The Beautiful Lost Read online

  “Billy,” I said, grabbing his arm.

  We watched the whale following our boat, a shimmer of pure white just below the surface. It raised its head above water, turned on its side just long enough to look directly at us with its round black eye, filled with unfathomable curiosity and intelligence, and its mouth turned up in what appeared to be a smile. It did a half roll, showing us its small flippers and heart-shaped tail, and then disappeared into the deep.

  “Wow,” Billy said. “That was amazing.” I was so happy, seeing the whale and feeling Billy’s excitement.

  “Whales are really friendly and love to make contact with humans,” Atik said. “You’ll see a lot of them in the fjord, but first we have to stop and gas up.”

  “Where do you dock?” Billy asked, peering at the shore. The distance between the water and the top of the seawall looked too great to climb.

  “At the quay,” Atik said, pointing. “There’s an extreme tide here, fifteen feet between low and high. It’s low right now.” He looked at his phone—it was already nine o’clock. In May, this far north and barely a month to the longest day of the year, the sky really did stay light until very late. Laurent Cartier had been right about that.

  “We should spend the night here and go up the Saguenay tomorrow. It’ll be easier to find your mother’s cabin in daylight,” Atik said.

  My heart sank lower than the tide. To be so close to her and have to wait another night seemed almost unbearable. As Atik idled the engine and we slid close to the wooden dock, I jumped off with Billy and helped tie the lines around the cleats.

  “You want to walk around town while I call my girlfriend again?” Atik asked. “Then you can come back here to sleep.”

  “Sure,” Billy said. “We’ll pick up some food.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “Places around here close early.”

  “Well, we’ll try. We’ll bring something back for you.”

  “I’ve got some dried fish,” he said. “There’s plenty for you if you don’t find something better.”

  “Okay,” Billy said. I couldn’t quite speak; my throat ached with disappointment. I tried to tell myself Atik was right, it made sense to wait until tomorrow, but typical of me, my heart and my mind were in different places. I had wanted to surprise my mother tonight.

  A sharply inclined ramp slanted from the floating dock up to the land. It felt like climbing the steep roof at home in Connecticut. When Billy and I got to the top we saw the small town. The massive, old-fashioned white hotel with the bright red roof stood out. It was warmly lit, the windows glowing as the night fell. Beside it was a small chapel, also white with a red roof and steeple.

  “Are you okay?” Billy asked.

  I nodded, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  “I know how much you want to see your mother,” he said.

  That melted my hurt a little because I knew he wanted us to keep moving, that he was leery of what would happen when we saw her. I felt even better when he held my hand, linking his fingers with mine.

  “Let’s try to find something for dinner,” he said. “Although we have to make our money last. Who knows when we’ll find another job.”

  “We can always dive for really big lobsters,” I said, feeling okay enough to make a feeble joke.

  The street names were in French. As we walked along de Bord de l’Eau, the road that followed the curved bay, we saw that Atik was right: Many places, like the souvenir shops and whale watch office, were closed for the night. But there were bright and lively cafés, filled with people. We passed one that was painted pink with a whale on its sign. Music came through the open door, and I felt the strongest urge to go inside.

  Instead we kept walking, in search of a grocery. Billy hadn’t let go of my hand. I began to breathe more easily. Once you make up your mind that things are just the way they are, that wishing won’t change them, you realize you can live through it. I felt a ripple of weirdness and chalked it up to the third full day off meds.

  “Are you okay?” Billy asked.

  “Mostly,” I said. “It’s bizarre, being so close to my mom and thinking really old thoughts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, when she first left I went so crazy I wanted to rip my hair out. I wanted to stop existing. The idea of her leaving was so horrible, completely impossible, it didn’t seem the earth would keep turning. When the sun came up the next day, it felt wrong.”

  “Yeah, there couldn’t be daylight if she was gone,” Billy said. I knew he got it: It had happened to him, too.

  “I held on as long as I could,” I continued, “but once my dad decided to get remarried it felt as if our family was over. I stopped going to school. I literally couldn’t get out of bed.”

  “That’s when you went to the hospital?”

  I nodded. “I was like an insane girl in a padded room—well, it wasn’t actually padded, but the doors were locked and the windows had bars.” I paused, thinking of our fight on the way to the lighthouse. “I’m sorry I couldn’t really talk about it before. It’s still hard. I thought it would make you hate me.”

  “Hate you, are you kidding?”

  “I feel like the only one, Billy. At least in our school.” Try talking to your friends about your time on a psych ward. Try telling your crush.

  “Just keep getting better, Maia,” Billy said softly. “Taking your medication, whatever helps. You can take it in front of me, you know.”

  “I know,” I said, cringing and wondering what he’d say if he knew I’d stopped.

  But as we walked through town, with Billy never letting go of my hand, I felt my shoulders drop with a kind of silent relief, and I knew that everything would be okay. Tomorrow would come, and we’d find my mother. She’d be so happy to see me. She’d immediately get Billy, see how both serious and funny he was, how smart and cool. She’d realize he’d survived something terrible, and she’d respect how he’d helped me find my way to her.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find a place,” Billy said after we’d scoured the streets around the harbor for an open grocery store. “It might be time to dive for those lobsters.”

