Lost and Found (12 page)

"Did you sleep at
all
last night?" I asked Connor as he scratched his fingers absentmindedly at the base
of his neck beneath his wavy hair. In the morning sunshine, the russet coloring showed
tints of red here and there, making his hair seem to glow at the right angle.

"I got enough. Do you remember your dreams from last night?"

"My dreams? No, why?"

"You tossed and turned a lot, like you were having bad dreams." He sipped on his small
tin cup.

I didn't remember a nightmare. "Sorry, my mind is a blank,"

"Small favors." He winked and passed me his cup. "Drink up; we have a long day ahead
of us."

With a salute, I blew the steam off the top of the cup before taking a sip. The black
coffee was unpleasantly strong. But it would wake me up and get me going - something
that was becoming harder and harder to do at six in the morning after sleeping on
the ground fitfully for half the night.

Kris was already dressed for the day and eagerly rubbing the horses down with her
hands. She scratched under their manes, around their ears and down their sides until
they were jittery with excitement. She had a way with them and the horses had bonded
with her most of all. All she had to do was click her tongue and they would follow
her around like excited puppies. The most I got with
my
tongue clicks was a snort or two, or an impatient swish of the tail.

After turning away from Kris and the horses, I caught Connor staring up the street
near where we had camped out. The wind whipped at my loose hair as I approached him,
sliding my hand inside his.

"What are you looking at?" I leaned into Connor's hip.

"Just…it's nothing. Just staring off into space I guess."

"Really?" Pulling back, I peered up into his face. "You look far too serious for someone
just spacing out."

"Guess I'm anxious to get a move on. You girls almost ready?" he asked without looking
down at me.

"Almost, Kris is just fawning over the horses for a bit. Give us a few minutes, okay?"

"Sure."

I moved away from him, letting his hand slowly fall from mine. When my arm dropped
back down to my side, Connor said over his shoulder, "Riley?"

"Yeah?"

His eyes twinkled in the dawn like wet slate. "You look beautiful this morning, baby."

***

Sunny did not like the City. We stopped for lunch after only a few hours to give her
a chance to decompress a bit. She was wound up and unable to relax, like something
was bothering her. Foxy was her usual finicky self, however.

We were halfway to the coast and off the highway by the time the clouds rolled in.
North of Escondido was packed bumper to bumper with civilian and military vehicles
alike. There were more signs of fires and destruction along the way but it wasn't
clear when the damage had been done. All we knew was that none of it was recent. It
made sense to stay off the highway and the side roads weren't too bad, though it felt
as if we were traveling through a town that had been deserted since the seventies.
Grasses grew up through cracks in the concrete, turning into weeds many months before.
Some reached straight up into the sky as tall as the horses and others spread out
along the concrete into scraggly bushes. The horses would jump every time the wind
would rattle through the dry weeds, causing the raspy foliage to drag across the ground.
I personally found the sound comforting - it went together well with the clomping
of the horse hooves.

Sometime before the end of that third day, Kris announced her iPod battery had died.
I thought the silence might end up killing her but eventually she struck up a conversation
with Connor. I listened to the two of them talk about his movies, his favorite characters
and how much money he actually made. The figures he pulled in from his last blockbuster
film astounded me. The other's found it funny that I didn't know who he was but it
didn't surprise me. Sure, I had seen his face a time or two, but I wasn't a movie
buff. Lifestyles of the rich and famous never interested me. But I was slightly embarrassed
to know so little about his past when everyone else was so familiar with it.

"You were rich enough to buy yourself a small island," I laughed nervously. Money
meant nothing to us anymore of course, yet it still felt awkward discussing his success.
It made our relationship feel more like a fairytale and less like it really happened.
That someone like Connor would ever end up with someone like me just wasn't meant
to be.

"Maybe. But remember, I'm from an island, why buy one?" he laughed back. "Hey, look
over there…see what I see?"

Kris and I followed his nod to our right and spotted the trees instantly. We were
trained to look for food, especially
fresh
food. Small yellow fruits weighed down the branches of a tree, not much taller than
the property fence it hid behind. The petite and round fruits were clustered around
the branches in such large numbers it was hard to imagine it had ever been picked
clean at one time.

"I've seen those before but I don't remember what they're called. Funny looking fruits,
if you ask me," Connor said as I dismounted Foxy.

"I love these things, they're called Loquats. My grandparents used to have a tree
in their backyard," I said while standing on my toes and pulled the closest branch
down to my face. "It must have bloomed early…don't usually see the fruits till after
the New Year."

"Loquats?" Connor mumbled.

"Kris, throw me your bag…I'll fill us up," I said with a grin.

I grabbed on a cluster and pulled, dropping the loose fruits into the front pocket
of Kris's bag. By the time I had finished filling the pocket, my hands were covered
in a downy powder-like residue. As I wiped them clean onto the thighs of my jeans,
a fat drop of water splatted onto the brim of my hat, making a tapping sound on the
thick, woven material. When I looked up into the darkening sky, another raindrop landed
on the center my cheek.

"Looks like we're going to get wet. We need to find somewhere to put the horses,"
I sighed over my shoulder, swinging the bag up to Kris. We moved quickly, letting
the horses trot until we came across an apartment complex with covered parking spots.

Connor dismounted first, pulling Sunny into the small lot behind him. It was too dark
outside with the rain clouds to see into the nearby apartments, so we tied the horses
to the frame of the driveway awning and peered into the windows that flanked the front
door of the unit closest to the parking lot. The room we looked into was a modest
kitchen - clean and empty. The only thing out of sorts was that half the cupboards
hung ajar, as if they'd been riffled through quickly and emptied. I still had my face
up against the window when Connor jiggled the doorknob, opening the unlocked door
with ease.

