Bridget, April 2, 2015: Three weeks before the birds fell
Lord, Bridget missed Georgia. April already and just still so damn cold, some nights you could hardly inhale, your lungs seemed to freeze midbreath.
Bridget sat at her desk long after the final bell, distracted, thinking about her mama. She’d spent the week south, in Colquitt, Georgia. They’d had off Monday and Tuesday, some slim semblance of a spring break, although to Bridget that had always coincided with Easter. She guessed they didn’t do that anymore, separation of church and school and what have you.
So she’d taken a personal day and made it a five-day weekend and flown south, like a snowbird. Down to Mama, her mobile home propped up on a poured foundation on thirty acres of land. Aunt Nadine in a unit behind Mama, on the same plot, the path between their homes worn thin from the sisters traversing the lawn in the dark. Bridget sat outside with them on the nights that it spiked up into the seventies, legs thrown over lawn chairs while they played canasta at a card table on the in-between dusty grass. Aunt Nadine surrounded the table with buckets of citronella candles to keep the skeeters away, and they sang loud as anything because who cared, they hadn’t any neighbors. The air was sticky wet, even in winter, the swamp behind the trailer vaporizing into the air and hanging there like a thick fog.
She hadn’t seen Mama since Christmas, when she’d barely managed to get the tree up, a spindly teetering thing, propped up in the corner, strung with big colorful outdoor lights and only a handful of ornaments. When Bridget had asked her about it, Mama only muttered and waved her hand around in a circle, it’s good enough, bebe. Mama wasn’t Cajun French, but she claimed she spent a summer on the bayou as a teenager. With Mama it was hard to tell what was real and what only existed in her mind.
Mama’s crazy seemed to keep getting a little crazier and Nadine had gotten a little more watchful, but Mama took her pills and Nadine set limits on her wine and it all seemed to be working. Nadine, the spinster, took care of Mama, the widow. Sometimes Bridget couldn’t believe she’d followed in her Mama’s footsteps, a widow at thirty-seven. Sometimes she wondered when Mama’s crazy would get her, too.
Bridget left as tired as she’d come, but for drastically different reasons.
She’d gotten so lost in her own brain, thinking that it had been too long since she’d been down there, that she needed to make more time, more often. Thinking about how Nadine would cope when Mama went first, which she surely would, lifelong bipolar medication eating away at her liver like a Georgia swamp parasite.
“Mrs. Peterson?” Taylor Lawson stood in Bridget’s doorway, her messenger bag slung across her body, her shoulders hunched forward with the weight of it.
“Hi, Taylor,” Bridget said with a smile, but she was tired. She wanted to go home to her sandwich and her tea and Sunny the cat.
“Sure.” A dark green plastic and metal chair was pushed against the whiteboard and she pulled it to her desk with her foot. Bridget motioned for her to sit. “What’s up?”
“I’m worried about Lucia.” She pushed her bangs away from her face with her hand. “I know you don’t like her.”
“That’s not true, Taylor. I don’t dislike her. I think . . .” Bridget paused, because her feelings seemed irrelevant, but then also because Taylor was Lucia’s unlikely best friend, inasmuch as Lucia could have a friend. Taylor, dark and petite, friendly but a bit of a follower, trailed by Lucia like a pet. She gave Lucia what little social credibility she had, got the duo invited to parties and events. People mostly liked Taylor and tolerated Lucia’s strangeness. Or were at least fascinated by it, until she became some kind of oddball fetish: where’s the weirdo? Then later: where’s the witch?
Bridget thought it odd, these mixing of classes. When she was in school, the juniors and seniors stuck to their own like cattle in a chute. These days, everyone was all mixed up in some kind of bubblegum soup.
But Lucia and Taylor had been added to the right table in the cafeteria, between Andrew Evans—King Evans—and Porter Max, vying for the attention of Riana Yardley. Josh Tempest, with his arms thrown around Kelsey Minnow, protective and needful, his face in her hair while she chewed iceberg lettuce from between two fingers. Lucia perched on the end, her legs thrown to the side, as though ready to bolt at any time. She rarely saw them talk to her. If Bridget had to guess, she’d wager most kids were afraid of her.
“I think Lucia needs attention. Everyone is looking for the same thing, to feel loved. Lucia’s no different,” Bridget finally said.
