Page 7 of Lost in the Moment and Found

There: a good reason, sensible, and well within the limits of acceptability. Tyler settled back into his seat, still looking unhappy, and her mother managed a wan smile as she touched Antsy on the cheek.

“You’re my good girl,” she said. “Always so good. Always better than I deserved.”

“I love you,” said Antsy, and fled to her room. She emergedhalf an hour later to brush her teeth, grimacing and touching her temples the whole time, and while she saw Tyler watching from the hallway, reflected in the bathroom mirror like an unfriendly ghost, no one tried to talk to her or interrupt her. Clean, hungry, and afraid, Antsy went to bed.

THE BABY CAME ONtime, as babies sometimes will, and loudly, as babies always do. A girl, a baby sister. Tyler and her mother tucked the crib into their room, and Antsy sat rigid with silent fear as she realized what the baby’s arrival really meant. She couldn’t sleep with the little girl wailing in the next room, but she wasn’t sleeping anyway, too afraid to close her eyes.

They named the baby Abigail. She became “Abby” instantly, even to Tyler, who still wouldn’t call Antsy by any name but “Antoinette.” And for a while, she took up all the attention in the house and all the air in whatever room she was in.

That was better. A Tyler focused on his daughter was a Tyler not looking at Antsy with that expression that made her skin crawl for reasons she couldn’t understand; a Tyler who cared about the baby was a Tyler who didn’t care about Antsy. She wanted that more than anything. She still didn’t like him, and she still didn’t know exactly why. He wasn’t trying to be her daddy, but as to what hewastrying to be, she couldn’t say.

After that one bad dinner, he had never tried to play her against her mother like that again. Instead, he sat too close to her on the couch, he put his hands on her legs or arms whenever he had the slightest excuse, and he watched her.

Everywhere she went, he watched her. He watched her when she left for school, on the days when he hadn’t already gone to work, and he watched her when she played in thebackyard on the weekends. His eyes were a constant danger, far worse than his hands, which required her to lower her guard and get close enough to grab. She hated them so. Her dislike was taking root and sprouting thorns, becoming something wilder and more tangled.

Six months after Abby was born, her mother sat her down in the living room and took her hands, as she’d done twice before. Antsy sat rigid, having learned that these were the moments where her life changed for the worse, where things she didn’t even know could be lost were ripped away from her and thrown aside. Somewhere in the time between her father’s collapse and now, she realized, she had lost the belief that her mother would always protect her, and somehow that burned the worst of all.

“Sweetheart,” said her mother. “This house isn’t big enough for our whole family. You know that. The baby can’t sleep with me and Tyler forever.”

“So she can share my room with me,” blurted Antsy, desperate to say something—say anything—that wouldn’t let the next change leave her mother’s lips. “I don’t mind. I already have a bunk bed. She can have the bottom bunk while she’s all little, and then when she gets bigger, we can take turns on top. It’ll be fun. Like having a sleepover, but with a sister.”

“Oh, darling, that’s very generous of you, but it wouldn’t be fair. This house isn’t big enough, and it’s full of memories that make us sadder than we have to be. Your father wouldn’t want us to be sad.”

Antsy wanted to scream. Her father wouldn’t have wanted Tyler lurking in the hall and watching her brush her teeth. He wouldn’t have wanted her to feel like she was being haunted in her own home, even though she didn’t understandwhyshe felt that way. And she thought that maybe if he’d been there,he wouldn’t have wanted her to understand. She thought keeping her from ever understanding might have been the most important thing in the whole world to him.

“We’re moving,” said her mother.

Antsy stared at her, eyes large and grave and petrified. Her mother, weary and happy and unable to understand why she’d be alone in either of those things, squeezed her hands and smiled.

“You’ll have a bigger yard and a better room and you’ll never have to share it,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful.”

“Yes,” parroted Antsy. “Wonderful.”

PART IIWHERE THE LOST THINGS GO

4SOMETIMES THINGS MISPLACE THEMSELVES

THE NEW HOUSE WASbigger, and filled with light, with windows in every room, and Antsy hated it and loved it at the same time, because more space meant more opportunities for Tyler to catch her alone, away from her mother, and more light meant fewer shadows for him to hide in.

It was almost a year after Abby’s birth when Antsy heard her bedroom door swing open in what felt like the middle of the night and sat up with a gasp, clutching her blankets to her chest as she saw the man in the doorway. He was a shadow against shadows; all the windows in the world couldn’t stop the sun from setting. He walked toward the bed. Antsy watched him come, eyes very wide, barely even daring to breathe.

He stopped only a few feet away, watching her. Taking her measure for something she didn’t understand and didn’t want to, and her vague discomfort and dislike finally solidified, becoming a hatred so thick it choked her, making it difficult to breathe. He had neverdoneanything, apart from occasional attempts to make her fight with her mother; always little things, like the plates, or like swearing he’d told her they were leaving soon when she knew full well that he hadn’t. Always his word against hers. And what she had learned, again and again, was that her mother would believe him every time. He was the adult, he was her husband, and Antsy was just a little girl who had never been fully accepting of his place in her life. She was the unreliable one, not him. NotTyler.

But she was the one safe in her bed while Tyler was the one standing silently where he had no business being and staring at her like he expected something. Antsy finally shrank away.

“You can’t be in here,” she said. “You can’t… you can’t beinhere. This ismy room.”

“And this is my house,” he said. “I paid for it; I own it. So is this really your room, or is this the room I let you borrow as long as it’s convenient for me?”

Antsy had never considered that her room might not actually belong to her, that it might be in some way conditional. She glared at Tyler. “It’s mine,” she said. “I chose the paint for the walls, and myfatherbought me this bed. This is my room.”

“You know your mother will believe me if I tell her something and you tell her something else,” said Tyler, and moved closer still, finally sitting on the edge of the bed. “You know I could make things a lot harder for you than they are right now.”

Antsy did know those things. She continued to watch him, wound up and wary, almost too afraid to blink.

“I can also make them easier,” he said. “I know you asked your mother for a bike. I could convince her it would be a good idea to let you have one. If I said I thought you’d make more friends in our new neighborhood if you could get around more easily, you know she’d listen to me. You and I don’t have to be enemies.”

“We don’t?” whispered Antsy. She felt like it was important that this hadn’t happened in their old house, in her old room, where her mother had been right across the hall, close enough to hear her if she yelled. Here, her mother was on a different floor of the house. She’d still come running if she heard Antsyscream, but she’d have to come up the stairs, and the noise would wake the baby, and her mother was still so tired all the time…

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