The Forgotten Girl (4 page)

Jason and Nora were getting ready for bed when their front doorbell rang. They’d already done the dishes and turned out the lights on the first floor, leaving just a lone bulb burning on the front porch. It was past ten. Jason held his toothbrush, and Nora looked startled.

“Who the hell is that?” she asked.

Jason rinsed his mouth and, wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, started down the stairs to the front door. Halfway to the bottom, Nora called after him.

“Are you sure it’s safe? Maybe you shouldn’t answer.”

“Safer than New York, I would hope,” he said. He didn’t know if she heard him. He slowed his pace as he approached the front door. No one ever just showed up at their house, especially late at night. He figured it was probably kids playing a prank, ringing the bell and running off. Jason leaned over and peered through the narrow window that ran parallel to the door. What he saw brought him up short.

The person on the porch who stood with her back to him looked familiar. So familiar that her posture, the shape of her body, struck a chord inside him, one that hadn’t been struck in years.

“Who is it?” Nora called.

But Jason didn’t say anything. His hands felt sweaty as he undid the two locks and the chain and pulled the door open. She turned around as the door came open, and there, in the sickly pale glow of the porch light, Jason came face-to-face with his sister, Hayden, for the first time in five years.

“Hey, big brother,” she said through the screen.

Jason was surprised by what he saw. Hayden looked . . . clean. Her hair, her clothes, her hands. All clean. She wore black slacks and black shoes and a neatly pressed blue button-down shirt. One hand rested on the sleek leather purse she wore over her shoulder and the other held a smartphone. She had always been tiny, almost frail. In the years since high school, when her drinking was at its worst and she was likely consuming most of her calories in the form of alcohol, Hayden always appeared fragile, her skin nearly translucent. She looked like that the last time he saw her, the time that caused the five-year break. When Jason hugged her or touched her during her longest benders, it felt as though her bones might snap beneath his touch. Like she was a bird.

But the version of Hayden on the front porch looked healthy and trim. Her cheeks were full and carried a trace of color.

“I bet you wish this was the pizza guy, right?” she said.

Jason still hadn’t spoken. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t.”

He couldn’t think of anything else. He stared at his sister through the screen as june bugs and moths dipped and dived in the space between them.

Hayden raised her eyebrows. “Am I allowed to come in?” she asked. “I understand if after last time . . .”

Jason undid the lock on the screen door and pushed it open. “Come in,” he said, stepping back. “Of course you can come in. Jesus, Hayden, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just stand here.”

Hayden slipped past him and through the foyer, trailing the faint
scent of cigarette smoke. Jason didn’t know what to do. He flipped on the lights in the living room and let his sister go ahead of him.

Nora asked again from the top of the stairs, “Jason? Who was it?”

Jason looked at Hayden, who had taken a seat on the sofa. Then he said loudly, “It’s my sister. It’s Hayden.”

“What?” Nora said. “Really?”

Before anyone could say anything else, Nora was coming down the stairs, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood. She wore a modest, knee-length nightgown and brushed past Jason as though he weren’t there. Hayden rose from the couch when she saw her sister-in-law.

“Hey, girl,” Hayden said.

“Oh, Hayden. Look at you.”

The two women hugged in the living room. They held on to each other and swayed side to side. Then they stepped back, and Nora gave Hayden a long appraisal.

“You look great,” Nora said.

“Thanks.”

“You look . . .”

“Sober?” Hayden said.

Nora nodded. “Yes, you do. Healthy, I guess I was going to say. But sober works.” The two women sat next to each other on the sofa and Nora asked, “What on earth are you doing here? Are you moving back to town?”

Hayden looked up at Jason. He remained standing, his hand resting on the back of a chair. A tension hovered between the two siblings, something unspoken. As always, Hayden was the one most ready, most eager to give it voice.

“I wasn’t sure if I would be welcome back,” she said.

“Of course you are,” Nora said. “Right, Jason?”

