“Patrick—the storm. This isn’t safe!” she shouted as he approached us.
Dad took a step away from the pine, his body following her command.
“We can’t leave her!” I cried with my hand still out.
The three of them looked at me, as if I made no sense at all. But it was the only sense that mattered.
Dad bent down to touch the girl on the head, gingerly, as though she really was something wild that could turn on him. She didn’t move.
Mom looked around like she was searching for someone else to jump out at us—a trap for having touched her. She grabbed Moni’s arm and jerked us both farther away from Dad.
“Patrick . . .”
He didn’t say anything as he scooped the girl up in his arms. It looked so easy, like a pillow being lifted off the bed.
She kept her head burrowed, hands clenched into little fists, a titan of a fetus propped on Dad’s arms. He placed a finger under her nose.
“Is she breathing?” asked Mom.
“Yes,” he answered. Quickly, gruffly.
She didn’t wait another second. She took my hand and ran, my little legs stumbling every other step, her pace far too quick. I looked back to see Moni following as best she could. She appeared even smaller than usual with her head ducked down to shield herself, arms up in surrender. The storm was strengthening, daring us as we tried to escape her, the intensity of each downdraft practically lifting us off the ground. We ran through sheet after sheet of water, disorienting and exquisite.
I looked up for one second to see the glow from our cabin for the first time, the gleaming dot making me ache a little. Was it only a moment ago that we were all sitting around the coffee table, bellies full and heads humming with untroubled thoughts? When it was just the four of us, our rhythms with each other having been fine-tuned over the years, a painstaking balance not to be disrupted? What would happen when we crossed that doorway? What had we done?
The sirens grew noisier the brighter the light from our cabin windows became.
Mom threw a wool blanket from the couch over me as soon as we fell through the doorway, as if I were on fire and it needed to be snuffed out.
“Are you okay?” she kept asking me, as though I were the one who had been found in the woods.
Moni sat quietly in the tan saddle-style armchair, a little puddle of water at her feet. I pushed away from Mom and sat on Moni’s lap, wrapping us in the blanket, little pieces of woolly fuzz already caught on my damp lips.
Dad surged through the door, the girl still in his arms. He looked at us expectantly, as if we should have already formed a concise plan for what to do next.
“Towels first. Then blankets,” he ordered—mostly to Mom, who had withdrawn into a motionless state, arms slack at her sides.
The girl lay on the wood floor, her head and upper body on the maroon-and-cream-speckled rug. She looked straight up at the ceiling, like a patient would in a dentist’s chair, with eyes that took up half her face. Her feet were bare and marred by scratches, blood dried in some areas and fresh in others. Her body was covered in dirt, its grimy linear patterns like some sort of crude tattoo. Even with all the mud that coated her, the pink shirt and shorts she wore were visible. Tiny strawberries lined the edging of her sleeves, a big one over her belly. Her hair was split into pigtails, held by pink bobble elastics, each section soaked and limp. Who had dressed her in those clothes? Who had done her hair like that and placed each elastic so carefully around each pigtail?
Who had left her?
She began to open her mouth and then close it, like a fish searching for water. Yet her breathing remained steady, her chest rising up and going down in a rhythmic fashion. A soft moan crawled from the back caverns of her throat and whistled out.
“Stella, keep her warm. I’m calling for help,” Dad said. He lifted the cordless phone out of its cradle and dragged its antenna up with his teeth.
Mom dried her off, rubbing vigorously with a blue towel. Instantly it became caked in mud. I wondered if it was the same towel I had used getting out of the bathtub.
“I need an ambulance. We found a girl in the woods by our cabin . . . I’d say six or seven . . . Yes, she’s breathing. Yes, she’s conscious . . . You don’t understand. We found her out in this storm. She needs medical attention . . . You can’t what?”
Mom grabbed another towel and continued to rub harshly. The girl’s head vibrated.
“What? What do you mean you can’t get anyone out here?” Dad’s voice rose with each syllable, the agitation ringing in a way I had never heard from him before.
I leaned forward out of Moni’s lap, my feet hitting the floor softly as I placed the wool blanket over the girl so only her head was exposed. She had gone still. Mom rocked back on her heels and put her head in her hands. I wasn’t sure if it was from exhaustion or dread. Maybe it was both.
“Please. First thing in the morning. Sheriff Vandenberg, he knows me. Tell him I said it’s an emergency. Patrick Baek. B, A, E, K.”
“She need bath. She need hot.” Moni finally spoke.
Mom’s head jolted up. She met Moni’s eyes and nodded. “I’ll go run it,” she said quietly. She patted my head, telling me to stay where I was.
Dad held the phone low at his side, the metal antenna tapping his leg.
“No one can get here tonight,” he finally said.
“What?”
“The roads are flooded and blocked by downed trees. They said since she doesn’t seem injured, we should keep her warm and hydrated.”
“Until when?” Mom demanded, her voice near shrill, her hand clutching the banister as she took a step back down.
He shrugged and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know, Stella. Until they can get here.”
The tenderness they had shared earlier in front of the mirror seemed like decades ago. The night had swept that moment away.
Mom studied the creature who had abruptly disturbed her last evening on vacation. Like a classmate chiding the one who had ruined a field trip for the rest of the class. I was not used to such apathy from her, the woman who swam in the lake with me, her carefree strokes and tossing of the head. Her gentle caress with a towel when we got out together.
“Well, let’s get her warm,” she said.