“I just don’t know who else to talk to. It’s weird, because she’s eighteen.”
“What’s weird?”
“Lucia said she ran away. She said she’s been living at the old paper mill.” Taylor ran her fingernail along a ridge in the wood top of the desk. Bridget felt her heart speed up. Oanoke Paper stood on the edge of town right before a thick impenetrable woods, part of the twenty-two thousand square acres of preserved game lands in northern Pennsylvania. While some well-traveled areas contained winding but clear trails, most of the forest was left untamed, dense and disorienting.
“Taylor, that’s not possible. The nights are still pretty cold. In the thirties sometimes.”
“She says she has a fire. And some kind of oil heater? I don’t know where she’d get that.”
Every other person in this county was a hunter. Schools were closed for opening day of buck season. Camping equipment wasn’t hard to come by.
“Plus, I think she skipped work. She never does that.” Taylor kicked the leg of the desk, a quiet, steady thump vibrating up Bridget’s arms.
“She works?”
“At the Goodwill. A few nights a week,” Taylor said, but with an air of confusion like a girl who’d never had a job might say.
“What do you know about her family?” Bridget asked, her tongue thick. Taylor shifted the binder in her hand and stared at the wall behind Bridget’s head.
“Enough. I don’t go there much. Her dad left, but I don’t know when. He’s a drunk. Her brother is Lenny Hamm. He was supposed to graduate like three years ago but he dropped out.” She shrugged like this was no big deal. “Heroin.”
“Heroin?” Bridget blanched.
“A lot of kids use,” Taylor said.
Bridget sighed. She thought of her tea. Her cat. She stood, grabbed her purse. “Come on, Taylor. You’re in it now.”
Taylor stood but hung back. “I should get home, Mrs. Peterson . . .”
“I’ll take you home,” Bridget said. “After.”
• • •
Bridget had never been to a student’s home. That was more Nate’s thing; he’d been invited for dinners with the baseball players, steaming plates of homemade meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Comfort food as thanks. Bridget kept a nice air of distance and she’d wanted it to stay that way.
Lucia’s house sat outside of town, away from the developments and square streets that formed “downtown” Mt. Oanoke. It stood alone, beyond the trailer park on the outskirts, over the railroad tracks, literally the wrong side. It was asphalt sided, broken in places, and the shingles were hanging. The house was grayish-brown, a noncolor, and the porch was sunken as though supporting the weight of some invisible giant. The upstairs window was broken, splintered out like a spiderweb.
Bridget stared at that window, halted at the end of a broken sidewalk, one arm outstretched protectively in front of Taylor.
“What’s wrong?” Taylor asked.
“That curtain,” Bridget pointed to the broken window. “I think it moved?”
“I’ve been here before, it’s no big deal.” Taylor shrugged. “It’s just a mess. Her family is a fucking mess.” Her hand went to her mouth and she let out a little whoop. “Sorry.”
“Should we have called first? Lucia, I mean,” Bridget asked.
“She doesn’t answer her phone much anymore, anyway. Just text, and only sometimes.”
Bridget navigated the upended concrete. The porch groaned under their combined weight. She knocked. Waited. Knocked again.
Finally, the interior door slid open, wide enough for a face, a pair of gray eyes.
“Yeah?” The boy looked like Lucia, skinny with that same shock of white hair. Lenny, Bridget guessed.
“Is Lucia here?” Bridget asked, and Lenny looked past her to Taylor, regarding her with a nod.
“No.” He started to close the door.
“Lenny, wait.” Taylor reached out, her hand on the screen door handle. “When did you see her last?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Awhile ago.” Lenny shrugged, and in doing so the door inched open. Bridget could see the living room beyond, dark and brownish. Trash on the floor. A smell wafted out the door, ripe and sour, like beer and body odor.
“Is your father here, Lenny?” Bridget asked, hiking her purse up on her shoulder, reflexively crossing her arm across her chest.
“No. Who are you?” Lenny finally asked, his eyes narrowed.
“I’m Mrs. Peterson, Lucia’s teacher. If she’s not here, have you reported her missing?”
“Uh, is she missing?” Lenny scratched his head. “Has she been in school?”
She had, of course, but Lenny didn’t know that.
“Where is she staying, Lenny, if she’s not here?” Taylor pushed past Lenny into the house and Bridget followed her, impotent.