“Sure,” Jason said, but he still didn’t take a seat. “I’m just kind of blown away. You’re the last person I expected to see on the porch.”

Hayden maneuvered the purse around to her lap and undid the clasp. “I wanted to give you something,” she said. She dug inside and extracted a plain white envelope. She held it out toward Jason. “Here,” she said.

“No,” Jason said.

“It’s five hundred dollars,” Hayden said. “I know the car cost more—”

“Oh, no,” Nora said. “Jason, tell her. We don’t want it.”

“I
want
to give it to you,” Hayden said. “I’m working now. I’ve saved this money. I saved it to give to you. Please, Jason. Just take it. It will make me feel so much better knowing that you took it, that you let me off the hook just a little bit.”

Jason came around the chair and sat down. He waved away the envelope that Hayden still held in the air between them. He crossed his legs and studied his sister. She looked good. She looked cleaned up and straightened out. But Jason also knew that meant nothing when it came to Hayden and her drinking. How many times had she been through rehab? How many times had she quit only to start again with greater intensity?

“Are you here alone?” Jason asked. “Where’s Sierra?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Hayden said.

“What is it?” Jason asked. “What’s wrong?”

Hayden brought the envelope back down to her lap. She stared at it for a moment, then looked back up at her brother.

“I do need something,” she said. “A favor. And I know I don’t have a leg to stand on with either one of you. But this is different. It really is.”

Jason looked over at Nora. Her eyes widened, her head nodded
ever so slightly.
Go on,
she was saying with the look.
Go on. She’s your sister.

Jason looked back at Hayden. An image from their childhood flashed into his mind. It was involuntary. Hayden . . . a little brown-haired girl in a sandbox, holding a plastic bucket with one hand, the index finger of the other stuck into her mouth. She tottered, lost her balance, and fell back on her butt, spilling the sand. Before she could cry, Jason, a year older and bigger, was there, helping her up. Receiving praise from their parents for his act of brotherly protection.

He had to help her. He
wanted
to help her.

“What is it, Hayden?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell us all about
it?”

Hayden still held the envelope clutched between her fingers. She looked at both of them.

“The first thing I want to do,
need
to do really, is apologize to the two of you for my behavior the last time I was here.”

Nora made a gesture with her hand like she was smoothing something across a flat surface. “There’s no need to do that.”

“Actually, yes, there is. I was a bad sister, and I took advantage of your trust and hospitality. I just want you both to know I’m sorry for that.”

Shortly after Jason and Nora moved back to Ednaville, Hayden had come to visit. She was drinking then, heavily drinking. She showed up at their door with her hair matted and her clothes dirty. She smelled like she hadn’t bathed in a week. Jason remembered similar times with Hayden when they were in high school, and the tough love their parents eventually began to practice. Jason was still in that mode, because he initially was reluctant to let Hayden stay, but Nora convinced him. She said family was family, and they were obligated to let her in.

For two days, all went well. Hayden didn’t drink in front of them. She showered and washed her clothes. On the third morning, Jason and Nora woke up to a police officer on their doorstep.
Hayden had taken the keys to one of their cars during the night and, after drinking at Apollo’s, a local bar, drove it into a tree. The police arrested her, and later that day Jason and Nora found four hundred dollars missing from a drawer in their house. They never saw Hayden after that. She never called or wrote or came by.

Everyone remained silent. Hayden looked at Jason as though she expected him to say something.

“Are you apologizing as part of some twelve-step program?” Jason asked.

“Jason,” Nora said.

“That sounded harsh, Hayden, but I want to know,” Jason said. “You’ve apologized to me before, so I really want the reason behind this one. Is a shrink making you do it? A minister? It’s not Mom and Dad this time because they’re dead.”

