Essential Maps for the Lost (6 page)

Where to look next? It doesn't seem possible that with all the bits and volumes of information on the Internet there is only this. She hunts for other ideas. She clicks and pecks like a hen searching for an overlooked corn kernel.
Seattle woman jumps from bridge. Son of. Seattle woman suicide.
This leads her to a quiz.
Are you depressed? Welcome to the Goldberg Depression Screening.
Fine. She'll take the stupid quiz. Why not? Maybe she isn't even depressed! Maybe she's just very, very tired.
Number one. I do things slowly
.

She pauses. It is a very slow pause.
Not at all. Just a little. Somewhat. Moderately. Quite a lot. Very much.
She answers after much time has passed.

My future seems hopeless
.

Mads's mind shoots her an image of those Murray & Murray business cards, all printed up and waiting. Do you know how many come in a single box? Hundreds. Hundreds! All in a row, smelling new and begging to be let free so they might circulate in the world.
Here's who I am and will always be
, they shout. It'll take her years to get through the ones her mom already ordered. Finished basements, empty rooms, the losses and leavings of other people—all of that will be hers as her mom leaves work early because her head hurts.

The big ogre of despair starts stomping around, now that his name has been called. He's a familiar beast, and so is the way he pulls Mads in and shoves her down and makes her feel out of options. Damn you, Goldberg Depression Screening!
It is hard for me to concentrate on reading
, Mads reads, and then reads again because she can't concentrate.

Enough! She moves on. Next, there's a confessional article by a famous person about their
struggles with depression
. It is always worded like this, like Harrison and Avery wrestling after they make each other mad. It seems about right. Mads's own arms feel locked behind her back, and the ogre has his chin in the soft place between her shoulder blades. Now another confessional article by a famous person, and another. No one can get out of bed, and there are lots of people curled up on bathroom floors. This also seems about right. Every day, Mads experiences a forced unfurling, the fight to rise; the ogre has his big, rib-eye hand on her chest.

These confessions—Mads knows they're supposed to make her feel better. They're meant to send helpful messages like
You're not alone
and
Me too
and
It can happen to anyone
. But they don't make her feel better. Maybe she shouldn't even admit it, but the articles only feel like despair stacked on despair (Suzanne's smiling Amazon boxes, upside down), and she needs to hear the
okay
part. She needs her famous people to conquer. She needs people older than her to cope. That's unfair, but she does.

A scratching and rustling blares from the baby monitor. It sounds like a space traveler making contact with Earth. When Mads goes into Ivy's room, Ivy is sitting up, her cheeks rosy from sleep, her hair sweaty.

“Well, hello, sunshine,” Mads says.

Ivy lets out a string of babble that might be a highly intelligent foreign language.

“Let's get you changed.”

And then Mads finally does it. The thing she's thought about since the first day she started working for the Bellaroses. The thing that will maybe-just-maybe keep her from being some bathroom floor person from the Goldberg Depression Screening. She packs Ivy's bag. It gives her a weird release, relief from what feels stuck and immovable. She puts in Ivy's favorite toys—the stuffed frog, and the ball that makes music. She fixes a bottle for the road and gets the formula powder to make more. In go the container of Cheerios, and diapers. She packs a change of clothes for every season. And then she grabs her keys.

•  •  •

Mads's father always says that if you have your phone and a credit card, you've got what you need for a trip. He said this whenever they went on vacation and her mom got all anxious about forgetting stuff back home. It's also nearly all he took with him as he left when Mads was nine. (And, yeah, one other thing, too, but she doesn't like to think about that.) This demonstrates the hurry he was in. Mads has her phone and the Visa her dad insisted she get to
build credit
. Pretty sure he didn't have
kidnap baby
in mind.

“Cap-a-bility,” Mads sings, a song that just comes to her. She tries to rhyme it, but oh, well. She buckles the car seat into Thomas's truck and lifts the strap over Ivy's head. “What do you think about that, missy?”

“Burble gah.”

“Burble gah! I'd have said the same thing myself.”