  The air had gotten chilly, a breeze blowing off the harbor. Billy put his arm around me. It felt so good, but it took me a minute to figure out how to walk in step with him. I stumbled a couple of times, and I let out a nervous laugh. He just held me steady until I caught the rhythm. I realized my bones were still chilled from our icy swim, and snuggling into his side felt wonderful. It would have anyway.

  As we circled back to the harbor, past the little chapel, the hotel looked so warm and inviting. We climbed a path past a tennis court and a row of white wooden chairs facing the bay. Walking around the hotel’s exterior, we saw a fire blazing in the lobby fireplace. We gazed into the restaurant windows. It looked vast and elegant, with white tablecloths and sparkling crystal, like the kind of hotel the Burritt wished it could be. Even though it was late, there were a few people still dining, waiters serving food. Hunger pangs hit me hard, and my mouth started watering.

  “Do you think we have enough for dinner?” I asked. “Once we get to my mother’s, she’ll feed us.”

  “It looks pretty expensive,” Billy said. “But we can try.”

  “What about that place on the quay? That little pink café. That might be cheaper.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “I’m pretty sure white tablecloths are out of our league tonight.”

  We hurried along, wanting to make sure we got to the pink café before it closed. As we approached we heard music, and I relaxed a little, knowing we’d get in. There was a menu posted by the door, but we didn’t even look. By then we were both starving, and we figured we could afford at least a bowl of soup.

  A waiter greeted us at the door.

  “Would you like to be inside or upstairs on the porch?” he asked.

  “Inside,” Billy said. I knew he realized I was cold.

  The atmosphere was cozy and dark, with strings of wh
ite lights around the small stage by the bar; there was a man playing guitar and a woman on accordion. People laughed and chatted, and we heard both English and French.

  We sat at a small table by the window. We were just across the street from the bay; a wide beach sloped down to the harbor where house- and streetlights sparkled on the water. The room was really dark, making us feel so private at our table, in our own little enclosed space.

  Pizza seemed like a good choice, not too expensive, and when it came, it tasted so delicious I couldn’t believe it. I nearly burned my mouth eating the first piece so fast.

  “You know what?” Billy asked. “This is our first date.”

  “Um, we’ve been on the road together for six days,” I said, sounding practical but tingling to hear him say it.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But things are different. Don’t you feel that?”

  I did. Everything had changed with our first kiss. The music was cheerful and the room was raucous, but it felt so romantic. We were leaning toward each other, elbows on the table, and then he moved his chair so he was right beside me and kissed me—with everyone all around us.

  “See?” he said. “First date.”

  “You’re right.”

  “We should celebrate it somehow.”

  “We did—with pizza,” I said.

  “No, I mean something bigger.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you,” he said. “Stay here, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and he walked out of the café.

  It felt weird to see him go, and I nearly called him back. I wanted to follow him, but I’d told him I’d stay. I watched as he crossed the street and disappeared down some steps. The tide was still low; I could see the beach from the window, illuminated by white lights ringing the harbor. Billy walked far out onto the hard-packed sand, and he picked up what looked like a long piece of driftwood. He seemed to be going back and forth, making patterns with the stick. I had to stand up to see what he was doing: writing our initials.

  BG + MC

  Then he started drawing something around them. At first I thought it was going to be a heart, but it was a circle. Then he made five sharp dashes, almost like rays of light shooting out from our initials.

  I had said I’d wait inside, but I couldn’t. I ran out the door and met him in the street. I threw my arms around him, kissed him hard. Another first, the first time I’d kissed Billy, started it myself.

  “Do you know what it is?” he asked.

  “Our initials,” I said, my arms around his neck. “You and me together.”

  “But the circle,” he said.

  “It’s like you drew a star around us.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s the sand dollar.”

  “It is,” I said, picturing the five narrow ovals, radiating from a center spot like the points of a star, on the delicate shell. “It’s our promise …”

  I wanted to run down to the beach, see his drawing closer. But we hadn’t paid the check yet, so we headed back inside. We stood by the door, peering down the dark bar for our waiter. I’d been so wrapped up in Billy, in just the two of us, I had barely noticed the other people there. There was a group, and some couples, and some people by themselves.

  One was a woman with straw-colored hair. She wore a khaki vest, the kind oceanographers sometimes used to hold their pens and notebooks and pocket-size binoculars. She stood at the bar, her back to me. I pulled away from Billy and took a step forward. It couldn’t be.

  My hand was shaking as I reached up and tapped the woman on the shoulder so lightly I wasn’t sure she could feel it. But she did, and she turned around.

  “Maia!” she said.

  “Mom,” I said, and I crashed into her arms.

  I buried my head into my mother’s shoulder and cried for a long time. I couldn’t have held back if I’d wanted. I wept, clutching her, crying because I felt every minute of those three years without her crashing over us in waves. It didn’t matter that Billy was right there, or that all the people in the restaurant could see me. I forgot about all of them—even Billy—until I could control myself enough to stop sobbing.