On the inside, the smell was worse. Greasy, cloying. Bridget held her breath, looked around. The place was sparsely furnished, a couch and a television propped up on wooden crates. She craned her neck to look to the kitchen, piled high with pots and pans. As far as she could tell, the garbage had been accumulating for months.
“God, I haven’t been here in forever. What the hell happened?” Taylor turned in place, a slow pirouette. “Where’s Jimmy?”
“Who’s Jimmy?” Bridget asked.
“Lucia and Lenny’s dad.” Taylor said. “This place has always been a shithole, but not like this.” She didn’t even apologize for the curse this time.
“Jesus, Taylor,” Lenny said, coming into the living room behind them.
“Lucia said she ran away. She’s been staying in the old paper mill. When was she here last?”
It seemed irrelevant. They would just go there. Bridget hung back, trying to gauge their intimacy. They knew each other, but how well? How often had Taylor been here? Were things in Lucia’s life ever normal? Happy? She tried to envision a mother. None came to mind.
“Lenny, where is your father?” Bridget pressed. She got the feeling Lenny was avoiding the question.
“I don’t know,” Lenny grumbled, sinking down onto the plaid couch.
“You don’t know?” Bridget asked. He was probably twenty years old. Lucia was eighteen, it was hardly a concern if they lived alone. But to not know?
“He left here, drunk, months ago. I ain’t seen him since. We had a fight. I figured he skipped town. Listen, this ain’t that weird, you know. He done it before.”
“He has? When?”
“I don’t know! He don’t like what I say, so he leaves. We’re all adults.”
“What happened to your mother?” Bridget asked, and wondered about the invasiveness of the question.
Lenny laughed. “That bitch? Well, gee, now y’all go digging and y’all don’t stop. I ain’t seen her in prolly ten years. The mill closed and then she left same as him. Took him a little longer, but I guess she’s smarter. Now Lucia. Only me in this house.”
“Did you call the cops about Jimmy?” Taylor asked.
“Sure. You know what they told me? They’d put out an APB.” He let out a pfffftttt. “Do you think they care about the town drunk and his druggie kid? They ne’er found his car but I guaran-damn-tee they ne’er looked.”
“So you’re telling me that Jimmy’s gone and now Lucia’s gone and you never called the police about her?” Bridget asked, her voice slow and deliberate.
“I just figured she ran off to find him or something.” He made it sound illicit.
Bridget shivered.
“Why would she do that?” Taylor asked.
“Oh, ’cause she took care of his drunk ass. Waited hand and foot on him.” Lenny wiped a line of grease from his forehead, up into his hair, glinting and wet. “Ne’er gave a fuck about me, though. ’Cept to beat my ass.”
• • •
“Let me take you home, Taylor.” Bridget’s offer was halfhearted.
Taylor shook her head. Hard. “If you’re going to the mill, I’m going with you.” She hesitated a beat. “Even if you’re not, I’d probably go myself. I’m worried about her. There’s been something off with her. I can’t tell what.” She looked out the window. “Lenny’s bad. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“How long have you been friends?” Bridget asked softly.
“Since kindergarten. They had a mom then, though.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. She just . . . left. After the mill closed, when Lenny was still normal. I guess we were ten or so. She sent letters for a while, but Lucia was pretty pissed about it. I don’t think she ever wrote her back. My mom takes care of Lucia a lot, feels bad for her. We had a séance once.” Taylor traced a pattern in her jeans with an index finger, avoiding Bridget’s gaze. “Maybe sixth grade? We burned everything. Her mom’s clothes, her letters, her pictures. Jimmy found us. He said he was mad, but there was no conviction behind it. I got the feeling . . .” She took a deep breath. “He was proud of her for it. Listen, she’s never been normal, I know that. She pushes into people, gets under their skin. She flies in people’s face. Sometimes I think it’s all she has. This . . . persona. But deep down, I think she’s more like everyone else than she wants to believe.”
Bridget considered this, Taylor with her Seven jeans and her Free People boots. Lucia with her black secondhand clothes. Taylor gave Lucia social credibility. Lucia gave Taylor’s bubble gum an edge.
“Okay, you can come with me, but we’re not going alone.”
• • •
Tripp Harris didn’t look comfortable. They met in the dusty parking lot of the paper mill, their cars meeting nose to nose, hers blue, his black. The redbrick facade of the mill was crumbling and the roar of the dam in the back made it hard to hear.
