The Lost and the Found (3 page)

I
have my very own spot on the sofa at Michel and Dad's apartment. They've got one of those huge corner sofas, and my spot is right in the corner, where I can look out the window and see the canal. I always try to sit in corners when I can. I didn't even realize it until Michel pointed it out to me one day. Then Dad laughed and said it was true, and that I'd been doing it since I was a little girl. He stopped laughing when I said that maybe I didn't like having my back to the room because photographers have a nasty habit of popping up from nowhere and snapping away. I like to see them coming, at least.

Michel's made us both a cup of tea, and I'm sitting in my usual spot; the sun is streaming through the windows and Tonks, the cat, is curled up on my lap. (Michel is a massive Harry Potter fan; Dad barely even knows who Harry Potter is.)

“So…you and Thomas…?”

“Yeah, me and Thomas.”

“That's big news! How are you feeling about it all?”

I shrug. “I don't know. Good, I think. It was…nice.”

“Wow. That bad? You mean the earth didn't move and angels didn't sing and there were no fireworks?” I shake my head. “Well, that's exactly how your first time is supposed to be—average at best. God, I remember my first—”

I stick my fingers in my ears. “La-la-la, I'm not listening!” I only take my fingers out when I'm sure that he's stopped talking. “I don't want to hear about you having sex, because that makes me think about Dad having sex, and that's just…” I shudder and make a gagging sound.

Michel smiles at me. “Oh, right, so I have to sit here and listen to you, but you don't want to hear about the time when Jean-Luc waited for me in the changing rooms after soccer practice and—”

I throw a pillow at Michel's head and laugh so hard that Tonks leaps from my lap and stalks off without a backward glance. It feels so good to laugh with Michel, even though I know he's only trying to distract me from thinking about what's happening at the police station.

“Seriously, though, are you okay about all this?”

“Okay about what? Losing my virginity or Laurel?”

Michel shrugs and smiles. “Both, I guess.”

“I'm okay.” I nod as if to reassure myself. “Yeah, I'm okay. I think I love Thomas and I think he loves me, and we've been together
forever,
so there really wasn't any reason
not
to have sex. And I think I'm going to like it. We just need to practice a bit more…and find somewhere a bit better than the back of his van.”

“Romantic,” Michel deadpans.

“As for Laurel…well, I'm happy, of course.”

Michel shuffles over to sit right next to me. “You don't have to pretend with me. You know that, don't you?”

I
do
know that. I've always been honest with him. I don't know what it is about Michel, but I've trusted him almost since the day we met. I can tell him
anything,
and he would never even dream of telling Dad. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I'm scared, Michel.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“You know that thing they say—be careful what you wish for? I've wished for this my whole life, it seems. I've dreamed of this day, but I suppose I never really thought it would happen. I mean, at the time I
thought
I believed it would happen….It's only now that I realize I was so sure she was gone forever. Does that make sense?”

Michel nods.

“I've been in her shadow ever since she was taken. You know how much I've hated that everything is
always
about Laurel. And that I couldn't have a normal childhood like everyone else. But now that she's back, it's all going to be different, isn't it? And maybe…I don't know…maybe I'll realize I was sort of okay with being in her shadow after all.”

Michel puts his arm around my shoulders, and I lean my head against his. “It's okay, you know? Whatever you're feeling is okay. There's no right way to feel about this. It's hardly a normal situation, is it?”

Normal.
I've always been jealous of normal. Boring too. I'd have been perfectly happy with the most boring, normal childhood you can imagine—like Martha's. Nothing remotely interesting has ever happened to anyone in Martha's family, and she doesn't even realize how lucky she is.

Michel's phone rings, and it's Dad calling from the police station. Michel looks at me guiltily, and I can tell we're both thinking the same thing: he really should have called me first. Michel's end of the conversation mostly consists of “yes,” “okay,” and “I see”; it's not particularly enlightening. I leave the room to look for Tonks and find her under the duvet in my room. I scratch her head until she forgives me for spooking her.

Eventually Michel comes in and hands me the phone. He leaves the room to give me some privacy, and I immediately wish he'd stayed.

“Faith? It's her….It's really her.” Dad's crying over the phone—I've never heard him cry like this, huge, gulping sobs. “The teddy bear…you remember that bear of hers?” He doesn't wait for me to answer. “Well, somehow they got the sound chip to work! They played us the recording! Can you believe it?” Again he doesn't wait for me to speak. “She's…Oh my god, Faith…it's really
her
! Laurel's come home!”

I say, “That's great, Dad,” and it sounds like he's just told me his soccer team has won the league. My reaction is
all
wrong, so I try again. “It's amazing.” A little better, but not much.

Dad clears his throat. “She's been asking for you. She
remembers.
Isn't that wonderful? Just wait till you see her, Faith. She's a beautiful young woman…just like you.” It couldn't be more obvious that the “just like you” is an afterthought.

“She's really asking for me?”

“Yes! She wanted to know if you're still obsessed with building sand castles!” Dad chuckles.

I was building a sand castle in the sandbox when she was taken.

“We showed her a picture of you, Faith. She couldn't believe how grown up you are!”

This is all very nice, but there's something he's not telling me. “Where has she been? What happened to her?”

I hear muffled voices. Dad must have put his hand over the phone. I wonder if Mom's been listening in this whole time. “We'll talk about that when I get home, love. All that matters is that Laurel's back—safe and sound.”

Dad tells me that Laurel will be staying in a hotel for the next few days. Mom will stay with her, but he'll come home. The police need to talk to Laurel, and she needs to get checked out by a doctor and a psychologist and various other people. There's a specialist counselor on her way up from London.

I'm not allowed to tell anyone yet—not even Thomas and Martha. (
Of course
I'm going to tell Thomas and Martha.) Apparently there's going to be a press conference tomorrow afternoon. I wonder how they can possibly have all this planned out already.

