And, then, like a second bolt of lightning, it struck me with dead certainty what would happen if the children disappeared, if they died, if they simply inconvenienced everyone around us. I would be blamed. And I would be sent back home. And just like all those years ago, when I’d been kicked out of Iron Mountain, everyone would sit there blaming me, wondering why I thought I was anything other than what I was. Madison? That would be the end of our relationship. She had asked me to do this one thing for her . . . well, this second thing for her. If I couldn’t do it, if I failed her, why would she need me? I would lose her again. I had never let her down before. I felt my heart stutter in my chest. I couldn’t let this happen.
“Kids!” I shouted now. “Bessie? Roland?” I walked into the woods at the edge of the estate. “Bessie! Roland! Come back! Get back here right now!” I shouted. I didn’t care who heard. Maybe one of the gardeners would come running, help me look for them. But, no, it was just me. It was always going to be just me, walking into the dark woods, looking for these kids.
I kept following the trail that someone had blazed through the forest, though it was slightly overgrown and thorns kept sticking to my bathing suit. I wished I had something other than flip-flops on. “Bessie! I am not joking. Bessie? Come back,” I said, but there was no response. I could be going in the exact wrong direction, but what else could I do? I just kept walking, every once in a while saying their names so they knew that I was coming for them. What I’d do with them when I found them, I tried to keep that out of my voice.
After about twenty minutes, I finally saw the woods open up, and there were the kids, right where the light came in. They were standing there in their swimsuits, and it looked like they were taking and retaking this one tentative step. They were so close to running away. Just beyond the woods was a road. But they were paralyzed, right at the moment when they had to decide. And I caught up to them. I was right on them. My hands were on them, touching their weird little bodies.
“You scared the absolute shit out of me,” I told them, and I realized that I hadn’t been breathing, that I’d been holding the air in my lungs until I had them in my grasp.
“Sorry,” Bessie said, not looking at me.
“What the fuck were you doing?” I asked. “Why did you leave me?”
“You weren’t watching us,” Bessie said, so petulant, just like a child. “So we left. And then we kept walking.”
“We tried to get a car to stop for us,” Roland said, “but there have only been, like, two cars and they didn’t even slow down.”
“Why are you running away?” I asked them.
“It would be easier, right?” Bessie said. “If we just disappeared, everyone would be happy.”
“I wouldn’t be happy,” I told her, meaning it. “I would be so sad.”
“Really?” Roland asked, surprised.
“Yes—Jesus Christ—yes, I would be sad.”
“Okay,” Roland said, satisfied.
“And would you be happy?” I asked them.
“No,” Bessie said. “Not really. I was just standing here, and I couldn’t move because I didn’t know where I could go. Not back to Mom. No way would we go back to Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop’s house. Where else is there? We don’t have anyone, Lillian. We don’t have anyone.”
“You have me, okay?” I said, and I guess I meant it. Regardless, it was a fact. They had me. They had me.
And all this time I’d been worried about what would happen to me if I fucked it up. I’d lose this life. I’d lose Madison. But I hadn’t thought about the kids. If I failed them, where would they go? Somewhere bad, that was for sure. Somewhere worse than this life. Carl was ready to send them there. For all I knew, Jasper and Madison would be ready to send them there if I slipped up just a little bit. I remembered that feeling, driving down to the valley, no longer welcome at Iron Mountain. It had felt like my life was over. And it kind of was. I wouldn’t let that happen to these kids. They were wild, like me. They deserved better, like me. I wouldn’t fuck up. I resolved myself to this future. I would not fuck up. No fucking way.
And just then a car slowed, pulled over, rolled down its window. A dude in a Hawaiian shirt peered over at us.
“You need a ride?” he asked.
“No,” Bessie said suddenly, her face red.
“You sure?” he asked. I had him figured out. He was not a threat. He was a doofus. Still, we were not meant to be seen. We were not for public consumption.
“We’re on a hike,” I told him.
“In your bathing suits?” he asked, curious.
“Hit the road,” I said, making myself bitchy. It felt good.
“Well . . . bye,” he said, driving off. We watched the car head down the road, disappear.
“Can we go back to the house?” Bessie finally asked me.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.” And the two of them took my hands, and we made our way back to the house that was ours but wasn’t quite ours.
“Have you guys heard of yoga?” I asked them, and both kids groaned, because nothing that was called yoga was probably much fun.
“Just read to us?” Bessie asked. They were ten years old, but sometimes they seemed so much younger, undernourished, wild.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s just read. I’ll read you a story.”
We listened to the sounds of the woods, and we noticed how, once we made it back home, those sounds had changed, gotten quieter. Or maybe they had gone inside us. Whatever it was, we were back. And we would not leave again.
The next morning, I awoke to Roland’s fingers in my mouth, Bessie’s feet pressed hard against my stomach. The possible inappropriateness of the situation, of sleeping with these two kids, gave me momentary pause, and then I thought, fuck it, nobody else was going to hold on to them. Their lives, up to this moment, could not have been less weird than sleeping with a grown woman who was nearly a stranger to them. I spit out Roland’s fingers, and he twitched a little. I pushed my belly out, and Bessie felt the resistance and stirred. “Wake up, kiddos,” I said, stretching my arms over my head.
“Do we have to go swimming again?” Bessie asked, and she seemed shocked that she had become bored with a swimming pool, glimmering chlorinated water.
“No. We’ve got a new routine,” I said, trying to think of the routine. “We’re doing some exercises.”
“Right now?” Roland whined.
“Yes, right now,” I told him.
“Can’t we have breakfast first?” Bessie asked.
“I think, hm, I think we do exercises first. You don’t want to exercise on a full stomach. That’s bad for you, I think.” I was making this shit up as I went along. I didn’t have the yoga tapes from Carl yet, so I tried to remember my mom’s ex-boyfriend. I couldn’t recall the poses, though I did remember that his butt was often in the air in ways that made me embarrassed for him. He had a ponytail, which was distracting.
“What kind of exercises?” Bessie asked.
“Breathing exercises,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound much like exercising,” Roland conceded, and I said, “Just sit on the floor.”