Where We Belong (16 page)

“It’s not worth much.”

“It’s all our stuff.”

“Sooner or later, it’ll have to be here without us.”

“I’m not going. Okay? I’m not. I’m upset, and I want to be by myself. I need alone time. Usually I’d just go out if I needed alone time. But we’re not in walking distance of anything, and it’s pouring rain and freezing. So take her and go take the damn trailer back and at least leave me in the sleeping tent by myself. You have any idea how hard it’s going to be, living like this? All three of us, in that tent? In the pouring rain?”

“Can’t rain forever.”

She handed me another box. It felt light.

“Are we on to clothes already?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell what all’s in here. Just put it on top of the kitchen stuff. I don’t know what I packed in what. I was in a hurry.”

“And what if it stops raining? There’s no fence. We don’t have a yard. How are we supposed to handle her if we’re not fenced in?”

“Your complaints aren’t helping, Angie.”

“Well, I’m sorry. They’re all I’ve got right now.”

“Just go in the other tent and be alone. I’ll finish this. And then I’ll take Sophie, and we’ll take the trailer back.”

I ducked out into the rain fast, before she changed her mind.

“You have to let her out first, though,” I said. Even though it meant I had to stand there in the rain to say it.

“Why? You just said there’s no fence.”

“You can’t keep her strapped into that seat for a whole day. Which it will’ve been by the time you get back. It’s cruel. It’s like abuse.”

I could feel the rain running into my eyes and ears.

She didn’t answer. So I just ducked into shelter.

It wasn’t much shelter. It was out of the rain—there was that to be said for it. But there was nothing inside the tent but me. And I was soaked through, so the more I sat there, hugging my knees and shivering, the more a pool of rainwater formed under my butt.

But at least I was alone.

It was probably an hour later when I unzipped the tent flap and stuck my head out. Rain blew in, adding to the lake I’d created.

I’d begun to wonder what was taking my mom so long.

I was pretty desperate to go into the big tent and find towels and dry clothes, and maybe a blanket. But I’d been trying to wait until they were gone. They should have been gone by then. I was starting to wonder what the hell was going on. I knew I would have heard the car start up and drive away. If it had.

The car and trailer sat right where they’d been all along. No Mom, no Sophie.

I climbed out into the downpour.

I looked for them in the storage tent.

Nobody in there. Just what looked to be maybe two-thirds of our stuff. Like she hadn’t even finished unloading.

I looked into the trailer. It was empty.

She hadn’t been kidding when she said all our stuff wasn’t much.

I looked again at the stacks of boxes, trying to adjust to the idea that this really was everything we owned. It seemed impossible. Pathetic.

I sighed a couple of times and then grabbed the plastic bin of towels. I saw a tied-up garbage bag that looked like blankets. I took it sight unseen.

I ran back to the sleeping tent, forgetting about dry clothes. When I got zipped back in and remembered, it was more than I could take on. It was too much trouble.

Everything was just too much.

I opened the lid on the bin of towels and took out the rattiest one. I used it to soak up most of the water on the tent floor. But it soaked through immediately, and the floor was still plenty wet. I pulled out another towel.

Underneath it, I saw my mom’s old jewelry box. Which seemed weird, because she’d sold all her jewelry a long time ago—the few things from Grandma worth selling. I wondered why she even kept it. Then I wondered what she kept in it if she had no more jewelry.

I opened the lid.

Inside was a wallet, a Timex watch, and a plain silver ring.

I opened the wallet. My dad’s face smiled back at me from the driver’s license. Which was a shock I can’t quite describe. I quick shut the wallet, threw it back in the box, and shut the box. I covered it up with a clean towel and put the lid back on the bin.

First I thought, I know what this means. It means the police returned that stuff to her.

Except, she never told me they returned it. Why would she not tell me that? Besides, they could only get it back to us if they caught the guy. Which they never did.

Then I thought, It means they caught the guy. Whether I know it or not.

Except then there would have been a trial. And besides, how could I not know? It would have been on the news, and in the paper. The other kids at school would have seen it. The neighbors would have seen it.

I tore open the plastic blanket bag, even though I knew I should have carefully untied the knot. I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat there wondering where Sophie and my mom had gone, without the car, in the pouring rain.

But I couldn’t keep my mind off the watch and the wallet and the ring.

I thought, I have no idea what it means.

Except… I knew it meant that everything I’d always believed was not necessarily true.

It was probably another hour before my mom stuck her head into the tent. Rain water poured from her long hair, pooling on the floor I’d worked so hard to get dry.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said.

I thought, Are you a liar? Do you lie to me? Because that would be a problem.

I said, “Where’s Sophie?”

“That’s the problem. I have no idea. I let her out to move around, and she ran. I tried to catch her, but I slipped in the mud. By the time I got back up, I couldn’t see where she’d gone. I’ve been looking for her for hours. She must be hiding. I have no idea what to do.”

