Lost (20 page)

She wiped her face and blew me a kiss. “I don’t really have a choice.”

She waved and vanished, and my heart broke for her. Nothing could be worse than having to leave your husband, except if he’d let you stay away.

My new father peeked into the room, looking nervous. I waved at him, not exactly sure of how to comfort him. I’d just changed his life in a minute. I thought about apologizing, but I heard that he wasn’t upset with me in the whispers in the air. His thoughts were easier to decipher now that I felt less soggy. He was happy, beyond happy. He couldn’t find a word to describe how he felt.

I tinkered with the guitar on the sofa as I listened to him compose a melody in his mind, trying to capture the feeling with music since his words had failed him. The notes were light and happy, like something you would hum while running through a field of flowers.

“Christine,” he said. “I know it’s weird being here with a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger,” I said. “I know a lot about you.” He lifted his chin, challenging me. “You play the guitar. You’re in a band.
With … Meg, the redhead.
And some other guy I didn’t see tonight who plays the piano. And you like to cook.”

“Are you reading me right now? Being psychic?”

“Nope.” I plucked at his guitar again. “Mom told me you used to cook for her, and we watched you play a few months ago through this mirror she has.”

“You call her
Mom
?” I nodded. “Why? She abandoned you. She kidnapped you from me. She’s a criminal, baby, not a mother.”

“She
is
my mother. I know it’s not a perfect situation, but that’s who she is to me.”

We sat there in silence for so long that I almost expected the hairs on my arm to gray and my skin to wrinkle. I was beginning to think that Dad didn’t address things that made him uncomfortable. It seemed like he let things be. Maybe things he couldn’t control like Mom leaving him.

He finally lifted his eyes from the floor. “Okay, kid. What do you want to do?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

“Anything with you. Something that makes me know you better, I guess.”

“Everything I know about myself, I stash in my attic. I could show you if you aren’t afraid, like a strange man is bringing you to your doom or something.”

I laughed and followed him into a hallway. He pulled a string dangling from the ceiling and unfolded a little staircase. He went up first and I followed, holding his hand the whole way, trying to ignore his thoughts about how much he hated Mom.

He gestured over to the boxes in the corner. “I’ll start with what I didn’t have to work to remember. I woke up in a hospital in Miami. I wasn’t injured, but I’d been knocked out for a week, they’d said.”

With one arm around me, he walked us over to the dusty boxes. I was far too interested in his past, the part that happened after she’d slammed him into a tree, to let go of the connection I had to his mind.

I saw a blurry vision of him waking up disoriented in a hospital room, surrounded by nurses.

“They told me my name was Christopher Gavin,” he said. “And I was driving a Mercedes, lost control of the car, and slammed into a tree. I had no – no – uh…” He grunted, frustrated with losing his words, it seemed. “I had no clue what they were talking about,” he finished, speaking much slower.

In the vision I couldn’t pull away from, I saw him staring at himself like a stranger in a mirror.
Then at his wallet and license like foreign objects.

“After a day, they let me out. I took a cab to the address listed on my license. I spent a few months like that, not recognizing anything or anyone, waiting for it to come back to me like the doctor said it would.”

He pulled a box from the middle of the stack. He plopped it down and dust swirled around us. We sat around the box of forgotten things, his shoes touching mine.

“I went to a doctor for months and didn’t remember a thing until one random day. I was going to the hospital for a checkup, and I remembered being in a hospital when I was a little boy. Then I remembered my mother,
Rohina
.”

He opened the box and pulled out an 8x10 canvas painting of a woman that was obviously related to me.

“This was in my house on the wall. I figured it was my mother, but I didn’t remember her until that day. She was – uh – sick when I was a kid. Uh – she died when I was nine. But before she died, she got too sick to take care of me. She used to visit the home I lived in every day and … bring me things. I – I remember her being very nice.”

My father was an orphan. No wonder he’d yelled for thirty minutes straight, screaming obscenities, when he’d learned his child had lived as one too.

“Why is she in a box?” I whispered, answering the multitude of questions I had about her with my powers as the rest of the potion wore off. She died of pancreatic cancer. She didn’t know his father well. She was part Native American, part African American. I smiled, John was right, if that was what he’d meant by Indian.