"Huh. It's open…should we go in, dry off a bit?" he asked.

It was a silly question, really. Kris and I stood on the front stoop, shivering and
looking like a pair of drowned rats in cowboy hats. I shoved him inside and closed
the door after Kris passed over the threshold. The apartment smelled old, like dusty
carpet but thankfully not like a dead person.

"No one died here," I said under my breath.

"How do you know?" Kris asked, glancing around the small kitchen and attached dinette
nervously.

"We'd be able to smell them," I said with disgust. The decomposing flesh of a person
was a sickening stench that all of us remembered well. It was a sweet, rotten smell
that overwhelmed every sense of the body. One did not forget it easily.

"Right." She breathed out a long sigh of relief and collapsed onto the loveseat that
sat below the wide front window. A small cloud of dust bloomed up around her before
settling. "Ewww," she coughed, waving at her face.

"There are probably towels or sheets somewhere. I'll go look for them." I dropped
our bedrolls onto the carpet and kicked them up against the wall. It felt good to
be indoors, even if it was in a dusty apartment belonging to a stranger.

I found several sets of queen-sized sheets and four towels in a narrow hall closet.
After draping one over the modest loveseat, stripping, and remaking the bed in the
back of the apartment, I plopped down beside Kris, who was kneeling on the small couch
nervously looking out the window. The horses were standing shoulder to shoulder, apparently
sleeping.

"They'll be fine out there, don't worry," I said to her before dropping my head back
onto the cushion. "Damn, I'm tired."

"And hungry, no doubt," Connor said from the kitchen. He went through the whole room
and came up empty handed. Our food spread out on the round dining table didn't create
any sort of appetite either. I looked with resignation at the granola, cereal bars,
two apples, a few oatmeal cookies, three bruised tomatoes and more loquats then we
knew what to do with.

"Kris, why don't you take the apples out to the horses?"

She jumped off the couch and snatched them from the table before Connor had a chance
to object. "They need to eat something other than weeds, Connor…we'll find more tomorrow,"
I said.

"Tomorrow? So, are we staying here tonight?" He sat down beside me and dumped a handful
of the fresh fruit onto my lap. I rubbed one against my shirt until it shined.

"Why not? We need a break and we need shelter from the rain. I'd rather not spend
the next twelve hours sitting in wet clothes."

Connor popped a loquat into his mouth and just as I began to warn him, he spit the
partly chewed fruit out into his hand. "Damn, why didn't you tell me there's seeds
the size of rocks in here!"

I laughed loudly while nibbling the sides off one of the yellow orbs. "I was just
about to but you beat me to it. You didn't break a tooth, did you?"

Kris walked back inside, shaking water droplets off her arms. The cold followed her
in before she had a chance to close the door. "The apples weren't enough. I thought
Sunny was going to eat my shirt," she sighed.

"We'll find something more for them tomorrow," I promised.

"Are we almost there?" Connor asked, shifting to make room for Kris on the sofa.

"Less than two days, unless the weather sticks around for more than a few hours,"
I answered.

"Good, the sooner we get there - the sooner we can head back home. I want my own bed."

Taking one of the throw pillows from beneath my arm, I swung it hard into his face
until I was satisfied by his grunts of protest.

***

We have this little piece of the park all to ourselves for the time being. Shannon
lays on my right in her 'I love Music' t-shirt and cut off shorts with one hand above
her head twirling a piece of my hair between her fingers. Dean squirms around on my
left. His jeans are cuffed several times, exposing his pale feet and ankles. He wiggles
a foot at me and I smile at the blade of grass that is lodged between his two smallest
toes.

"Look at that one," Shannon sighs.

I turn my attention back to the task at hand, staring intently up at the cloudy sky.
The shapes move slowly, merging and separating fluidly. The day is humid and overcast
- the perfect kind of day for cloud watching.

"Hmm…I see…a snowman with a top hat on."

Shannon giggles and shifts on the picnic blanket. "A snowman? I see a giant mushroom,"
she laughs.

"Wearing a top hat?"

"Mushroom's don't wear hats, Mommy!" Dean exhales loudly and hooks a dirt-streaked
foot over my knee.

"Well, what do
you
see?" I ask him.

"I see an ice cream cone!"

Shannon groans.

"One scoop or two?" I tickle his side with my finger.

"Two!"

"Dean! You always see ice cream!" Shannon laughs.

The clouds begin to roll above us, darkening until they look like iron balloons -
titans of cold metal in the sky. I sit up quickly, scrambling to my feet to take in
the vast show above us. When I reach down for the children - they aren't there.

"Shannon, Dean?" I spin in a circle, seeing nothing but rolling grass and trees.

A shrill scream echoes around the tree line and I squint into the dreary day shadows
in an attempt to locate the source of the sound. "Where are you two?"

The sky answers by ripping itself into pieces, dumping torrents of icy water onto
my head as it falls to the earth in colossal amounts. I'm drenched in a second, wet
through my clothes and instantly chilled to the bone. As I sprint to the nearest tree,
wiping my dripping hair from my eyes, I search for the kids. Where are they, where
have they gone?

The jagged bark of the tree feels rough under my hand while I rest but I only slightly
feel it beneath my frozen skin. In a panic, I scream their names into the storm. My
voice barely a whisper over the sudden downpour. They're lost. My eyes flood with
a mixture of tears and rain water as they dart from one still form to the next, seeing
nothing but the disquieted forest around me. I have to find them.