Which was my mom’s way of saying, “Now
you
do something.” When my mom said she was out of ideas, it meant I had to step up.

I just sat a minute, not sure what to say. It seemed to make her nervous.

“You think I should ask the campground host for help?” she asked. “He seemed nice.”

“No,” I said. I thought he’d just use it as proof that we couldn’t handle her. That he and his wife were right, and my mom and I were wrong. But I kept that part to myself. “What’s he supposed to do, anyway? If
you
can’t find her, how’s
he
supposed to find her?”

More silence. I was feeling frozen, like in that dream. No part of me wanted to move. Or even felt like it could.

“Kiddo,” she said, “we have to do something.”

I opened my mouth to say, “I can’t do this. You can’t keep asking me to take care of things.” I was overwhelmed, out of ideas, almost at the edge of tears. I was cold, I was wet, I was homeless. I was fourteen. I wasn’t anybody’s mother. I hadn’t lost Sophie. It wasn’t fair that I had to be the one to find her.

I closed my mouth on all of those things.

When I opened it again, I heard myself say, “Do you have Paul’s phone number?”

“No, but I have his address.”

“I’d want to call first. It’s going to really freak him out if I just show up at the door.”

“Okay. I’ll go to the pay phone and see if I can get a listing.”

I sat awhile longer, wondering why I hadn’t heard her calling for Sophie. I could only guess that she hadn’t called. Maybe she’d thought it went without saying that Sophie wouldn’t come.

But I wondered if it was more my mom Sophie was hiding from. Less me.

I stuck my head out through the tent flap and yelled her name. I didn’t mean to scream it. But it came out as a scream. It came out with all the panic, all the confusion… everything I’d been holding in.

A tent flap opened next door, and someone peeked out. I saw the curtain shift aside in the window of a motorhome. Then nothing moved. Wherever Sophie was, she couldn’t hear me. Either that or she heard me fine and just decided to stay put.

I looked up to see my mom standing over me. “No listing,” she said.

“All right. Take me there.”

“Take you there?”

“Did you really not hear me?”

“What if she comes back while we’re gone?”

“I don’t know. I just know I have to try this. We have to do something that might work. She’s soaking wet. If it gets down below freezing tonight… which it might… she’ll freeze. She won’t survive a night out.”

A long pause, during which my mom stood in the pouring rain. Not trying to stay dry in any way.

“I think we need to call the police,” she said.

“Let me try this first.”

“We’re burning daylight, kiddo.”

“It might work, though. And then we wouldn’t have to tell anybody. What if the police find her and don’t give her back?”

“Why wouldn’t they give her back?”

I didn’t answer.

After a while, I guess she got tired of standing in the rain, because she came inside the tent and sat close to me. I could feel a whole new lake pouring off her wet clothes and pooling underneath my butt.

“Why wouldn’t they give her back?”

“I don’t know. Because we can’t handle her. How many times are they supposed to come out and find her if we can’t keep her from running off?”

“Look. Kiddo. They might charge us for her rescue the second or third time. They might even stop responding to our calls. But they can’t just keep her.”

“They take kids away from parents when the parents can’t keep them safe.”

“I think the parent has to be unfit for that to happen.”

“You sure?”

Long silence.

Then she said, “What’s Paul supposed to do?”

“Nothing. I’m not going to ask him to do anything. It’s his dog I think could help. What if I could yell to Sophie that Rigby was here? She’d come running when she heard that.”

A sigh from her. “And if she doesn’t?”

“Let me try it. It’s our best bet. She’ll hide from the police or a search-and-rescue team, too. This is the only thing I can think of that might really work.”

“I’ll have to tell the campground host to watch for her while we’re gone.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

She ducked out of the tent again, leaving rain blowing into my face. I zipped up the flap.

I wondered what time it was. If it was already afternoon. I wondered how much time we had. If it would ever stop raining. If it would snow. If the whole soaked forest scene would ice over. If the ground would be slick, and the branches would fall under the weight of the icicles.

I wondered if it was my fault, for telling my mom she had to let Sophie out of the car.

I wondered if we would ever see my sister again.

I grabbed my mom’s jewelry box out of the towel bin and ran it next door to the storage tent. I wedged it in the middle of a carton, between some fitted sheets. She wouldn’t remember where she’d packed it. At least, I hoped she wouldn’t. And I didn’t want her to know I’d seen.

“Leave me around the corner.”

“Aren’t you tired of being soaked?”

“I don’t care. I don’t want him to see you. If he sees your car outside his new house… it’s too stalker-ish. He’ll freak. It has to just be me.”

I stepped out into the rain, which had lightened to more of a steady mist.

I looked around. I couldn’t even see houses. Just mailboxes. And the streets weren’t paved. I mean, in town they were. But out here in the residential part of things, it was just muddy gravel roads, dense stands of trees, and mailboxes.