A Lily in the Light(52)

“She pushed me into the ocean for this.”

Stagehands had swept fake snow into buckets.

“I never thought,” he’d said, “I never thought that’d be the last time I saw my mother. It’s not enough to just be here. It has to mean something. Or what’s the point?”

Silent tears had trickled down his face. An usher had woven through the empty seats. “It’s time to go,” he’d say. Esme had wished he’d get there faster because she’d been speechless, lost in a melded memory of a boy in a boat and a little girl with rainbows on her fingers.

She’d been stunned that someone else felt that way too. Now, she wondered why she hadn’t told Adam about Lily. That would have been the moment to say she understood, truly, because she’d never said goodbye, that she’d always wonder what had happened to Lily, about the person she would have become. She could have told Adam that Lily would always be a four-year-old girl preserved in time like an insect in amber, perfect and unchanging, or that it sometimes felt like Lily hadn’t been real. But she hadn’t told Adam those things because the Esme then had believed Lily was living in someone else’s house, starting a new life. It must have felt false even then because it was too complicated to explain to someone else, but what else was there? She still didn’t know what anything meant. Adam’s voice snapped her back to now.

“Before I forget.” He fished for something in his pocket and handed her a small piece of paper. “Your sister called. It sounded important.”

Madeline had called here? It was only nine a.m., three a.m. in New York, and they hadn’t spoken in weeks. They went through phases. Sometimes they talked for hours, a strange kind of confessional, because no one else would understand, or they went for months without a word because they were too much of a reminder of their broken life. It intruded on the delicate balance of a normal one.

He slid the phone across the desk. “Take your time.”

Esme was already dialing when the door closed behind him, fumbling with country codes until she gave up and dialed the operator. Was it her mother, her father? It couldn’t be a wedding emergency. Madeline wasn’t a fussy bride, even if her wedding was only a week away. Oh God, she thought, biting her index finger so hard it left a mark. Her brother. Her mother’s words echoed as the phone rang. “It’s a good job until something happens,” she’d told Nick when he’d made the police academy.

“Esme?” Madeline was breathless. Esme’s skin prickled at the urgency in her sister’s voice. “Where are you?”

“The studio. What’s wrong?”

“They found a girl.” Madeline’s words rushed out in a jumble.

“What?”

“They found a girl Lily’s age.”

How many times had she imagined something like this? Her ears rang. Her body was a flyaway wisp. She grabbed the wooden seat for support and stared at the blue-and-white vase on the table, the purple lilacs. They turned to salt and pepper.

Inside, her little self was dancing furiously, pounding inside until her heart skipped a beat. Across the ocean, Madeline made sounds. Esme listened through water. It took seconds, a minute, until she realized it was her name.

“I’m here.” Esme’s voice broke. “Alive or . . . ?”

“Yes, in a house in New Jersey. Neighbors called in a bad smell and mail piling up, and when the police checked it out, the owner had died, but they found a girl in the basement. She’s roughly the same age as Lily and matches her description.”

New Jersey. Outside, people snubbed out cigarettes in the courtyard, laughing and disappearing as the studio door slammed shut behind them. Conversations echoed in the hallway behind her. The sun was brighter through the window now. Esme pinched the space between her thumb and forefinger until it left a painful half-moon, a reminder that she was still living and breathing.

“How could no one know she was there?”

It shocked her when someone was found in neighborhoods where people rode bikes or carried groceries from their cars to their homes, mowed lawns, where neighbors waved to each other when they picked up mail. How could some sick bastard hide people without anyone knowing? It poisoned all the nicest neighborhoods, all the smiling faces.

“Listen.” Madeline’s voice was serious. “They don’t know who it is yet or what she’s been through. No one’s contacted us. It was just on the news. We don’t know anything yet.”

Lily would be twelve now, older than Esme when Lily had first gone missing. The tiny baby teeth Esme had helped her brush would be gone. Lily was not supposed to be in a basement, but that was the thing about having someone stolen. She didn’t have a say over what happened. Someone else decided for them. The unfairness stung all over again. Even after all this time, she wasn’t numb to it.

“I have a show tonight.” Anger washed in. Why did Madeline have to call here, right now? The old immediacy of Lily missing, of Lily trumping every thought and every action and stunning them into comas, was so unfair. She was already panicked about the Waltz Girl. She didn’t need this too. The thought of a costume, fake eyelashes, remembering choreography, and being the Waltz Girl felt like a joke.

“Why did you call me here? Why couldn’t it wait?” Knowing now wouldn’t change anything.

“Well.” Madeline’s voice hardened. “I thought you’d want to know. You’re her sister too. And believe it or not, you’re still part of this family, even if you pretend not to be.”