“It’s okay,” Hayden said. “I know why you feel that way. Yes, this is part of a program. And I understand that you think I’ve done this before, and it’s okay if you’re suspicious. I’d be suspicious of me too. All I can say is that while I have apologized to you before, I never meant it before. I mean it this time. All of this is going to stick. The sobriety, everything. This is real. It’s who I am now.”

Nora jumped in. “I think it’s fabulous. Really.”

Jason wished he had kept his mouth shut, that he had let Hayden say her piece without interjecting his own comment into it. So much of his life had been spent accommodating his sister, so much time had been spent walking on eggshells and blithely encouraging her in every struggle—both real and imagined—she engaged in, that he no longer felt he could listen to her talk without challenging her assertions. But he had to admit Hayden looked different. And she did seem different. For the first time,
the language she used about her recovery matched the reality she seemed to be existing in. And he couldn’t ignore the feeling he had when he saw her silhouetted on the porch. The hope that sprang into his chest, the simple, deeply rooted desire to see his sister again.

“Okay,” Jason said. “Apology accepted. It’s long over anyway. Everybody’s moved on.”

Nora said, “And we’re sorry we didn’t help you more back then. Maybe we could have, I don’t know, been more understanding of where you were.”

“I understand,” Hayden said. “
You
don’t need to apologize.” Hayden raised the envelope toward Jason again. “So,” she said, “will you accept this as the beginning of restitution for the car and the money I took?”

Jason shook his head. “Just keep it,” he said. “Please. You can use it to start a new life or whatever you need it for. You can use it for— Well, that brings me back to the question I asked you before. Where exactly is Sierra? Is she . . . ?” A multitude of scenarios sprang into his mind. Had something happened to his niece? Had Hayden lost custody or contact with her daughter?

Hayden must have sensed Jason’s concern because she said, “She’s fine. In fact, she’s here, with me.”

“Where?” Nora asked.

“She’s in the car, waiting for me to give her the all clear.”

“Bring her in,” Nora said. “My God, we haven’t seen her in so long.”

“Just a minute,” Hayden said. “You see, I wanted to talk to the two of you alone before I brought her in.”

“You mentioned a favor,” Jason said. “Is that what you wanted to talk about before Sierra came in?”

Hayden nodded. She took the envelope, which had become
wrinkled under the pressure of her grip, and stuffed it back into her purse. Her hand shook a little as she adjusted the clasp. When Hayden looked up again, Jason pretended not to have noticed the shaking.

Hayden said, “I have something I need to do here in town. I can’t really tell you what it is, and I know that makes me look bad. I’m sure that’s a huge red flag, and you may just tell me no. But I don’t want you to. I really don’t want you to.”

“Is this thing you have to do part of your . . . recovery?” Jason asked, trying to be delicate.

“It is.” Hayden ran her hands over the tops of her thighs, back and forth like that, the skin making a light swishing sound against the material. When she resumed speaking, Jason detected a thin edge of anxiety in her voice, the sense that she wasn’t really in control of everything swirling around her. It was rare to hear that tone from Hayden. She was always cool, always assured. Even when she was at her worst and in the depths of her deepest struggles, she managed to sound as though she could handle whatever came her way. Jason knew Nora may not have noticed that edge in her voice, but Jason did. He’d heard it a few times in his life and understood what it meant. “I don’t want to downplay the apology I owed to you guys because it was and is very important to me. But this is much more important in a way. It affects . . . Well, I don’t want to say a lot more than what I’ve already said.”

“So you’re not going to tell us what this thing you’re doing is,” Jason said.

“I can’t. Not because it’s really a secret or anything, although I guess it is. But more because . . . I don’t really know if it’s going to work. I don’t know what the end result is going to be, and some other people are involved.” She shifted her concentration
directly to Jason as she spoke, boring in on him in a way that seemed to signal something he couldn’t quite understand. “A lot of people are involved. It’s delicate.”

“People we know?” Nora asked.

Hayden ignored the question. She kept her eyes on Jason, as though she was waiting for something.