“She wasn’t in a box until I remembered who painted her for me.”

He tossed my grandmother into the pile and closed his eyes. Curiosity made me stay with his thoughts. He was remembering when Mom gave him the painting on his 19
^th
birthday. She’d used her powers to catch a glimpse of his mother and painted her. She had on an oversized shirt that was obviously his, and maybe no shorts on underneath it … so I pulled out of his mind, vowing to never return.

“I’ll paint you a new one,” I said. “Would you like that?”

He opened his eyes, tears falling from them. “You paint?” I nodded. “I’d like that very much, thank you.” He sniffed and scooted the final box closer with his leg. “So after I remembered my mom, I pieced my life together pretty quickly. I remembered the foster home, my high school, and the coffee shop. I went to visit and … things got better. I decided to move here, and in the process of cleaning out my house, I found these.”

He showed me three photos – all of Mom asleep in a hammock wearing a blue bikini. “She’s gorgeous,” I said.

“She’s the devil,” he said.

We listened to the hum of his air conditioner for a minute.

Before I could defend her, he pulled out old magazine clippings of Mom: the hero. I’d seen the first picture several times over the years. It was always in her chapter in my history books.
The twenty-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“I asked my old coworkers if I had a girlfriend, but they didn’t know of anyone special. I finally matched the bikini girl to the magazines and wrote it off as a fling before she saved the world. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was more than that, at least for me. I couldn’t let it go. I
didn’t
let it go. After years of trying, having crazy nosebleeds and blacking out, I remembered everything. A few times, I thought to say something to her, but …”

 
He hunched his shoulders and packed the Mom box up. He never finished that sentence.

“Dad,” I said, as he led me down the shaky stairs from the attic.

“I’m never going to get tired of hearing that, but … what is it, baby?”

“Did you ever tell anyone about her or that you were married to a celebrity?” He shook his head. I kept waiting for him to expound upon that, but he didn’t. He just let my question drift and drift until I forgot I’d ever asked it.

I kept waiting to feel odd snuggled up in his arms on the sofa. It never happened. I loved him instantly, and besides constantly having to tune his thoughts out, it was comfortable and natural.

 
“So … your last name. Is it Shaw? Grant?” he asked, sniffing hard. I hadn’t noticed he was crying again.

“It’s Gavin,” I said, proud to share his name.

 
“Well, Ms. Gavin, who’s the joker in the pictures with you in the tabloids? The tall, bulky one.”

“He’s not bulky!” He laughed. “And he’s my boyfriend. His name is Nathan. He’s away for work right now.” I cleared my throat. “He’s sort of a dog.”

“The bastard cheats on you
?!
”

“No. I meant that literally. Magical
kind still exist
. Witches, wizards, everything.” He nodded, like he’d known that all along. “Nathan is a shifter. Canine.” He groaned and said
no
about sixty times. “He’s great, Dad. You’re going to love him.”

“I’m not. I hate him already,” he said.

“So … what about you?” I asked. “Is there some lady I should hate?”

He chuckled. “Not currently.”

“Really?” He nodded, and I smiled. “You’re a good-looking guy. Why are you single?” I asked, brows raised and waiting for him to say that he couldn’t love anyone but Mom.

He sighed. “I’m single because most women my age don’t like to be girlfriends. They want to be wives and …” He shivered. “It’s not my thing.” Not exactly the answer I wanted, but I could work with that. I had a new ludicrous wish to add to the list of things I prayed for. Right under letting Mom
keep
her soul, I added:
Let my parents get back together
.

“You like music?” he asked. “I have tons of it.”

He fished around for the remote and turned on his complicated-looking CD player. He clicked through his favorite album, and I booed every track.

“So you hate jazz,” he assessed.

“I think it’s safe to assume that. I like soft guitars and violins. I can’t hear them in jazz. The other instruments are too loud.”

He sprung to the wall, scanning the shelves and humming. “Guitars and violins, huh?” He popped in a new CD and met me back on the sofa.

This music was perfect to paint to, to get lost in – soft singing and strumming with barely audible violins in the background. “I love this,” I said.

“It’s yours then. I probably have a few more like it.”