“Bridget.” Tripp smiled uneasily. “Nice to see you again. Although, this . . .” He spread his arm out wide. “You should let me call this in.”
“We will. If it’s anything. I promise.” She pulled her hair back from her face and lifted one shoulder. “It’s a student. If I can avoid the police, I’d like to.”
“You know, I am the police.” Tripp smiled and leaned down to peck Bridget’s cheek. “What’s the urgency?”
“I think a student of mine is living in here.” Bridget stomped her feet to get the cold out, her breath coming in puffs.
“Okay. And you are . . .” Tripp looked at Taylor.
“Taylor Lawson. Lucia’s best friend.” Taylor dipped her chin, shy.
“Another student,” Bridget said.
“Aw, Bridge, let me call it in. Take Taylor home,” Tripp said again softly. His teeth gleamed white in the purple twilight. He put his hand on Bridget’s elbow and she was reminded of the last time she saw Tripp, at Holden’s funeral, standing with the rest of the bar league softball team. Tripp had been a periodic fifth to their foursome, single and flaunting, a string of girlfriends at cookouts and barbecues. Girls, not women, merely twenty-five, perky breasted, and lean legged. A man-child with a badge.
Bridget ignored his request. “How do we even start to look?” It was four o’clock; the sun would be setting, the sky streaked bright red, plunging the mill into darkness. Close to nine hundred thousand square feet, the mill stretched out for what seemed like miles of broken windows and crumbling brick. The interior was likely to be treacherous. Bridget realized at once how stupid this was. Lucia could be anywhere. She looked at Taylor. If something happened to the girl, Bridget could lose her job, maybe her license.
“Let’s just do a quick perimeter search. If we don’t find her, we’ll call it in,” Tripp said, eyeing the pinkish sky. “But keep in mind, she’s eighteen. As long as she’s coming to school, they might not invest the time. They’re taking regular OD calls. It’s getting worse, you know? We’re a small force.”
They picked their way around the side of the mill and Tripp retrieved a mini magnum flashlight from his back pocket. He shone the light in the side windows and the beam bounced off giant spools and tables, the detritus of a decrepit industry. Aside from words scrawled on the walls in haphazard spray paint (Whore, Bitch), the place looked appropriately abandoned.
Bridget kicked a Miller Lite can and everyone jumped.
Tripp moved to the next window, then the next. He shone the light up to the second floor, then the third, but unless Lucia was crouched near a window, they’d never see her.
In the fourth set of windows, there was a crumpled red shirt in the corner, covered in dust. Been there awhile.
They moved on, Tripp leading the way, Bridget close behind. She held Taylor’s hand with one hand while gripping the back of Tripp’s jacket with the other, the slick nylon sliding between her fingertips. He smelled of cologne, and she wondered if he had a date later.
“Bridge, I see something.” Tripp stopped short and Bridget ran into the back of him, pulling Taylor with her. The light from the flashlight glinted off something metallic.
A kerosene heater.
Taylor dropped Bridget’s hand and ran. Toward the water, the dam, that loud rush. In a panic, she yelled, “Lucia! Lucia!”
Tripp chased her. “Taylor! Come back, she won’t hear you!”
One side of the double-door entrance to the mill had been kicked down years ago. Only one door hung creakily from a twenty-four-inch hinge.
Tripp stopped and swung the light between the interior and the outside, where Taylor had run, indecisive. The lure of Lucia won out, and he turned into the corridor of the concrete building.
“Lucia!” called Bridget, her skin alive, crawling. “She’s not out there. She wouldn’t hear you anyway.”
Taylor stopped, her back to the mill, staring in the direction of the dam, the mist collecting in her hair. She shrugged and turned back, pushing past Bridget and inside, after Tripp. Bridget followed.
Dust and beer cans, garbage and plastic bags, clothes, the makings of a campfire littered every room. It was a teenage party haven.
They got to the room with the heater, which was off. There was a small black backpack, the zipper tied with a rainbow braid, that Bridget recognized as Lucia’s. A journal, the pen between the pages like a bulbous bookmark.
Taylor came up behind them, breathing hard, her face red and sheened with sweat.
“Any luck?” Bridget asked, but Tripp already had his cell phone in hand, dialing.
“Nothing,” Taylor said.
Lucia was gone.