“You can meet her tomorrow, love. How does that sound? Seeing your big sister?” Dad's using his coaxing voice—the one that makes me feel like a child.

How does that sound? Utterly terrifying.

“I can't wait,” I say.

M
ichel manages to convince me that making macarons will make me feel better about everything. For the past couple of years, the two of us have spent every Saturday afternoon in the kitchen together. Dad's usually watching soccer or out on one of his bike rides.

It started off as a bit of a laugh. My pathetic efforts would often end up in the garbage, and Michel would take his perfect macarons into the veterinary practice and share them with his colleagues (after we'd eaten our fill, of course). It was Dad who suggested we start selling them at the local farmers' market. At first we weren't sure that people would go for them, but on the first day, we sold out within an hour. That was when we discovered that the French accent was definitely an asset. It was my idea that Michel should play up the whole French thing. Who wouldn't want to buy authentic French macarons made by an authentic Frenchman who just happens to be very, very handsome?

Thomas texts when Michel and I are having our customary pre-macaron-making cup of tea. He wants to know why I haven't been in touch all day. He's worried I might be upset about what happened yesterday. I text back:
Upset after all the sex, you mean?
Thomas doesn't like to talk about sex. I don't have to worry about him bragging in the boys' changing rooms. Not that he'd ever be in the boys' changing rooms—he's not exactly the sporty type. Thomas likes to think of himself as a tortured artist. He sketches and writes poetry and drinks far more coffee than can possibly be good for him.

I reply to Martha while I'm at it. I bet she's been waiting patiently all day, trying not to check her phone every two minutes:
Last night was good! Thanks again for covering for me. Speak later? I have news (not sex-related).

Martha texts back first:
WHAT NEWS?

Thomas:
I miss you.
I roll my eyes at that; I can't help it. Thomas does not do text banter, no matter how hard I try to lure him into it.

I'll tell them both about Laurel tonight. They deserve to know.

Today's macarons are a spectacular failure on my part. Michel's are fine, though, so he makes another couple of batches (one batch of raspberry and one of salted caramel—my favorite). He realizes that I'm missing my macaron mojo and tells me we don't have to go to the market tomorrow, that it's totally up to me. He can go on his own or stay home—whichever I'd prefer. I don't think it's possible for me to love him any more than I do at this exact moment. I tell him I want to go to the market. I don't tell him the reason why: this might be the last time that we get to do this—just the two of us. Maybe Laurel will want to come next week, and maybe she'll be miraculously brilliant at baking, and her macarons will have perfect, shiny tops every time.

Dad arrives home early evening; he looks worn-out. He quickly hugs Michel, then he hugs me for the longest time. They say a few words to each other in French—speaking quickly so that I can't even try to understand.

We sit down on the sofa and Dad talks. Laurel is slightly malnourished, with a serious vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight, but she's physically okay otherwise. First impressions are that she's in better psychological shape than anyone could have expected. But at the same time, she's clearly traumatized; she lashed out at a police officer trying to take a cheek swab for DNA testing. It took an hour for Mom to calm her down, but she wouldn't let anyone else near her. Apparently everyone was very understanding about it. After all, says Dad, Laurel has been through a terrible ordeal.

Dad doesn't go into much detail, other than to say that she was taken by a very sick man who kept her locked up in a basement. A lot of people had suspected that was the case. Mom always maintained that maybe she was taken by a couple who were desperate to have a little girl—and maybe they were raising her as if she were their own and taking the best care of her. Nobody dared to disagree with her whenever she mentioned this theory of hers. They tended to nod and smile awkwardly.

“Did she escape?” I like the idea of Laurel escaping, being daring and brave. Fighting back.

Dad shakes his head. “He let her go.”

“Why?”

“We don't know.”

“Why would you go to the trouble of keeping someone locked up for all that time only to let them go all of a sudden?”

“I'm just glad he did.”

I am, too. Of course I am. “Did the police catch him?”

Another shake of the head. “No. We don't even know where she was being held. The guy blindfolded her, drove her to Stanley Street, and left her in the front yard. By all accounts, the couple living there got a bit of a shock when she knocked on the door. The police are doing everything they can to find the man, obviously. And Laurel's trying her best, but it's hard for her. She can't really remember how long they drove for. And she can't tell us much about where she's been kept all these years—the bastard was clever about it.” Dad
never
swears in front of me.

“So this psycho's still out there? What if he comes back?”

“The police think he'll lie low—go into hiding. But they're not taking any chances. They'll be watching us, okay? There's no need for you to worry about that.”

I sit back and try to process this information. The police have
no
idea who this man is. How is that even possible? I try to picture the sort of man who would do something like this. A man who would keep a girl locked in a basement for all those years. “He abused her, didn't he?”

Dad looks at Michel, and Michel nods, and it makes me so angry that my father can't make a decision by himself for once. “Yes. He beat her, too.” Dad's jaw is tight. “The abuse was…systematic.”

I close my eyes to blink away the tears.

“I'm not saying this to upset you, Faith. But you need to be prepared. What she's been through…” He shakes his head and breathes out slowly. Then he sits up straighter and pats me on the leg. “But the most important thing is that she's safe now. We can be a family again.” I think he's forgetting that we can't exactly go back to being the sort of family we were thirteen years ago.

Dad says we need to give Laurel time to heal, and that she'll be getting the best help available—therapy and counseling and whatever she needs.

Mom and Dad have arranged for me to go see her tomorrow morning. It looks like I won't be going to the market with Michel after all. There's no point in arguing—they wouldn't understand.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to my parents that I might have slightly conflicted feelings about seeing my sister for the first time in thirteen years. That I might be nervous—even scared.