We listened to each song, not rushing through the disk like before. He bobbed his head and wiggled his fingers as if he were playing along. I thought of all the things I could paint as I lay there.
Mom, Dad, my new grandmother like I’d promised.

“Christine,” he whispered. I rolled my head and eyes back to see him, staying pinned to his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You would have been six years old when I remembered her. I missed your life because I hated her for leaving like she did.” I looked away because he was crying again. It made me want to join him. “You’re an adult. You have your own house and a boyfriend. I – I – I let her do this to you. I let it happen.”

“You didn’t do anything, Dad. You didn’t know.”

“I knew
her
. I should’ve made sure she hadn’t done something this awful. Lydia …” He paused to cry and started again, first with a stutter, then slowly pushing his words out. “I’m shocked, but I’m not. This is so like her. Everything always has to be her way and on her terms.”

“She didn’t do any of this on purpose. She thought she was going to die. She thought she was helping us. Well, she did. We’re both living.”

“Are we? I’ve been going to speech therapy for years, you were in an orphanage believing you were a witch, and
she
… rules the world. How is that fair?”

It grew quiet enough to hear every note of the song in the background, every breath he took between his cries, and every crack Mom put on his heart. I never answered his question. I had a feeling nothing I would say would be enough.

I tried to tidy up the lounge when I noticed my clothes thrown over both of the sofas and crumpled sketches covering the floor. I’d managed to turn it into a pigsty after three days of sleeping here, even with Sophia picking up after me in the mornings.

So I was running around picking up today’s trash, really tonight’s trash. Since meeting my father three days ago, I’d spent most of the day with him – either at his house or mine, but mostly in the car he was teaching me to drive. At night, since there was no way to see Mom otherwise, I slept in the lounge attached to her gym. She worked mostly through the night, meetings with dignitaries and stopping acts of terrorism no one would ever know to thank her for. Even though she was only able to pop in every few hours, I liked being under the same roof, pretending I lived with her.

Never mind that the roof technically belonged to the U. N.; at least I had my fantasies.

I found my phone under a bustle of blankets that Sophia would tame in the morning far better than I ever could. I’d been looking for it since my phone-date with Nate. They’d finally made it to dry land and were staying the night in a motel. He’d planned for us to watch the same show, pretending we were together, but Em had snatched the phone and turned it into
her
date instead of his.

“Still awake?” Mom asked. I jumped. I hadn’t heard her come in. I wasn’t done cleaning up, not even close.

“Yeah. It’s only eleven.”

She plopped down on the sofa and winced. She wedged my hairbrush from under her butt.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this to you. You’re living in a gym … just to spend time with me. I’m beginning to doubt your sanity.”

I laughed and pulled the brush from her hands.

“I’m fine, Mom. And I’m sorry it’s so messy in here. I was talking to Dad, then Nate, then
Em
. I was sort of busy. Too busy to clean up, apparently.” I gathered my clothes in my arms and tried to make them look neat in a pile on the floor. She rolled her eyes and threw her feet up on the sofa, on top of the mess of papers I’d left there. “I guess it’s good that you’ve been so busy tonight. Are you – I don’t know – interrogating people about the 4
^th
?”

“No, sweetie. I’ve been busy with other things. Of course I hope to find this person, but …” She shrugged her shoulders. “You’re safe. That’s really all that matters. After the 4
^th
, Sophia will make sure whoever it is will never come after you again.”

I nearly screamed. Was she freaking kidding me? Why didn’t she see that life wouldn’t go on as usual if she died? I would lose my mother again. After the first time, I’d mourned her for seventeen years. I would never get over it, and
she
was shrugging her shoulders.

She yawned, and I forced myself to keep quiet and not mention how angry she’d made me.

I turned down the volume on the music videos Em had decided to watch and threw her a pillow. “I haven’t seen you sleep much,” I said. I grabbed my sketchbook and flipped to a blank page, deep in the back. “I can entertain myself so I won’t distract you. Go to sleep.”

She chuckled. “I wish,” she said. “My night has barely started.”

Her cellphone droned a mournful melody, and we laughed. I’d changed the setting to capture how I felt every time her phone rang. It usually meant we had to say goodbye for a few hours at least.

