“And when she started painting her own death, you all didn’t mind fulfilling her prophecies?”
Piper stills. “Kyra held this town together with her art. She was the example by which we took our inspiration—in her life, but also in her death. Kyra would’ve told you that the most important part of any story is the way it ends. We will remember her.”
“Her death was an inspiration?”
Piper narrows her eyes. “That’s an ugly way of putting it.”
“It’s an ugly sentiment.”
“She pulled Lost together.”
“And she shouldn’t have had to die to do so.”
If there’s such a thing as a townwide, collective intake of breath, this may be it. Outside the post office, Mrs. Morden and old Mr. Wilde turn and stare. From a distance, Sam does too. Every single person out on the street stops, turns, stares.
Piper laughs. “Be careful, Corey. You still don’t understand.”
Do You Understand Now?
Ext. Lost—Main—Afternoon Corey continues toward the Hendersons’ house. She fumbles with her phone. Piper and Sam walk away, but everyone else in her path remains, frozen like set pieces.
Two young girls stand in the middle of their yard. Each holds a snowball, but they do not play.
Girl #1: Do you understand now?
Girl #2
Let me tell you a story.
Tobias Morden leans against a wall.
Tobias Do you understand now, Corey?
Mrs. Morden Let me tell you a story.
Corey ducks her head and refuses to acknowledge anyone. She picks up her pace. She doesn’t see Roshan, who trails behind her, keeping an eye on all the townspeople.
Roshan Do you understand?
Through the windows of every house that Corey passes, she sees Kyra’s artwork. Simple paintings of families gathered together, of refurbished homes, of travel and riches. Paintings of carefully constructed happiness.
Phone Call
“Do you think it was more than suicide?”
“I really don’t know, E. They turned her into an icon. They forgot that she was a person. They believed in a lie, but I never thought that was enough to kill someone.”
“No?”
“What do you mean?”
“In my experience, words and beliefs kill people all the time.”
“Oh. I never thought—”
“You never needed to.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. It hurts to be here, E. I miss her. I keep waiting for her to run around the corner and tell me that she was hiding. Everything feels wrong.”
“That’s not just because of Kyra. You don’t feel at home anymore.”
“I should.”
“Lost changed. You changed.”
“I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want to.”
“Didn’t you? You like life at St. James.”
“But I always thought that Lost would still be home. If this isn’t my home, then where is? Lost was everything I ever knew, but they look at me like I’m a trespasser. Like I don’t matter anymore.”
“You’re at home here. You matter to us.”
“It’s not the same though.”
“I know.”
Fear Her
I slip into Mrs. H’s bakery an hour before the memorial. She’s preparing food and she’s still, as she called it the day I arrived, grief baking. When she sees me, she rushes toward the door. The pain in her eyes is as visible as the relief. She’s gone pale. She grabs my arms as though I might otherwise disappear. “Corey. You left hours ago. We didn’t know where you’d gone.”
Those few words are enough to make me feel small and selfish.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. H, I—” I stop myself. What can I tell her? “I went to the spa and lost track of time.”
“I should be used to that, shouldn’t I? The two of you always did.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She shakes her head, and I wait for her to say more. To acknowledge why she’s worried, or how Kyra simply walked out of our lives and she keeps waiting for her to come back too.
Instead, Mrs. H returns to her dough. She kneads with determination, but her methodic pounding doesn’t mask the way her shoulders shake. Or the way tears drip from her cheeks, one at a time.
The bakery smells of yeast, cinnamon, and sugar. The heat from the ovens makes the space cozy. But it’s not comfortable. Comfort implies an ease I don’t feel. I’m stifled—and I want to get out. I want to leave Lost after the memorial.
Most of the bakery is used for actual baking, and Mrs. H has an impressive workspace that’s open to the front. A few stools stand at the counter, for those visitors who drop by for a baked good and coffee and want to stay. I grab one. I hook my feet around the legs and balance on the edge of the seat.
“Mrs. H?” My voice sounds small, even to my ears, and maybe she picks up on it. She sets the dough aside and meets my gaze. “Mrs. H, I’ve seen the garden. I’ve seen the paintings.”
“Oh.”
I want to ask, How could you let this happen? What I ask instead is, “What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m here to listen.”
She pauses, and I can see that she’s weighing how much to tell me. I want the truth, but apparently, that’s not a simple request.
“Fear,” she says, eventually. “The people of Lost Creek were afraid of Kyra because she was so different. I can’t tell you how much that hurt. Especially because, at times, I was afraid of her myself. I didn’t always understand her, but I wanted her to be happy.” She shakes her head when I start to interrupt. “I only began to understand Kyra when I began to understand her art. She painted that.”
Mrs. H points to a small canvas of Kyra and her sitting on a rickety bench outside the hot springs. The spa was our special place, but I knew that Kyra wanted to share the hot springs with her parents. She wanted to tell them about her stories. She wanted to talk them into letting her travel and go to college.
In the painting, Kyra shows her mother a book. The two of them are surrounded by salmonberry flowers.
“The same held true for most everyone in Lost Creek. Once they understood—”
“She was a person with hopes and dreams.” Try as I might, I can’t keep the anger out of my voice.
“She helped the community, and they learned to stop fearing her. She was different, yes, but we finally understood that that was good. Until then, we hadn’t understood that we could help her too, better than any outsider could.”
“Rowanne? She was a therapist. Kyra needed therapy and medication.”
“Even when they didn’t work?” Mrs. H counters. Kyra struggled with medication from the time she first got her diagnosis. She responded to drugs, but marginally. They dimmed her mania for a while, but it would only come back stronger. “She was my daughter. All I wanted was for the therapy and medication to work. It broke my heart when they didn’t. It was only then that Joe realized—that we realized—that we’d been wrong all along.”
“But when I left—”
“We tried everything,” Mrs. H interrupts me quietly. “I wish you would believe me.”
When I left, Kyra was talking about therapy regimens. Other options. When I left, she still had hope. But if the state of the spa is anything to go by, at the end, she had nothing left but her paintings to draw out her restless energy.
It takes me a moment to register Mrs. H’s earlier words. “What do you mean you’d been wrong?”
“All of the medications she’d tried only suppressed her creativity.”
I blink. Something clicks.
Kyra never mentioned that. And Rowanne would never have left of her own volition. And the depths of Kyra’s mania… I push off the stool and it clatters to the floor. “You withheld her medication?”
“We didn’t give up without a fight.” I turn to find Mr. H standing in the doorway. He clings to his briefcase like a lifeline, his shoulders still sagging. “The medication didn’t work, Corey,” he says. “You know that. She would feel better for brief increments of time, but she’d inevitably get worse again. It was cruel to make her go through those ups and downs.”