Magic hour: a novel (21 page)

It took a long time, but the girl finally dipped her hand in the water.

The girl’s eyes widened. She made a sound that was half sigh and half growl.

Julia stripped down to her bra and panties, then got into the tub. “You see?” she said, smiling. “This is what I want you to do.” When the girl stepped closer, Julia got out of the tub and sat on the cool porcelain edge. “Your turn. Go ahead.”

Cautiously, the girl climbed over the tub’s porcelain edge and lowered herself into the water. The minute she was in, she made a sound, almost like a purr, and looked up at Julia. Then she slapped at the water and kicked her feet and splashed around, and set about exploring. She licked the tiles and touched the grout and sniffed the faucets. She cupped water in her hands and drank it (a habit to be broken, of course, but later).

Finally, Julia reached for the bar of lavender-scented soap in the dish. This, she handed to the girl, who smelled it, then tried to eat it.

Julia couldn’t help laughing. “No. Icky.” She made a face. “Icky.”

The child frowned, tried to grab it.

Julia rubbed her hands together to make a soapy foam. “Okay. I’m going to bathe you now. Clean. Soap.” Very slowly she reached out, took the girl’s hand in hers and began washing.

The girl watched her with the intensity of a magician’s apprentice trying to learn a new trick. Slowly, as Julia kept washing her hands the girl began to relax. She was pliable when Julia gently turned her around in the tub and began washing her hair. As Julia massaged her scalp, the child began to hum.

It took Julia a moment to realize that there was a tune within the notes.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Julia straightened. Of all the unexpected twists today, this one was the most important. “Somebody sang that to you, little one. Who was it?”

The girl kept humming, her eyes closed.

Julia rinsed the long black hair, noticing how thick and curly it was. Tendrils coiled around her fingers like vines. She saw, too, the network of scars that crisscrossed the tiny back; there was one near her shoulder that was especially ugly.

Where have you been?

The song was a glimpse into a part of this girl’s true history; the first one they’d seen. More questions were unlikely to solicit answers. Julia knew what she needed was more primal than that.

She decided to sing along with the humming. “How I wonder what you are.”

The girl splashed around until she was facing Julia. Her blue-green eyes were so wide they seemed too big for her small, pointed face.

Julia finished the song, then planted a hand to her chest and said, “Julia. Ju-li-a. That’s me.” She grabbed the girl’s hand. “Who are you?”

The only answer was that intense stare.

With a sigh, Julia stood and reached for a towel. “Come on.”

To her amazement, the girl stood up and got out of the tub.

“Did you understand me? Or did you stand up because I did?” Julia heard the wonder in her voice. So much for professional detachment. This girl kept throwing curveballs. “Do you know how to speak? Talk? Words?” She touched her chest again. “Julia. Ju-li-a.” Then she touched the girl’s chest. “Who? Name? I need to call you something.”

Nothing but the stare.

Julia dried the girl off, then dressed her. “I’m putting you in pull-up diapers again. Just to be safe. Turn around. I’ll braid your hair. That’s what my mom always did to me. But I’ll be gentler, I promise. Mom used to pull so hard I’d cry. My sister always said it’s why my eyes tilted up. There. All done.” She accidentally bumped into the bathroom door. It shut hard; the mirror on the back of it framed the child in a perfect rectangle.

The girl gasped so loudly it sounded as if she’d just washed up on shore. She reached out for the mirror, trying to touch the other little girl in the room.

“Have you ever seen yourself before?” Julia asked, but even as she asked the question, she knew the answer.

None of this made sense. The pieces didn’t fit together. The wolf. The eating habits. The song. The toilet training. They were tiny pieces that made up the puzzle’s border, but the central image, the
point,
was unseen yet. Certainly she would have seen her reflection in water, at least.

“That’s
you,
honey. You. See the beautiful blue-green eyes, the long black hair. You look so pretty in that nightgown.”

The girl punched her reflection. When her knuckles hit the hard glass, she yelped loudly in pain.

Julia moved in beside her and knelt down. Now they were both in the mirror, side by side, their faces close. The girl was breathtakingly beautiful. She reminded Julia of a young Elizabeth Taylor. “You see? That’s me. Julia. And you.”

Julia saw when understanding dawned.

Very slowly the girl touched her chest and mouthed a sound. Her reflection did the same.

“Did you say something? Your name?”

The girl stuck out her tongue. For the next forty minutes, while Julia put on a tee shirt and sweats and brushed her teeth, the child played in front of the mirror. At one point Julia left long enough to get her notebook and digital camera. When she returned to the bathroom, the girl was clapping her hands and bouncing up and down in time with her reflection.

Julia took several photographs—close-ups of the girl’s face—then put the camera away. Notebook in hand, Julia wrote:
Discovery of self.
And documented every moment.

It went on for hours. The child stared at herself in the mirror long after the sky had gone dark and shown its cache of stars.

Finally, Julia couldn’t write anymore. Her hand was starting to spasm. “That’s it. Come on. Bedtime.” She walked out of the bathroom. When the girl didn’t follow, Julia reached down for a book. They finished
The Secret Garden,
so she chose
Alice in Wonderland.

“Fitting, wouldn’t you say?” she commented to herself. After all, she was alone in the room when she said it, and equally alone when she began to read aloud. “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and ‘what’s the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’”

In the bathroom, the jumping stopped.

