Magic hour: a novel (20 page)

“You’re upset,” Julia said in a soothing voice. “Upset. You’re getting angry. Did you think I was leaving?”

At the sound of Julia’s voice, the girl quieted. She looked nervously at the door, sidling away from it.

“We’ll keep the door open from now on, but I need to go potty. You know that word? Potty?”

Perhaps there was the merest flinch at the word, a flash of recognition. Perhaps not.

The girl just stood there, watching her.

“I need privacy. You should . . . aw, hell.” None of the social niceties mattered here.

The girl frowned and took a step closer. She cocked her head in the same way the blue jay had, as if to see things from a preferable angle.

“I’m peeing,” Julia said matter-of-factly, reaching for the toilet paper.

The girl was intent now, utterly focused. Once again she’d gone completely still.

When Julia was done, she stood and pulled up her pants, and then flushed the toilet.

At the noise, the girl screamed and threw herself backward so fast she stumbled and fell. Sprawled on the floor, she started to howl.

“It’s okay,” Julia said. “No hurt. No hurt. I promise.” She flushed the toilet again and again, until the girl finally sat up. Then Julia washed her hands and moved slowly toward her little patient. “Would you like me to keep reading?” She knelt down. They were eye level now, and close. She could see the remarkable turquoise color of the child’s eyes; the irises were flecked with amber. Thick black lashes lowered slowly, then opened.

“Book,” Julia said again, pointing at the novel on the table.

The girl walked over to the table and sat down on the floor beside it.

Julia drew in a sharp breath, but other than that, she didn’t react. She went to the nearest chair and sat down. “I think Ellie and I should move Mom’s old love seat in here. What do you think?”

The girl moved a little closer. Sitting cross-legged, she looked up at Julia.

Just then, even with her food-stained face and tangled hair, the girl looked like every kindergartner in every classroom at story time.

“I bet you’re waiting for me to start.”

As always, the only answer was silence. Those eerie blue-green eyes stared up at her. This time, maybe, there was a hint of anticipation, impatience, even. An ordinary kid would have said
Read
in an imperious tone. This girl simply waited.

Julia returned to the story. On and on she read, about Mary and Dicken and Colin and the secret garden that had belonged to Mary’s lost mother. She read chapter after chapter, until night began to press against the window in strips of pink and purple. She was approaching the final chapters when a knock sounded at the door. The dogs started barking.

At the noise, the girl raced to her potted plant sanctuary and hid behind the leaves.

The door opened slowly. Behind it, the golden retrievers were crazy to get inside. “Down
,
Jake. Elwood. What’s wrong with you two?” Ellie slipped past them and slammed the door shut with her hip. In the hallway, the dogs howled pitifully and scratched at the door.

“You need to get those dogs trained,” Julia said, closing her book.

Ellie, who had a tray of food, set it down on the table. “I thought getting rid of their balls would make them trainable. No such luck. It’s in the dick.” She sat down on the end of her old bed. “How’s the girl doing? I see she still thinks I’m Nurse Ratchett.”

“She’s doing better, I think. She seems to like being read to.”

“Has she tried to escape?”

“No. She won’t go near the door. I think it’s the doorknob. Shiny metal really sets her off.”

Ellie leaned forward and put her forearms along her thighs. “I wish I could say I was making progress on my end.”

“You are. This story is making headlines. Someone will come forward.”

“People
are
coming forward. I had seventy-six people in my office today. All of them had lost daughters in the last few years. Their stories . . . their pictures . . . it was awful.”

“It’s incredibly painful to sit witness to such grief.”

“How do you do it, listen to sad stories all day long?”

Julia had never seen her job that way. “A story is only sad if there’s no happy ending. I guess I always believe in that ending.”

“A closet romantic. Who’d have thought?”

Julia laughed. “Hardly. So, how did the press conference go?”

“Long. Boring. Full of stupid questions. The national networks are just as bad. And I learned this about reporters: if a question is too ridiculous to be answered, they’ll ask it again. My personal favorite was from the
National Enquirer.
They were hoping she had wings instead of arms. Oh, and
The Star
wondered if she’d lived with the wolves.”

Thankfully it was a tabloid. No one would lend the story any credence. “What about an identification?”

“Not yet. Between the X rays, the birthmarks, the scarring, and her age range, we’re narrowing the possibilities down, though. Oh, and your approval came through from DSHS. You’re officially her temporary foster parent.”

The girl crept out from her hiding place. Nostrils flaring, she paused, smelled the air, then streaked across the room, running low to the ground. Julia had never seen a kid move so fast. She disappeared into the bathroom.

Ellie whistled. “So that’s what Daisy meant when she said the girl ran like the wind.”

Julia slowly walked toward the bathroom.

Ellie followed her.

The girl was sitting on the toilet, with her pull-up big-kid diaper around her ankles.

“Holy cow,” Ellie whispered. “Did you teach her that?”

Julia couldn’t believe it herself. “She walked in on me today, when I was going to the bathroom. The sound of the flushing scared her to death. I would have
sworn
she’d never seen a toilet before.”

“You think she taught herself? By seeing you once?”

Julia didn’t answer. Any noise could ruin this moment. She inched into the room and gathered up some toilet paper. She showed the girl what to do with it, then handed it to her. The child frowned at the wadded up paper for a long time. Finally, she took it and used it. When she was finished, she slithered off the toilet, pulled up her diaper/underwear, and hit the white tape-covered lever. At the flushing noise, she screamed and ran, ducking between Julia’s and Ellie’s legs.

“Wow,” Ellie said.