Ivy rides along next to Mads. Mads has her window rolled down a bit, and Ivy's wispy hair waves farewell. The baby slaps the glass with her hand, two smart smacks.

“Bah,” she says.

“Good riddance.” It's an old-fashioned expression Mads remembers from scary, hunched Grandma Mary, Mom's mom. It's no wonder Mom is the way she is. Still. Mom had a bad childhood, which means, so did Mads. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

She has no plan, but Thomas's truck does. It zips through Wallingford, where Claire and Thomas and the Bellaroses live, and then it heads toward the adjacent neighborhood of Fremont.

“Look, Ivy. See the water? See the boats?”

“Pree.”

Mads smiles. Ivy's new words have lately been falling like snowflakes. “So pretty.”

God, it feels great. It feels fantastic, to get out of there, to flee. She's as thrilled as Harrison was on the last day of school, his papers and school supplies already part of the past by the time Claire poured the celebratory Gatorade. Joy rises up, and Mads could fly on that joy forever, but Thomas's truck has other ideas. It pulls off into the little park just before the Fremont Bridge. The lot is right underneath it, and the cars roar overhead. Mads feels the rumble and shake of metal.

She needs to stop and think. Stop a minute and
think
. Sure, running off is an understandable plan, but it's not a good plan. They'll arrest her, and she'll be a terrible prisoner. She'll be terrified and she'll cry every day. Jumpsuits are a bad look for anyone. This whole thing made her feel good for all of five minutes.

Mads gets out of the truck. She unbuckles Ivy from her seat. She carries her to the grass by the water. From where she stands, she can see two bridges, the friendly, blue-towered Fremont right beside her, and the high, intense Aurora Bridge beyond.

“Boat,” she says as one chugs past. She jiggles Ivy on her hip. Her mind is not on boats, though. She knows where she is, of course. She knows exactly what she's looking at. Anna Youngwolf Floyd jumped from that huge bridge, and her body floated across the lake to where Mads swam that day. It was all too horrible, and it's too terrible for Ivy to see. She isn't sure why Thomas's truck led her here. There's a park with a few geese walking around and gawking, and there's a guy eating his lunch, and a mom with a pair of twins tossing rocks into the water, but there's that bridge, too.

“Tell me,” she says. Who knows who she's even asking. Or what she's even asking. There are just questions and more questions here. That's the way it is a lot of the time. No one tells you how often you just have to sit in the not knowing.

“Ives, I'm sorry,” Mads says. “We're going to have to go back. I forgot your sunscreen at home. And Kitty is there. And I didn't bring Blankie.” Mads feels a crush of failure. She isn't sure how anyone ever saves anyone.

And then . . . she sees something. When coincidence is that beautiful, you might as well go ahead and call it fate. Because, just before she crosses back over that goose-pooped lawn, she glances up at the Fremont Bridge, and she swears it's him. William Youngwolf Floyd. She's not sure. Her eyes are bad. She should wear her glasses all the time, but she doesn't.

It seems crazy. Is it even possible? It's a fast-pass of rebel hair that gets her attention, and a bunch of dogs. Tons of them! She shields her eyes with her free hand so she can see better, but then she stops all the hesitating and wavering and heads for the stairs. She hurries, walking with intent, because he'll be gone in a second, and if it's him, it's the most important coincidence of her life. Sure, we're talking about a ten-mile radius circling William's life and Mads's, but never mind. Cynicism is for cowards.

Mads wants to see if it's him, but also, she
has
to see. Ivy grabs a handful of her hair and tugs, but Mads barely notices. Wait. He seems to be looking her way. Is he? Is it even him? She still can't tell. With eyes like that, she should never drive without her glasses! If she doesn't get a move on, he'll disappear.

But look. He's changing direction. Suddenly, too. He's running! Rushing toward the stairs like there's some kind of emergency, and with all those dogs. One of them is as big as a sheep. What a disaster. It's
a bloody mess
, as her London-born father would say.

