Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)
Seanan McGuire
FOR THE CHILD I WAS.
I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE
TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR THE
FACT THAT WHEN I WAS YOU, I DIDN’T RUN SOON ENOUGH.
I’M SORRY.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While all the Wayward Children books have dealt with heavy themes and childhood traumas, this one addresses an all-too-familiar monster: the one that lives in your own home. Themes of grooming and adult gaslighting are present in the early text. As a survivor of something very similar, I would not want to be surprised by these elements where I didn’t expect them.
I just want to offer you this reassurance: Antsy runs. Before anything can actually happen, Antsy runs.
Street penny sacrament; what are you looking for?
Lost in the moment and found, I am the God of Lost Things, and I will take care of you.
Foundling and fallen, not where it ought to be, Mislaid and moved around.
I am the God of Lost Things, and I will take care of you.
I will take care of you.
—“The God of Lost Things,” Talis Kimberley
PART I
SOMETIMES THINGS GET LOST
1
FALLING BETWEEN THE CRACKS
THE FIRST THING ANTOINETTE Ricci ever lost was her father, but she was so young when it happened that she never really felt like she could be held responsible. She was only five years old, made of wiggles and giggles and still enough smaller than her name that no one ever called her anything other than “Antsy,” not even her parents. She had never been hungry for longer than it took to tell an adult, never been hurt worse than a skinned knee or banged elbow, never truly been afraid.
It was a daddy-daughter day, something Antsy still viewed as a special treat, even though she knew that it was really to give her mother a few hours of peace after a long week of raising her hyperactive child. Mommy was going to go back to work as soon as Antsy started first grade, but until then, it was just the two of them all day while Daddy was at work, and that meant Saturdays were for Daddy and Antsy, Antsy and Daddy, just the two of them out in the world.
That was normal. That was right. That was the way things were supposed to be. And one minute he was there, watching indulgently from the end of the aisle as she ran wild and gleeful past ranks of Disney princesses and their jewel-toned plastic accessories, and then he wasn’t there anymore. Antsy stopped running right in the middle of the aisle, too confused to move. Her parents never left her alone when they were at Target. That was one of their first and firmest rules; she could be allowed to free-range through the toys as long as she could see them, but she couldn’t let them slip out of sight, not ever, because the world was full of people who wanted to snatch up pretty little girls and walk away with them.
But her father—her tall, strong, broad-shouldered father with the hair as bright a red as hers—wasn’t there anymore. He should have been right there at the end of the aisle, watching her with the little smile on his face that he reserved for what he called her “feral child moments,” what he called the times when she ran wild and free and unfettered by the expectations of a world that was inevitably going to come crashing down on her soon enough.
Instead of her father, there was a pair of scuffed brown shoes that stuck out just past the edge of the aisle. They looked familiar. She’d seen them at home, in the hall. Suddenly gripped by the cold hand of caution, Antsy crept closer. Why were her father’s shoes on the floor? Where was her father? Grownups didn’t lay down on the floor the way kids sometimes did. They were too tall. When they did get down on the floor to look at something neat, they complained the whole time, saying things that didn’t make any sense, like “ow, my back” and “when’s the last time we vacuumed this carpet?” So her father couldn’t be wearing his shoes anymore, because he wouldn’t lay down like that, but the toes were pointed at the ceiling, and shoes only did that when there were feet inside them.
She slowed down before she reached the shoes, before she could see the person—not her father, it couldn’t be her father—who was wearing them. Something was very wrong. If he’d been playing hide-seek without telling her, he would already have popped back out to give her a chance to find him, and if he wasn’t, he’d never have left her alone like this. She didn’t want to reach the end of the aisle. She was suddenly gripped by the unkind conviction that if she did, everything was going to change, and she didn’t want it to. She didn’t want it to change at all. She had everything she wanted.
She had a nice room with a bunk bed that was just for her, and walls painted her favorite shade of green, with yellow daisies stenciled all around the baseboards. She’d helped with the daisies, and her handprint was pressed next to the doorframe, smaller than her hands were now, but still enough to make it clear that the room was hers, the space belonged to her, and no one was welcome there unless she wanted them to be.
She had a pretty mother with long dark hair and a laugh like watermelon on a hot summer afternoon, sweet and good and oddly sticky in its own way. Her mother’s laughter stuck to you, and it made everything better for hours and hours, even after it was over. And she had the best father in the world, with red hair like her own, although he had a lot less of it—he’d started losing his hair before she was born, and when she’d seen pictures of him from the wedding and before, where his whole shiny skull was covered up by untamed red frizzes, she’d been scared of losing her own hair for more than a week, until her mother told her that because her hair was curly like Aunt Sally’s and not straight like Daddy’s, it wasn’t going to happen. Her father didn’t laugh as good as her mother did, but he knew the best games, and he was always happy to play them with her. He didn’t mind mud or mess or spending hours at Target while she ran around and looked at all the toys.