Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

He didn’t reply, sinking instead into a crouch on the floor and holding his head. The doctor had warned about a possible concussion. Then I noticed one of his slippers – the kind they gave patients to use the bathroom or go to the cafeteria – was turning red.

‘Come on. You’re bleeding.’

I helped him back to his feet and checked his pupils, which looked normal, then grabbed a first aid kit out of the cabinet. Jasper whined when we passed through the living room.

‘So this was your grand plan?’ I couldn’t help the dazed laugh that bubbled out of my mouth when we got to the kitchen. ‘You wanted to escape Congdon to visit my house? I should have just bought some cookies and gone home instead of killing myself trying to stop you.’

He frowned at his foot, looking calmer now. ‘Maybe you could’ve locked up your dog, too.’

‘I think whoever trespasses in a yard with a sign that says, ­ATTACK DOG ON SITE. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. deserves whatever they get.’

‘Why do you have an attack dog?’

I dropped into a chair, exhaling gratefully at the relief of pressure on my ankle. ‘My dad got him as sort of a welcome home present after I’d been gone once. He’s a sailor, so he lives on the lake for a good part of the year, and he worries. He thinks… he thinks I need protection.’

Now it was Lucas’s turn to laugh and I couldn’t help grinning. ‘I know, right? Dad trained him as a guard dog, but he’s a big softie underneath and it’s nice to have the company. The nights can get pretty long in the winter.’

‘Yes, they can.’ His smile faded. After a moment he seemed to forget about Jasper and dropped into a chair, studying the kitchen as if looking for something he’d misplaced. I watched him carefully, trying to gauge his mental state and how to approach whatever came next.

‘What about your mom?’ he asked after an awkward pause.

I shrugged, dousing some cotton balls in iodine. ‘She didn’t stick around. Take off your slipper and put your foot on the table.’

He did, letting me examine it. There were two shallow scrapes from Jasper’s incisors with some abrasions on either side. I swabbed the worst of it, ignoring his hiss of pain. The longer I wiped the blood off and applied bandages, the more surreal the situation became. Lucas Blackthorn was sitting at my kitchen table like he’d just dropped by to hang out. I should have called Congdon the minute I saw him. Or I should’ve let Jasper hold him while I phoned the police. As if it knew what I was thinking, my cell phone bleeped to tell me I had another message from Dr Mehta and it finally occurred to me why she’d been calling.

‘There’s probably a manhunt out for you now.’

‘Why?’

‘You tend to attack people, haven’t you noticed?’

‘So does your dog. Why isn’t he chased down and locked up?’

Raising an eyebrow, I swung a hand toward the living room where Jasper could clearly be heard scratching at the kennel door.

Lucas smiled with chagrin. ‘Are you going to turn me in?’

‘Any minute now.’ I stuffed the bloody slipper back on his foot, trying not to think about why I was postponing the inevitable. He’d assaulted the couple who’d found him robbing the outfitter store; he’d choked, fought, and shoved me; and his file at Congdon clearly labeled him dangerous. But he was also injured and there was something different about him in the dull light of my kitchen, the way he was still inspecting the house even now, drinking in the details of the spice rack and coffeepot with an intrusiveness that was almost endearing, a boy who’d never learned manners, who’d never been told not to stare.

‘How’s your shoulder?’

He ran a hand over the coat. ‘It aches a little. Not bad.’

So, the pain meds were still working. He hadn’t been loose long.

‘Did you strangle anyone to get out this time?’

‘Didn’t need to.’ His face split into an unexpected grin and he began chatting freely. ‘I pretended to be sleeping until they took my handcuffs off to change my clothes. When they left to get something, I slipped out the window, took a jacket from an unlocked truck, and headed toward the lake. From there it was easy to find your house.’

I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, remembering how I’d showed him my street on the map of Duluth. It was a mistake real psychiatrists wouldn’t make, giving personal information to their patients.

As I came back to sit at the table Lucas described the people he’d seen roaming the streets: the homeless, the packs of college kids, the drunken tourists, and the older couples bundled in their peacoats for a dinner on the town. I waited for him to finish, then casually asked if anyone had noticed him . As far as I knew, he was totally unaware of his fame or the controversy his reappearance had created. He said he’d stuck to the shadows, no one had spoken to him. I nodded, glancing into the darkness outside the window.

‘Why?’ The question slipped out before I could find a more professional frame for it. ‘Why are you here?’

His gaze lingered on me. Slowly he drew my hand across the table, taking the ice pack from me and setting it down.

‘A couple reasons. The first is that I missed talking to you, too.’

Too? I pulled back in surprise as it registered. ‘You were awake?’

‘Sort of. I was surfacing when you were there and by the time I woke up, you’d left.’

‘I would have come back tomorrow.’

He shrugged. ‘That wasn’t soon enough.’

The way he said it made heat flood my cheeks and, embarrassed, I ducked my head and started to remove my boot, but he lifted my foot onto his lap.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You fixed my foot. I’ll fix yours.’ He pulled off the boot and sock to reveal the swollen, wrapped ankle. ‘I saw you limping when you got out of the car. What happened?’

‘Gymnastics injury.’ I nodded to the ice pack, which he applied to the swelling,

His hands closed around my calf and beneath my foot I could feel his whole body tightening. He seemed to be searching for something in me, a sign, and I didn’t know what to do besides return his turbulent stare and wait.

Finally, he took a deep breath and decided.

‘We never talked about it, my dad and I. Sometimes I even thought I dreamed the whole thing.’ He paused, and his gaze turned inward, seeing things I couldn’t.

‘He only told me one thing about the world outside – that they would take me away from him. They would separate us and we would lose each other, maybe forever. He promised he would never let that happen, but now it’s happened anyway, because of me.’

He leaned in until I could see my own reflection in his eyes, tiny and paralyzed.

‘That’s the second reason I’m here – to ask for your help. It’s why I’m going to tell you.’ He paused, faltering.

‘Tell me what?’

‘Why we had to hide.’

I made some noodles, the nice udon ones instead of ramen, and foraged the kitchen for mushrooms, onion, and shreds of leftover chicken to stir into a simmering soup that could warm the coldest of Duluth stomachs. Lucas stared at the pictures on the refrigerator while I cooked, the Blackthorns, Lykovs, and Ho Vans all lined up like members of the same social experiment performed every forty years across the globe. The boy Lucas was the only one smiling, beaming out at us, unaware of his fate, while adult Lucas swallowed and quickly moved on to examine the appliance itself, tracing the lines of the doors, the hardware, practically getting his head caught between the fridge and the wall in order to see how the wiring worked. When the soup was done, I set one of the bowls in front of his chair and put mine on the opposite side of the table.