Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“Oh, Hailey,” Prairie said, and her voice wavered. “I… had reasons for leaving when I did. I didn’t know about you. I meant to come back for your mom, but by the time I could, she… well, she died. I never even knew she was pregnant.”

“But you… you left my mom here alone with Gram. And then she killed herself.” I didn’t bother to keep the accusation out of my voice, even though I wasn’t sure I believed what Milla had said.

“I know.” Prairie’s voice got softer. “That’s something I have to live with every day of my life.”

I considered telling her that I’d never leave Chub with Gram. Never .

“Didn’t anyone come looking for you?” I asked instead.

“Gram didn’t report me missing,” Prairie said. If she was bitter, she covered it well. “I was never officially a runaway. And the police had better things to do than search for me.”

“But-why didn’t you come back, you know, later? After I was born?”

I heard the crack in my voice and I hated it, hated that Prairie heard it too.

“I didn’t know, Hailey. Alice said your mom-” She hesitated and I saw that she bit her lip the very same way I did, catching the right side of the bottom lip between her teeth. “She never let me know about you.”

Why should I care? My mother was nothing to me. I had no memories of her. As far as I was concerned, I’d never had a mother at all.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” I muttered. “Chub’s my family now. We’re fine, we don’t need anyone else.”

Prairie nodded, more to herself than to me, I thought.

“I see you found your mom’s hiding spot,” Prairie said gently.

“Her… what?”

Prairie put her hands to the back of her neck and twisted the clasp of a thin silver chain. As she closed her fingers on the pendant, I knew what I would see.

“It’s just like yours,” she said. “When I saw it on you… well, your mom never took it off. Neither of us did. Mary-our grandmother-she gave them to us. They’re very old. She said they would protect us.”

She handed the pendant to me, still warm from her skin. I had noticed that the stone in the necklace I wore absorbed my heat and held it, almost like it carried energy. The necklace in my hand was identical to the one around my neck, right down to the twisting, curling scrollwork that held the stone in place, the looping bale through which the chain ran.

I handed the necklace to Prairie. It would have been nice to believe there was magic in the necklaces, but I wasn’t counting on it. “I guess we should go back,” I said.

We didn’t talk, but the silence felt all right. When we got to the house, Gram was still sitting in her kitchen chair. She gave us a calculating smile and blew smoke in our direction. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“I’m taking Hailey out to dinner,” Prairie said. “We’ll be a while.”

This was news to me. Chub, who had been playing with his plastic magnet letters on the fridge, came over and pushed his face into my legs again. For just a second I was embarrassed for Prairie to see that Chub wasn’t like other kids.

Gram stared at Prairie with her eyes narrowed down to slits. Prairie stared back. I found myself hoping Gram would blink first.

“Fine,” Gram finally said. I could tell she was thinking hard. She had that look a lot. No matter what else you could say about her, she wasn’t stupid. I couldn’t tell you how many of her customers came to our house thinking they could put one over on her. She’d give them that look and sure enough they’d leave a lot more of their cash on the table than they had planned. If they didn’t like it, she’d tell them to take their business somewhere else, which they hardly ever did. I thought of the money and the ticket again, and wondered what she was up to.

“Don’t wait up” was all Prairie said as she took her keys out of her purse.

“We need to bring Chub,” I said. I wanted to find out what Prairie was really doing here, but I felt bad about leaving Chub tonight. I could tell he was upset, the way he’d hugged me so hard.

“Chub’s not going anywhere,” Gram said. “I think he’s catching something. I don’t want him taking a chill outside.”

I knew she was lying, but I also knew he’d be all right for an hour or two.

I followed Prairie out to her car. We didn’t talk. She drove straight to Nolan’s, taking the shortcut back behind the Napa Auto Parts, and I was surprised she’d picked the only fancy restaurant in town.

I was afraid the hostess wouldn’t seat us, since I was wearing jeans. But Prairie gave her a smile and said, “We’ll need some privacy, please. Would you find us a table that’s a little bit out of the way?”

The hostess put us in a nice booth along the far wall, away from the waitress station and the kitchen. She kept sneaking looks at Prairie, and now that I had gotten over the surprise of how much our faces looked alike, I could see why Prairie drew attention.

I was tall and skinny, but Prairie was tall and elegant. Thin, but with nice hips and breasts, and her brown hair was shiny and hung exactly right, smooth and straight and curving under just a little where it went past her shoulders. Her jacket, plain and cut low enough in the front to show a little bit of her silky top underneath, fit her so perfectly it pretty much said money with a capital M . I guess the hostess was thinking the same thing. There were very few rich families in Gypsum; almost everyone was just trying to get by.

I was going to order the chicken sandwich. I read all the prices on the menu and added up in my head what dinner would cost. Part of me wanted to order the most expensive thing just to see what Prairie would do, to see if there was a limit to her concern for me, or maybe to see if I could get her to crack and show me who she really was. Like if under this nice exterior she was just waiting to tell me what she really wanted, and it would be something bad.

But when the waitress came around to take the order, Prairie said, “The filet mignon sounds really good, doesn’t it, Hailey?” It was twenty-three dollars, but I hadn’t had a steak in as long as I could remember and I just said yes, it did.

When the waitress walked away, neither of us said anything for a minute. Prairie fiddled with her knife, spinning it back and forth.

“Tell me about your dog,” she finally said. “If you don’t mind.”

That caught me off guard. Rascal wasn’t something I felt like talking about. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“It’s just that I can tell he’s… that something happened to him.” Her face went soft, and her eyes were sad. “Where did you get him?”

“Um… Gram got him from a guy she knew.”

“Alice traded him for drugs.” Prairie’s expression didn’t change.

“Yeah.” I shrugged like it was no big deal. “Probably.”

“Hailey… I saw the scar. What’s left of it, anyway. On his stomach.”

I blinked. This morning the scar had almost disappeared. You had to push the fur to the side to see the faint pink line.

I wanted to ask Prairie how she knew, but I didn’t want her to think I cared too much. Caring about things made you vulnerable. “He got hit by the Hostess truck a few days ago.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“He…” I swallowed, remembering the way Rascal looked. But I didn’t want to tell her what I had done, didn’t want to have to try to explain how he’d healed so well in one night. “No, just a little cut.”

Prairie watched me carefully. “I bet you must have given him good care, Hailey. What did you do?”

Her voice was so kind that I had to look away. I swallowed hard and took a little sip of my ice water. “I, um, I just cleaned it with antiseptic and, you know, kept him inside.”