Ahead, I see them: the narrow apartment buildings. Crowded close, they remind me of bodies on a bus, shoulders mashed together. Dodging junk piles, I run toward the buildings, and then I plunge into an alley.
The alley is as dank and dark as I remember it. The brick walls lean in toward each other, cutting off the last vestiges of daylight. I feel buried in twilight. Beside me, a rat scurries past, and the cardboard boxes shift and rustle. I pick up what could be the same trash can lid that I had tossed weeks ago. The weight of it makes me feel better.
Walking as quickly and quietly as I can, I retrace our steps toward Peter’s apartment. My shoes stick to the muck on the ground, and the stench pervades my nostrils until it swims in my head. Clatters and snuffling and squeaking and a thousand tiny sounds make my skin prickle. I listen for the dogs.
The air is damp and chill, as if I were a thousand miles from the desert. I can’t see stars overhead. The sky is a black sliver, as if the street were inverted above me. I walk through the shadows and hope this is the right direction.
I hear a door shut, and I freeze. Voices, ahead. I duck behind a Dumpster as two men pass by beneath the yellowish glow of a streetlamp. Also behind the Dumpster, a mutt watches me from beneath a cardboard box. His fur is matted around his face. Mud has dried on him. He has a collar. He watches me, but he doesn’t move.
Heart thumping hard, I wait until I am certain the men are gone before I creep out.
I quicken my pace. Every shadow leers at me, and I hear my heart beat louder than my footsteps. My breath sounds rough, and my eyes ache from staring so hard to make sense of the layers of darkness.
But at last, I see the stairwell, lit by the dim glow of a bulb. I run the final few feet and leap-run-fall down the stairs. I land against the door, smacking it with my palms. I knock.
No answer.
“Please, Peter,” I whisper at the door. “Please be here.” Images flood through my mind again: Claire alone in an alley, found by the dogs, found by the men, not found at all. I tell myself that it’s only my overactive imagination. Claire’s a survivor. She’s tough and fast and smart. But she was scared. Scared kids don’t think straight. She could have run straight into danger.
I remember that Claire had a special knock. Slow twice, three times fast...
I am rewarded with footsteps, and the door swings open. As soon as Peter sees me, he laughs, joy filling his voice and ricocheting off the brick walls of the apartment buildings. “A surprise! And it’s not even my birthday. Perhaps my unbirthday surprise?”
“Claire?” I call. His laugh dies as I push past him into the dark hallway, through the curtain, to the star-filled room. He’s decorated the tree with Tiffany’s nooses. He follows me.
“Lauren, are you all right?” He reaches toward me, doesn’t touch me, lets his hand fall to his side.
“I thought she’d come here.” I spin in a circle, scanning the fairy-tale room. Broken marionettes lay on a shelf. The button jar is overflowing, and one chair is covered with candy wrappers, laid flat like quilt pieces. The Christmas lights swirl in a spiral pattern. “She’s not here.” I hear my voice. It’s shrill, not like my own. “You have to help me find her!”
“Claire can take care of herself,” Peter says. “She’s a resourceful girl. Why do you think you need to find her?”
Because of the dogs. Because of the dark. Because of the Missing Man. Because... I don’t see the words coming. They burst out of me without passing by my mind. “Because I have to be able to save someone I love!” And suddenly, I am crying. Great heaving sobs that hurt my ribs. My face feels as though it is about to crack. I am crying so hard that there are no tears, only heaving racking sob noises.
Peter strokes my hair. His arms are around me. I feel the warmth of his bare chest as I sob against him. He doesn’t speak, and I am grateful for that.
At last, I can breathe again.
“She’s dying,” I say.
His grip tightens around me, and I realize he thinks I mean Claire.
“My mother. She’s dying.” I’ve never said that word out loud. I’ve said she’s sick, that she needs me, but not that word,dying.“Claire ran from the Missing Man because she isn’t lost anymore and I still am. I thought she’d come here.”
“And lo, the prodigal savior returns to take again from me,” Peter says. He has a mocking grin on his lips, but there’s no laughter in his eyes. His hands are still tight on my arms, almost enough to bruise. “If you had found what you lost, would you have left Claire?”
“I’d have made sure she was okay.”
“You could be happy here,” Peter says. “You have a home. You have family. You have safety, food, water, shelter. I have given this all to you.”
I don’t know what to say. His eyes are intense, and I am too close to him. I can feel his heartbeat through my shirt. His skin is warm. He’s looking at me as if he wants to kiss me or devour me and hasn’t decided which. “Will you help me find Claire?”
He releases me, and I stagger backward. Throwing my hand out, I catch my balance on the tree. The nooses sway from the impact, and the Christmas lights twinkle and shift. He says softly, “‘If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.’ When you came to my door, I thought—” Cutting himself off, he turns his back to me and faces the tree with the tiny nooses. “She wouldn’t run to where he can find her,” he says. “She’d run to where she’smorelost.”
He waits for me to understand. After a moment, I do. “The void,” I say. He knocks the nooses with his finger, sends them swinging faster. I know I’m right. “Can you bring her out? I...I’ve found things. I’ve never found people.”
“She chose it.”
“Knowing that you’d find her,” I say. “She trusts you.” I take a deep breath. “So do I.”