Julia smiled and kept reading. She had just introduced the white rabbit when the girl came out of the bathroom. In her pretty white eyelet nightgown with pink ribbons, and her hair braided and tamed, she looked like any little girl. The only hint of wildness was in her eyes. Too big for her face and too earnest for her age, they fixed on Julia, who very calmly kept reading.

The girl came up beside her, sidled close.

Julia stared at her. “Hello, little one. You like it when I read?”

The girl’s hand thumped down hard on the book.

Julia was too startled by the unexpected movement to respond. This was the first time the girl had really tried to communicate, and she was being quite forceful about it.

The girl smacked the book again and looked at Julia. Then she touched her chest.

It was the movement Julia had made to emphasize her own name.

“Alice?” she whispered, feeling a kind of awe move through her. “Is your name Alice?”

The girl thumped the book again. When Julia didn’t respond, the girl thumped it again.

Julia closed the book. On the cover of this ancient, well-worn edition was a painting of a pretty, blond-haired Alice with a large, brightly dressed Queen of Hearts. She touched the picture of the girl. “Alice,” she said, then she placed her hand on the flesh-and-blood girl beside her. “Is that you? Alice?”

The girl grunted and opened the book, smacking the page.

It was where they’d left off. The exact page.

Amazing.

Julia didn’t know if the reaction had been to the name or the reading, but it didn’t matter. For whatever reason, the little girl had finally stepped into this world. Julia almost laughed out loud; that was how good she felt right now.

The girl hit the book again.

“Okay, I’ll keep reading, but from now on you’re Alice. So, Alice, get in bed. When you’re under the covers again, I’ll read you a story.”

Exactly one hour later the girl was asleep and Julia closed the book.

She leaned over and kissed the tiny, sweet-scented pink cheek. “Good night, little Alice. Sleep well in Wonderland.”

ELEVEN

E
LLIE WAS ALONE IN THE POLICE STATION, GOING THROUGH HER
notes from this afternoon.

All those grieving parents and their missing children were counting on her.

She was terrified she’d disappoint them. It was the fear that drove her, kept her butt in this seat and her tired eyes focused on the pile of reports on her desk.

But she’d been at it too long. She couldn’t be objective anymore, couldn’t make any more notes about blood types and dental records and abduction dates. All she saw when she closed her eyes were broken families; people who still put up Christmas stockings every year for their missing children.

“I could hear you crying outside.”

She looked up sharply, sniffing hard. “I wasn’t crying. I poked myself in the eye. What are you doing here anyway?”

Cal stood there, smiling gently, his hands shoved deeply in his pockets. In a black Dark Knight tee shirt and faded jeans, he looked more like a high school kid than a married, fully grown father of three.

He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. “You okay?”

She wiped her eyes. The smile she gave him was pure fiction; both of them knew it. “I’m out of my league, Cal.”

He shook his head. A comma of jet black hair fell across his eyes.

Without even thinking, she pushed it away. “What do I do?”

He jerked back at her touch, then laughed awkwardly. “You’ll do what you always do, El.”

“What’s that?”

“Whatever it takes. You’ll find the girl’s family.”

“No wonder I keep you around.” This time her smile was almost the real thing.

He stood up. “Come on. I’ll buy you a beer.”

“What about Lisa and the girls?”

“Tara’s babysitting.” He reached for his rain slicker, put it on.

“I don’t need a beer, Cal. Really. Besides, I should get home. You don’t need to—”

“No one watches out for you anymore, El.”

“I know, but—”

“Let me.”

The simple way he said it plucked at her heart. He was right. It had been a long time since someone had taken care of her. “Come on.” She grabbed her black leather jacket and followed him out of the station.

The streets were empty again, quiet.

A full moon hung in the night sky, illuminating streets still damp from a late night rain. It gave off an eerie radiance that stained the trees and silvered the road.

Ellie tried not to think about the case as she drove. Instead she focused on the darkness of the road and the comforting light from the headlights behind her. Truthfully, it felt good to have someone following her home.

She pulled into her yard and parked. Before she could turn off the ignition, a song came on the radio.
“
Leaving on a Jet Plane
.”

She was plunged into a memory. Mom and Dad playing this song on the piano and fiddle, asking their girls to sing along.
My El,
Dad would say,
has an angel’s voice.

She saw her pint-sized self running for the makeshift stage, sidling up beside her dad. Later, when Sammy Barton played that song for her, she’d tumbled into love. It had been like drowning, that love; she’d barely made it out of the water alive.

“You used to love this song,” Cal said, standing by her door, looking down at her through the open window.

“Used to,” Ellie said, pushing the memories aside. “Now it makes me think of husband number two. Only he left on a Greyhound bus. You’ve got to want to get away from someone pretty damn bad to ride a bus.” She got out of the car.

“He was a fool.”

“I guess you’re talking about every man I’ve ever loved. And there are a truckload of them.”

“But never the right one,” he said quietly, studying her.

“Thanks for that insight, Sherlock. I hadn’t noticed.”

“Someone is feeling sorry for herself tonight.”

Ellie had to smile at that. “I won’t let it last long. Thanks for letting me vent.”

He slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Come on, Chief. Buy me a beer.”

They walked across the springy lawn and climbed the porch steps. Inside, Ellie was surprised to find her sister up and working.

Julia sat at the kitchen table, with papers strewn all around her. “Hey,” she said, looking up.

“Julia?” Cal said. His face lit up in a smile.

Julia stood up slowly, staring at him. “Cal? Cal Wallace? Is that really you?”