“Shaw. Yes.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s no need for that. I’m here.
In the gym.
I’ll be right out.” She faked a sob when she hung up, and I chuckled. “Back to work, I go. You’ll be asleep the next time I’m able to step away.”

“Wake me up. Please.”

She nodded and unrolled a bag of Doritos that was stuffed between the seat cushions. She tipped the bag over and scattered crumbs on the carpet.

“I’ve been too busy to fight with Sophia lately. Tell her that’s from me. I don’t want her to think I’m getting soft.”

I laughed and waved before she vanished, then I swept up the crumbs. I didn’t want to add more work for Sophia than she’d already have.

I wasn’t remotely close to being tired, and my back was killing me from sleeping on the hard sofa. But if I said that to Mom or Sophia, I would have to move in with the
Ewings
or sleep alone in California. I could sleep over at my dad’s, he’d offered me a room and everything, but Mom wasn’t allowed to even
think
of stepping foot in his house again, to quote him. I would never see her if I moved in with him.

I flipped through my sketchbook, past pictures of my loved ones – Sophia, my parents, my friends, my heart.
My decoy drawings.

Mom usually popped in when my face was buried in my sketchbook. She always assumed I was drawing frivolous things, exactly what I wanted her to think, and I’d flip to another page before she came over to see my work. The decoy drawings of the happy parts of my life masked my investigation into the dark, depressing event that was only weeks away.

Since the night I’d met my dad, I’d been using my powers to search for the person Mom sensed but couldn’t see, intent on finding them so either she or I could stop them. Doing the obvious, trying to see July 4
^th
in the future, was impossible. I’d tried and it had made my muscles quake worse than they ever had. I knew I’d end up in the hospital for sure if I took that approach. So instead, I’d focused my thoughts on finding my enemies, outside of catty orphans, and had come up with one name. Not even Kamon. Remi Vaughn. Shocker.

After that, I’d aimed my powers at uncovering anyone who knew who I was to my mother. It was the only thing that made sense. Why else would someone try to kill me? I didn’t know very many people, so there was no way I’d upset someone enough to drive them to murder. Other than Remi, and Mom was sure it wouldn’t be her. It had to be someone trying to hurt Mom through me.

I’d come up with three people who knew the truth about our relationship.

Sophia Ewing

Gregory Ewing Sr.

Christopher Gavin

Not helpful at all. Sophia would never hurt me, my father wouldn’t either, and Sophia’s husband was just as harmless as she was.

I’d resorted to sitting with my eyes closed with my pencil in hand, scribbling down any whisper that floated my way. I rolled my eyes at my other useless notes under the names of the three people who would never hurt me.

July 4
^th
.

Mom.

Me.

Death.

Chris, you have nothing.

At least I was being honest with myself.

I closed my sketchbook and went into Mom’s mini-kitchen. I pulled out the to-go plate Dad had made for me, the rest of the feast I couldn’t bare to swallow down at dinner. As it warmed, I pretended my parents were in their room just down the hall, and I’d crept into the kitchen for a midnight snack. And of course, my boyfriend had snuck into the house and was waiting for me in my bed.

I opened my eyes and snapped out of the fantasy. I was in my mother’s gym, in her office where she controlled international security. My life was so far from what I wanted it to be. My father was a perpetual bachelor who didn’t believe in marriage anymore, my boyfriend was out there somewhere saving magical creatures, and my mother … God only knew where my mother was right now.

That made July 4
^th
even more terrifying. This phantom person was threatening to take away a huge piece of my fractured family. I couldn’t even hope for the three of us to reunite while she wasn’t promised to live beyond the next two weeks.
And because of me.

I finished the rest of my leftovers and sat in the middle of the floor, ready for another session of psychic spying.

“Who will kill me,” I whispered. “Who will kill me and take Mom’s soul?”

I closed my eyes and pressed my pencil against the paper. And I waited. And waited.
Until my butt numbed from sitting so long.
 

There was no buzzing to search through. It was dead air, like there was no one to find. But there
was
something, an entire person none of us could see.

Even wondering about threats to my life turned up nothing. To say I was predicted to need my get-out-of-death-free card in two weeks, my future was clean and danger free from what my powers could sense.