  “You did it,” Mom said, holding me at arm’s length to look me straight in the eyes. “You made it up here, you really did. I never believed it. Your father said this was where you were heading, but I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “In Tadoussac? I thought you’d be miles up the fjord, on the cliff, in your cabin.”

  She didn’t answer. She just kept staring at me, as if assessing how much I’d grown, how I’d changed. I assessed her, too, but to me she looked exactly the same: our shared blue eyes, the gap between our front teeth, our smile. Suddenly I was wiping my tears and we both had the biggest smiles on our faces.

  “This took courage, Maia,” Mom said. “I can only imagine how you did it! Only a true Whale Maven could have undertaken this journey. You are a woman after your mother’s heart.”

  “I didn’t do it alone,” I said.

  She looked over my shoulder. Was it my imagination, or did her expression go slightly flat? It bounced back, though, and she gave a warm smile. “You must be Billy.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Collins,” he said, holding out his hand.

  She hesitated, then gave it a firm shake. “I use the name I was born with,” she said. “Gillian Symonds, but call me Gillian.”

  “Thank you,” Billy said. But I noticed he didn’t say her name. I figured it would feel as strange for him as it would for me to call someone’s parent by their first name, especially in the instant of meeting them.

  “Why, Mom?” I asked. It felt bizarre to me, knowing my mother was using a different last name from mine.

  “It’s more professional,” she said. She made a funny face, her mouth twisting in such a familiar way. “No, that’s not the real reason. It just didn’t feel right using your dad’s name anymore.”

  “It’s mine, too,” I said.

  “Maia, you were named for one of the brightest stars in the sky. I chose it because the minute I held you in my arms I knew it was the only name for you. You know how much I love the Pleiades, and I know you love them, too. That’s part of our forever connection, okay? The last name doesn’t matter.”

  I nodded, trying to see it her way. For a second I felt an awkward pause, as if we were both searching for something to say to each other. But then her eyes lit up, and she jostled my shoulder.

  “I want to hear all about your trip,” she said. “How did you escape your dad and Astrid? She’s got such an eagle eye.”

  “She does,” I said. “I had to climb out my bedroom window—”

  “I taught you how to do that!” she said.

  “I know, I was thinking of you! And I shinnied down the pine tree—it’s gotten so tall, Mom, you wouldn’t believe it—and then I drove away in your car. I went to say good-bye to Billy, but instead he came with me …”

  “Ah, my good old Volvo. I miss her. How is she?”

  “She’s great, but we figured Dad would have people on the lookout. We hid her behind Billy’s family’s house,” I said, looking at Billy and wanting him to join in, to tell the story with me. But he was silent, his wide mouth set in that way I recognized so well, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could trust Mom or not.

  “Well, she served you well,” Mom said. “Then what?”

  “Billy, you tell,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, then we took my truck. My grandfather had given it to me.”

  “That sounds like a phenomenal adventure,” Mom said. “Switching vehicles along the way! How wonderfully diabolical you were. I know it drove Astrid crazy.” She put on a pretend-stern face. “Not that that’s good.”

  “I know,” I said, smiling with a little shared Astrid bashing.

  “But, oh, Maia—I am so glad to see you!” Mom threw her arms around me. Again. Then she looked at Billy. “I’m sure it was good to have a traveling
partner. Which one of you drove and who navigated?”

  “I drove your car,” I explained. “Billy drove the truck, and we took turns navigating. No GPS because we threw out our phones so we couldn’t be tracked—we used a paper map most of the way here.”

  “Well, you were always good at reading charts,” Mom said. “I’m just sorry I left before I really taught you how to use a sextant. You never know when celestial navigation will come in handy.”

  “But you did teach me,” I said, wondering why she didn’t remember.

  “On the roof doesn’t count,” she said. “You have to be on a boat, rocking and rolling on fifteen-foot waves, to really perfect your skill.”

  “You can teach me now,” I said. “And Billy, too. But, Mom, you didn’t tell me, why are you here in Tadoussac? We were going to head up the fjord to find you tomorrow, at the cabin.”

  “How were you going to do that?” she asked.

  “We have a friend with a boat,” Billy said.

  “You guys are so resourceful!” she said, laughing. “Spectacular. But how would you track down my little hideaway? I never sent you a map, did I?”

  I grinned; I had wanted to tell her the whole time. “I borrowed Beluga and Humpback Whales of Saguenay Fjord,” I said.

  “Wait—that’s such a rare book! So hard to find.”

  “That’s why I went to Mystic,” I said. “Because I remembered you’d made a tiny dot on the map, and I knew that’s where your house would be. Is it?”

  She nodded, and I saw tears in her eyes. “I never thought you’d remember that. You were so little.”

  “I remember everything about you,” I said.

  I stared at her, making sure she took in my words. Did she know how true they were? I could tell her every single thing that had ever happened between us.

  “Did you come down here in your boat?” I asked Mom. “Are you going back to your cabin tonight? We can tell Atik, and he can go home, and we can go with you …”

  My mother wiped her tears away, but she didn’t stop gazing at me. She smiled softly, the way she did when I was little, when we would do the most special, secret things together—it was a smile of deep love.