The guy is at the top of the stairs. The leashes are wound around his legs, and the dogs are barking their heads off, and he stops to untangle everyone. One of the dogs squats right there, and the guy has to dig a plastic bag out of the back pocket of his jeans. There's the briefest pause to take care of business, and then they descend. Why he's in such a hurry, she can't begin to say. It's calm at the park. One of the twins chases a goose who hops away, bored with that old game. As the guy and those dogs barrel down the steps, though, everyone stops to look. The twins, the goose, the man eating his lunch, who watches the chaos with half of his sandwich stopped midair.

How they make it down without him breaking his neck, Mads has no idea. She is busy being frozen in place. There are three reasons for this: One, anyone would be shocked at this commotion. Two, it is most definitely William Youngwolf Floyd barreling in her direction with a cyclone of dogs. Three, it has suddenly occurred to her that she is the reason for his haste. He must know who she is. The girl who pulled his mother out of the water. The girl outside his house. The crazy, obsessed stalker, who he's about to confront.

Ivy's eyes are huge. A glossy stalactite of drool drops from the corner of her mouth. “Dah?” she says.

“It's okay,” Mads says, though she doesn't know if this is true. Maybe she should run.

But she is too compelled to run. They are coming toward her, this unruly gang. William Youngwolf Floyd has one arm raised, and at the end of it is a fistful of leashes, as if he's hailing the most important taxi of his life. His T-shirt has come untucked, and there are rings of spooked sweat around his underarms. He's thinner up close. Those dogs could pull him right over, but Mads notices the muscles in his arms, too. His mouth is open. He's shouting something. She can't hear him, because it's loud near that bridge.

He stops in his tracks. It's the sort of sudden halt that the phrase is made for, a cartoon slide, which causes all the dogs to ricochet back in a humiliating way. The one in the lead makes a little heck-heck choking sound from the rapid yank of the leash. They bump into each other like a five-car pileup.

They're all winded. The big dog has an enormous tongue that lolls out his mouth. William Youngwolf Floyd is right in front of her now, breathing hard. Up close, his dark eyes are something from the universe, a star in reverse, deep and old, black-intense.

He leans down to catch his breath. One of the dogs sits. He's a sweet boy, with fur the color of a gingersnap.

Mads is speechless. She doesn't know what to do. She is saying silent prayers that he doesn't know her identity. Her guilt (guilt for the stalking, guilt for her role in such a private family matter) is making her face burn red hot.

“Can I help you?” It's the very first thing she says to William Youngwolf Floyd, which is funny when she thinks about it later.

Well, it's funny to him right then. His face twists up, and Mads wrongly thinks he's about to cry. Anna Youngwolf Floyd's son stands near the bridge where she jumped, and he is now going to burst into tears. It's what Mads expects, to see the way he's wrecked. But then he starts to laugh. He's laughing so hard. He shakes his head as if he can't believe himself and tears roll down his face, all right, the kind from the shock of the ridiculous. He wipes them away with the back of the hand still clutching the leashes. The biggest dog flops down and causes earth tremors in Central America as the boy gasps and tries to speak.

Mads doesn't know what's right in front of her. He is a laughing mess of tears, and she is a stunned mess of confusion. Two strangers gaze upon each other's real and fucked-up selves. Somewhere in the universe, a couple of stars collide. They aren't fancy stars, or even ones with names. Just regular old stars. Two of millions. Still, just like that, some of the best things begin.

“I thought . . . ,” he sputters. Jesus, he needs water, bad. His stomach hurts from laughing so hard, and from twisting something on that last step. Shit, maybe it's his back.

He doesn't know the last time he's laughed like that. Maybe the day Alex went with him to Gran's to pick up her old TV. Alex misjudged the corner of the houseboat dock and fell right in the water. It was hilarious, and Alex was
pissed
. He was dripping wet, but Billy just stood there pointing at him and cracking up. That was, what, last year?

But, wow, talk about a first impression. Way to go. Great job. He's even holding a plastic bag of dog shit, which he attempts to hide behind his leg.

“You thought . . .” She's trying to help him. Her eyes are kind, though when he ran toward her, they were squinched and her nose was squinched, too, like she was trying to see better. But, yeah, it's the same girl, all right. He'd recognize that shiny hair anywhere.