It seemed like the worst that could happen to me would be if Sophia spanked me for sending pictures to Nathan that she thought were too racy. In my defense, a tank top is not a bra, even though she swore I was in my underwear.

I hid my detective work, frustrated with not learning anything new tonight, and curled up on the backbreaking sofa. The pain was worth it. Mom woke me around three in the morning. She only had an hour until her next commitment, but it was just enough time to watch an old movie.

Just enough time for me to pray this never had to end.

For the next two weeks, I saw her less and less. Two minutes here, three minutes there. Because of the attacks, she hadn’t even had time to do lessons with me, too many fires to put out with enraged and frightened magical beings. Her visits were so infrequent that Sophia made me move back into my house.

And I’d failed miserably in my search to find my murderer.
So much for being unstoppable and powerful.
I was forced to use my sketchbook for the proper thing, drawing, since my powers hadn’t revealed anything. I mostly drew Mom and
Dad,
together and laughing like a normal couple. I was still praying I’d see that happen one day. I owed my existence to their love. I was having a hard time accepting that it was spoiled now, like fruit that had been left out for seventeen years.

And with July 4
^th
close enough to breathe on my neck, my hands were constantly shaking.

Currently, they were shaking on my steering wheel. “Maybe I should buy you a slower car,” Dad proposed.

“Why?”

He tapped my tensed knuckles. “You seem terrified, and we’re only going five miles an hour … on your own street.” He pointed to my house. It seemed hilariously close for me to be so tense. “A Volvo, maybe. Aren’t they safe?”

“It’s not the car. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Talk to me. Is it the boyfriend?”

I smiled and eased on the brake at the stop sign. “He has a name, and you know what it is.”

“Fine. Is
Nathan
bothering you?”

“No. It’s this thing with Mom.”

The M-word ended that short conversation. I almost followed up with something like,
I thought you said I could talk to you
, but I knew it was useless. When it came to her, Dad never wanted to talk.

I parked the car in the garage, so crooked it was almost sideways.

I figured he’d decided to pretend I hadn’t said anything, so I silently slid my keys on the hook he’d mounted on the wall for me. I was still shaking and frustrated with feeling so powerless. Like a sitting duck waiting to be shot, or stabbed, or whatever the mystery person had planned.

 
“So my band always does this 4
^th
of July thing,” he said. “A barbecue. There’s
gonna
be food, fireworks, and games. I … I … I …” He paused for a moment to stop his stutter. It still broke my heart each time I saw him struggle with his speech. “I – uh – normally go alone or with a date. This year I was hoping to bring my kid, like everyone else does.”

There were several problems with that. His friends shouldn’t know about me, Lydia Shaw’s secret child should not be out on the town with her secret ex-husband, and there was a prediction that I would kill her that day.

“You know what’s supposed to happen that day, Dad.”

“No one will know that you’re there. They won’t be twittering or whatever it’s called. And you’ll be safer with me. You barely see
what’s her name
.” I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t even using her name now. “I’ll bring my gun and dare someone to touch you.”

I sighed. The kind of people who would be coming after me would be faster than bullets.

“It sounds fun, Dad, but…”

He frowned. “Please? I told my friends that I am the proud father of the most beautiful girl in the world, Christine Cecilia Gavin, and I want you to meet them. They know to keep it hush.”

“Dad! You know how dangerous that is! We have enough problems without the world knowing that Lydia Shaw is my mother!”

“Relax. They don’t know anything about her, and I – uh – ran it by Sophia first. She checked their futures or something. They won’t tell. I’ve worked out a s-s-story and everything.” I arched my eyebrows, anxious to hear what lie he’d concocted. “They think you ran away from school like the rest of the world, so I – uh – went with that. But I told them your …
mother
left you there to go to rehab.”

I gasped. “Rehab? For what?”

“Heroin. What else would explain this?” he said. I batted my eyes in disbelief, too stunned to speak. “I said she was a road groupie from my touring days.”

“So, I’m your long lost kid from a heroin using groupie, not your ex-wife?”

“Same thing,” he mumbled. I just shook my head. I didn’t think Dad knew how much it hurt that he had no plans to forgive Mom. Even though she could die this weekend, he didn’t seem to care at all or want to make peace with her just in case.