The Lost and the Found Read Free Page A

and Dad and Michel and school and Thomas and Martha and what I had for dinner. I let all of it leak out of my ears and onto the pillow, leaving nothing but blankness. Then I wait for her. For a real memory—one that’s mine and only mine and not something I’ve read in the newspaper or on the Internet or something that my grandparents told me.
    Sometimes it works. I can see her laughing, and I know it’s really her—it’s not from one of the three home-video clips that the whole world has seen, or from any of the other videos I used to watch over and over again until I mouthed the words coming out of Laurel’s mouth when she had her first pony ride and was scared she was going to fall off. This laugh is different—it’s just for me. Secret laughter between sisters. And she has two clips in her hair—they’re shaped like stars, and they shimmer in the sunlight.
    That’s it. That’s all I have: a laugh and a couple of hair clips. That’s all I was left with for thirteen years. But now she’s back.

M om comes back into the kitchen after phoning Dad. She’s been crying a lot—her face is red and blotchy. Clearly she didn’t want me to hear that conversation. I’m not sure why.
    Then it hits me. “Is she hurt?” I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask before.
    “What?” Mom’s distracted, trying to find her car keys. They’re on the shelf in the hall, exactly the same place they always are.
    “Is she hurt? Is there something…wrong with her?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question.
    “No! The police said she’s in remarkably good health, considering…”
    I wait, but Mom doesn’t finish her sentence. She’s too busy trying to fix her makeup in the hall mirror.
    “Mom? I’m…I’m scared.”
    She turns to me, and I can tell right away that she doesn’t get it. “Scared? Whatever for? There’s nothing to be
scared
of, Faith. This is…well, it’s a miracle, isn’t it?” She makes a face at the mirror and adds a slick of lipstick to her chapped lips. “There.” I stare at her as she stares at her reflection. “Do you think she’ll recognize me?” she asks in the smallest voice imaginable.
    The doorbell rings. There are a few possible answers to Mom’s question, but only one that’s honest. I go and stand behind her, and our eyes meet in the mirror. I tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear. “Of course she will, Mom.” Honesty isn’t always the best policy.
    Her face lights up and she turns to hug me tightly. “My baby’s coming home,” she whispers. The mean, twisted little voice in my head—the one I have to silence every single day—whispers something so pathetic and selfish that it makes me want to hug Mom extra hard and never let her go:
What about
me
? I’m your baby, too.
    —
    Michel already knows; Dad must have called him in the car. He says “I can’t believe it” at least three times in as many minutes. While Mom’s filling him in on the rest of the details, he keeps on glancing over at me.
    Mom seems to have forgotten her feelings about Michel. She hugs him, the first time I’ve ever seen her do that. Michel’s as surprised as I am when she launches herself at him. She babbles away, barely pausing for breath. She’s usually painfully polite—but distant—toward Michel, and I hate her for it. Especially because he never has a bad word to say about her. He just shrugs it off like he doesn’t mind one little bit. Sometimes I wish I could be more like him (“be a little more
French,
” he says).
    Michel tells Mom that we’ll wait at the apartment for news. We were supposed to be going to a new exhibition at the art gallery, but he says we can go next week or the week after.
    “Maybe the three of you can go, when Laurel’s back with us?” Mom says this as if it’s a normal thing to say.
    Michel moves his head, and you can tell Mom interprets it as a nod, but it wasn’t one. “You’d better get going, Olivia. John will be there soon.” That was