Page 1 of Lost in the Moment and Found

PART ISOMETIMES THINGS GET LOST

1FALLING BETWEEN THE CRACKS

THE FIRST THING ANTOINETTERicci 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 parentsneverleft 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, everythingwas 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 washers,the space belonged toher,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 laughterstuckto 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.

She loved both her parents, and she loved her life, and she didn’t want to lose any of it. She had the vague feeling that sometimes good things were only as good as they were because all the pieces had managed to line upjust so,and if you took any of them away, it wouldn’t be good anymore. Maybe not good at all.

So she stood frozen a few feet from the end of the aisle, staring at her father’s shoes and trying to fight back the panic that threatened to rise up and overwhelm her. Something was wrong.

The feeling that something was wrong only grew when an unfamiliar adult voice asked, sharp and interrogative, “Sir? Sir, are you all right? Do you need me to call for—oh my God.Someone call 911!”

Not entirely sure what was happening, only that she was scared and alone and wanted her father, Antsy finally rushed forward the last few steps, until she could see, and stopped again, eyes going so wide that it hurt. She couldn’t close them. She couldn’t look away.

There were her father’s shoes, toes pointed at the ceiling because they were still on her father’s feet, and there was her father, flat on his back on the cold linoleum, staring up at the ceiling the way he always saidsheshouldn’t do, because the lights would hurt her eyes. There was a woman she didn’t know kneeling next to him and yelling, her fingers pressed against the side of his neck. Antsy’s stomach seized up like a fist. She didn’t think it was okay for this lady to be touching her father.

But he wasn’t smacking the lady’s hand away or telling her it was rude to touch people without permission. He wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t even blinking.

People needed to blink. Blinking wasimportant.Antsy sniffled.

The woman hadn’t noticed her yet. She was looking over her shoulder and shouting something Antsy couldn’t quite hear. There was a weird ringing sound in her ears, getting louder and louder the longer she looked at her father, still and silent and staring at the lights, unmoving on the Target floor.

She didn’t even notice when her own throat hitched and she started keening, the sound high and horrible and inhuman. The woman’s head snapped back around, taking in the crying child and the fact that her hair matched the dead man’s in an instant, before she got to her feet and moved to put herself between the little girl and the body. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “Don’t look at that. No, no, don’t look at that. Sweetheart, look at me.”

Antsy tried to duck around the woman, who grabbed her by the shoulders and stopped her before she could complete the motion. “My name isn’tsweetheartI don’tknowyou you’re not allowed totouchme I want my daddy!” Her voice peaked in a wail so high and sharp that it made the people in earshot wince.

And there were more of them than there had been only a few seconds before. People were pouring into their location, other shoppers and staffers in their familiar red Target vests. Antsy recognized one of them, the nice man who always restocked the Barbies when they’d been picked over. She’d asked him before if he knew where a specific toy was, and he had always been willing to help her find what she needed.

Wrenching herself away from the woman, she flung herself at the man and wrapped her arms around his leg, holding on tightly as she wailed. The man looked around helplessly, holding his hands up and well away from her.

“I didn’t touch her,” he said, voice gone defensive. “She grabbed on to me.”

“Make Daddy wake up!” demanded Antsy, as if being an employee of Target gave him some sort of secret superpower.

“I can’t, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just stock the toys, I don’t raise the—I’m sorry.”

Antsy sniffled and wiped her face on the leg of his pants.He patted her on the head like she was a puppy, tentative and still clearly half-afraid to touch her.

“’M Antsy,” she said.

“David,” he replied. “Is my name.”

The woman who’d originally found her father was now talking earnestly to two men dressed as store security, gesturing alternately to the body and the child. Things got very hectic after that.

Someone pried Antsy off the man’s leg. She started wailing again, and only wailed louder as EMTs and police officers arrived and loaded her father onto a gurney, wheeling him away. She tried to run after them, and a policewoman in a blue uniform stepped in front of her, kneeling down to look her in the eye.

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