They both stared at the girl hiding in the forest of potted plants.

In the quiet room, the girl’s breathing was loud and fast.

“This whole thing just gets stranger and stranger,” Ellie said.

Julia couldn’t disagree with that.

“Well,” Ellie said at last, “I need to get back to the office. I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket and handed it to Julia. “These are Peanut’s and Cal’s home numbers. If you need to go to the library again, they’ll stay at the house with the kid.”

“Thanks.”

Julia walked Ellie to the door, let her out, then shut it again. She didn’t bother locking it. So far, the girl seemed terrified of the doorknob.

She went to the table, where she made a few more notes, then set her paper and pen away.

“It’s dinnertime.”

The girl remained hidden in the plants, watching her.

“Food.” She tapped the tray Ellie had left.

This time the girl moved. She crept out from the cover of green leaves and came to the table, where she started to attack the food in her usual way.

Julia grabbed her wrist. “No.”

Their gazes clashed.

“You’re too smart for this, aren’t you?” Julia got up, still holding the bird-thin wrist, and moved around to stand beside the girl. “Sit.” She pulled out a chair and patted the seat. “Sit.”

For the next thirty minutes they stood there, locked in a battle with a one-word soundtrack.

Sit.

At first the girl howled and snorted and shook her head, trying to pull free.

Julia simply held on to her, shaking her head, saying, “Sit.”

When the histrionics didn’t work, the girl shut up. She stood perfectly still, staring at Julia through slitted, angry eyes.

“Sit,” Julia said, patting the chair again.

The girl sighed dramatically and sat down.

Julia released her instantly. “Good girl.” She washed the child’s hands with baby wipes, then walked back around to the other side of the table and took her seat.

The girl attacked the food, eating as if it were a recent kill.

“You’re at the table,” Julia said. “That’s a start. We’ll work on manners tomorrow. After your bath.” She reached down for her notebook and put it in her lap, flipping through the pages while the child ate. Maybe there was an answer in here, but she doubted it. This was a case of questions.

A paragraph she’d written this afternoon caught her eye.

A perfect mimic. The child can repeat birdsong note for note. It almost seems as if they’re communicating, she and the bird, although that’s not possible.

“Is that the answer, little one? Did you see me using the toilet and simply mimic me? Was that a skill you needed to learn in the wild?”

She wrote down:
In the absence of people, or society, how do we learn? By trial and error? By mimicry of other species? Perhaps she learned to learn fast and by observation.

Julia lifted her pen from the page.

It felt like half an answer at best. A child who’d grown up in the wild, within a wolf pack or among other animals, would have learned to mark territory with urine. She wouldn’t see the point in using a toilet.

Unless she’d seen one before, however long ago. Or she recognized a new pack leader in her and wanted to belong. “Who are you, little one? Where do you come from?”

As always, there was no answer.

W
HILE THE GIRL WAS EATING,
J
ULIA SLIPPED OUT OF THE ROOM AND
went downstairs.

The house was quiet.

In the carport she found the two cardboard boxes that held the town’s donations. One was filled with clothes. The other held all kinds of books and toys.

Julia went through everything again, condensing the best, most useful items into one box, which she carried back upstairs and set down on the floor with a thud.

The girl looked up sharply.

Julia almost laughed at the sight of her. There was as much food on her face and hospital gown as had been on her plate. The whipped cream/coconut ambrosia fruit salad clung to her nose, her cheeks, and her chin in a white beard.

“You look like Santa’s mini me.”

Julia bent down and opened the box. Three items lay on top. A beautiful, lacy white nightdress with pink bows on it, a doll in diapers, and a brightly colored set of plastic blocks.

She stepped back. “Toys. Do you know that word?”

No reaction.

“Play. Fun.”

The girl stared at her, unblinking.

Julia bent down and picked up the nightgown. The worn cotton felt soft to the touch.

The girl’s eyes widened. She made a sound, a low, growling noise that came from deep in the back of her throat. In a movement almost too fast and silent to be believed, she got out of her chair, ran around the table and yanked the nightdress out of Julia’s grasp. Clutching it to her breast, she returned to her hiding place behind the potted plants and crouched down.

“Well, well, well,” Julia said. “I see someone likes pretty things.”

The girl started to hum. Her fingers found a tiny pink satin bow and began stroking it.

“You’ll need to get clean if you want to wear the pretty dress.”

Julia went into the bathroom and turned on the bathwater, then sat on the edge of the tub. “When I was your age I loved taking baths. My mom used to add lavender oil to the water. It smelled so good. Oh, look, here’s a little bottle of it left in the cabinet. I’ll add some for you.”

When she turned around again, the girl was there, standing just inside the open door, looking in.

Julia held out a hand. “No hurt,” she said gently, turning off the water. “No, hurt.” Then: “Come.”

No response.

“It feels so good to be clean.” Julia skimmed her other hand through the water. “Nice. Come on.”

The girl’s steps forward were so small as to be almost nonexistent, and yet she was moving. Her gaze ping-ponged between the adhesive-tape-covered faucet and Julia’s hand.

“Have you seen running water before?” Julia let the water stream from her fingers. “Water. Wa-ter.”

The girl was at the bathtub’s edge now. She was staring at the water with a mixture of fear and fascination.

Very slowly, Julia bent down to undress the girl, who offered no opposition at all. It surprised Julia, that easy compliance. What did it mean, if anything? She took the hospital gown away, looped it over the towel rack, then took hold of the girl’s bird-thin wrist and gently urged her toward the tub. “Touch the water. Just try.” She showed her how, hoping the action would be mimicked.