notebook near a rock. I don’t see her.
My hands feel slick with sweat. I wipe them on my jeans. She might not be here. She might not exist, no matter what the articles said. I could have hallucinated them all—the articles, the rabbit, the puffer fish, the diner menu, the Missing Man.
I don’t believe that.
She’s here.
I know she is.
And then, I see her. My Claire. She’s in the middle of the group of girls. She’s broken from the pack to toss a rock onto the hopscotch squares. I watch her hop on one foot. Her blond hair bounces. Her hair looks longer. She looks taller. Older. I realize she must have been in Lost for several years, not aging except on the inside. Balancing on one foot, she leans over and scoops up her rock. She’s steady, as she would be after months of scrambling over rooftops and through alleyways. She smiles triumphantly at the other girls, and then she hops back and passes the rock to a curly haired girl. Her friends cluster around her again, and she disappears from view.
I don’t move from the car.
She’s real. She’s alive. She’s happy.
I watch until the bell rings. Claire runs with the pack, her legs stretching, her lope as smooth as a deer. The other girls jostle around her, some keeping up with her, some falling behind, and they gather in a pack in front of the teacher. They jostle into a single line, my Claire in the lead. She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hesitate as she marches into school—her school.
I can’t take her from this.