Jason didn’t know what she needed. “What’s the favor, then?” he asked. “If we don’t know what you’re doing, how can we help you?”

Hayden shifted her attention back to both of them. “It’s Sierra,” she said. “I need the two of you to keep an eye on her while I’m taking care of this. It might be a day. It might be two. I’m not sure.”

“We’d love to,” Nora said. “Right, Jason?”

“Isn’t she in school?” he asked.

“She is,” Hayden said. “She has a week to go in her junior year. But I took her out. I told the school we had a family emergency. They gave her some assignments and things to do and let her go. It’s fine. Sierra was born here, remember? She lived here when she was a kid. She knows Ednaville. She likes it here. And I know she’ll be safe with the two of you.”

“Safe?” Jason asked. “Are you doing something dangerous?”

“No, not like that. I just mean . . . I can trust you both. You’re family.”

“You know, some questions have been running through my head. Some basics. Where are you living now, Hayden?” Jason asked. “We don’t know anything about what’s going on in your life. We don’t have an address or a phone number. What is happening with you?”

“Right. Of course. You deserve to know those things. That’s totally cool. I’m living over in Smithfield. Redman County. It’s just
an hour away. That’s where Sierra is going to school. Redman Consolidated. I’m working for a dentist’s office over there. I guess I’m like the office manager. It was a stroke of luck to get the job. The dentist is in AA with me, and he needed someone to help. I’ve been working there for a year. I’ve got benefits and everything.”

“The last time you were here, though, you didn’t have Sierra with you,” Jason said. “She was with Derrick, right?”

“She was. Mostly with Derrick’s mom.”

“And she still sees Derrick?” Jason asked.

“Sometimes.”

Jason sensed the conversation was hitting a wall with Hayden. He said, “She can stay, but we’re both working, you know? We won’t be around all day.”

“That’s fine,” Hayden said. “Sierra can take care of herself. She’s not a baby. I just don’t want her alone all the time.”

“It’s okay, Jason,” Nora said. “We can work something out so we can see a lot of her. I have some flexibility.”

“You really don’t mind?” Hayden said. She patted her purse. “I could leave this money for Sierra. She’s a teenager. She’s seventeen. She eats a lot and uses a lot of water.”

“No,” Nora said. “Don’t be silly. But for God’s sake, bring her in. She’s sitting out there in the car all alone.”

“Okay,” Hayden said. “I’ll text her and tell her to come in.” Her thumbs flew over the phone. “Done.” Hayden stood up. “She’s going to look so different to you guys. I guess you haven’t seen her since when?”

“Six or seven years probably,” Nora said, standing up. “I’ll get the door.”

Jason stood up as well, although he wasn’t sure why. Nora slipped away to the foyer, and Jason found himself standing face-to-face with Hayden.

“I saw you on the square yesterday,” he said. “Why didn’t you talk to me then?”

“I was working up my courage. I used to get that out of a bottle. I’m still learning to do difficult things when I’m sober.” Hayden shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I guess you still see Regan, right?”

“Why are you bringing her up?” Jason asked, his voice lowered. It was classic Hayden. Somehow, some way, she knew how to change the subject and throw Jason off-balance.

“You always had a thing for her,” Hayden said. “I just figured since you were back in town and all, you’d be seeing her. Obviously, I was right.”

“I see her from time to time. We catch up,” Jason said. “We’re old friends. And just friends.”

“I know,” Hayden said. Her voice dropped even lower than Jason’s. “I’m sure . . . Well, I’m glad the two of you are friends. I’m sure it’s good for her. That’s all I’ll say.”

“What does that even mean?” Jason asked. “Hayden, what are you up to?”

He didn’t get an answer. Jason heard Nora squeal at the front door and knew that Sierra had arrived in their house. He took one quick glance at his sister, and Hayden met his gaze. But he wasn’t sure what he saw there when they locked eyes. A plea? Fear?

Something he’d never
understand?