Lovely Wild Read online

  The only noise on the video now was the click of wood on wood. The small girl in the video had been set to the task of putting wooden shapes—circle, square, rectangle—into appropriately matched holes in a board. Painted in bright, primary colors, the puzzle was probably fit for a child of eighteen months. This girl was the size of a five-year-old, but Ryan knew her real age was eight years, four months. Though eventually she’d developed normally, extreme malnutrition and deprivation had caused her to suffer from Kaspar Hauser syndrome, or psychosocial dwarfism.

  The little girl in the video was his wife as a child.

  He’d set up his laptop so he could tap away at notes as he watched, but he also held a notepad and his favorite Montblanc pen on his lap so he could scribble down his thoughts. Both the computer and the paper were ignored. He’d been through three of these videotapes so far and had only been able to watch, stunned, without taking any notes at all.

  By the time Ryan’s father had adopted Mariposa Pfautz and brought her home, Ryan had already been out of the house for several years. Off to med school. Deciding if he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps or maybe do something different. Internal medicine, maybe. Or even pediatrics.

  Ryan had known, of course, about his dad’s work. In those pre-internet days, Dr. Leon Calder’s success with the “Pine Grove Pixie” had been written up in medical journals and used in textbooks. His dad had taken these countless hours of notes and filmed all of this video. He’d spent a great portion of his life studying the girl he’d later adopted as his own daughter. It had destroyed his marriage and hadn’t been too good for his relationship with his son, either.

  And all along, Ryan had thought he’d known everything about what had happened simply because he’d overheard bits and pieces or had read a few of his dad’s articles.

  Watching her in these ancient videotapes, there was no mistaking who she was. Ryan saw echoes of Kendra and Ethan in that little girl. The tilt of her head was purely Mari, but the sound of her giggle when she fit a piece into the right place was so much like his daughter’s as a small child that Ryan’s heart twisted. The young Mari’s furrowed brow of concentration was the same as Ethan’s when he was working on a Lego model.

  Ryan, as it turned out, had known nothing.

  On the video, young Mari managed to get the pieces into the puzzle after a few false tries. She looked beyond the camera to whoever was watching—was it his dad? She rubbed her stomach, then touched her mouth. Then again. A third time, looking stubborn and angry.

  “Are you hungry, Mariposa?”

  That set of motions again.

  Ryan paused the video and reached for one of the files with the earliest dates. He flipped through the pages, some browned with age at the edges. “Patient appears to understand language, though vocabulary is extremely limited. With no physical reason for her inability to speak, it’s nevertheless clear the patient has adapted a series of signs to indicate simple communication. Hunger, cold, fear and, most surprisingly, compassionate responses are all indicated by hand motions occasionally accompanied by grunts, growls and even barks. It’s unlikely, based on initial observations, that the patient will ever be able to communicate normally.”

  Ryan rubbed at his face, letting his hand cover his eyes for a minute or so. Elsewhere in the house, he heard the faint sound of raised voices as his wife called to their children. No hand motions and grunts there. She had learned to speak.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ.”

  How had he not understood this? How had he thought that his wife’s story was in any way similar to those he’d read in med school or during his psychiatric residency? How could he have thought she’d survived something as simple as poverty, abuse and neglect?

  He unpaused the video.

  “Mariposa? Are you hungry?”

  Young Mari made the same motions, a moue of frustration on her small mouth. She added what sounded suspiciously like a growl. Through the TV’s small and inadequate speakers came the sound of rustling paper and the murmur of voices. Mari pounded her hand on the table, making the puzzle pieces jump.

  Ryan’s dad came into the frame. God, he looked so young Ryan had to pause the video again. His dad had died too soon, no question. When this video had been made, he’d been just about the same age as Ryan was now. It was creepy, not just watching the juxtaposition of his children over his wife’s childish face, but seeing a reflection of himself in the image of his dad.

  His finger pressed the remote again. His dad moved toward Mari, who erupted into a whirlwind of screams and grunts. She pushed away, dumping her chair and scattering the puzzle pieces. She dove beneath the table.

  His dad looked at the camera and whoever was in the room with him. He made a “hold on” gesture with his hand, then squatted beside the table. The camera moved, though whoever had set up the tripod hadn’t meant for the angle to accommodate a view of under the table. His dad was still in focus, but only a small piece of Mari’s dress stuck out.

  “Mariposa, it’s all right. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s me, Dr. Calder. Remember? I gave you the soft dolly you like to take to bed with you at night. And I have something for you today, too.” He pulled something from the pocket of his sweater. “Look what I have for Mari.”

  A small hand reached from under the table, but Ryan’s dad inched it back. “Ah, ah. If you want it, you have to come out from under the table.”

  And so it went, like teasing a scared dog from its den. Ryan watched his dad tempt out the small girl from her hiding place with the promise of a treat. His dad looked at the camera, triumphant, when Mari stood in front of him, tearing open the plastic on a chocolate snack cake. She flinched and muttered when he put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t immediately run away. It must have been some kind of triumph, Ryan thought, watching his father. He couldn’t even imagine.

  “Ryan?”

  Quickly, he clicked off the TV and swiveled in his desk chair toward the doorway. He’d have to make sure to keep the door locked. Now that he knew the contents of those tapes, he couldn’t risk Mari or the kids stumbling in on him while he was watching. It would be worse than catching him watching porn.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “I’m taking the kids to the library. Want to come?”

  “I’m working.”

  His wife looked over the room, then settled her gaze on him. “You could take a break.”

  Even if he could, why would he want to? He wasn’t here for a vacation. He was here to work.

  But he didn’t let any annoyance filter into his voice. “I wish I could. But you guys go. Have a good time.”

  “Okay.” Mari in the doorway was nothing like the little girl in the video. She spoke in words, not gestures. Mari now, not Mari then. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Have fun.”

  She nodded and turned, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “How’s the work going?”

  “Great.” The enthusiasm burst out of him, unfeigned. A wide and somehow hot grin spread his mouth wide. “Really great.”

  Mari blinked. He watched her, noting the tilt of her head. The way she stood still, then moved. Damn it, the work...this was work, here. This was history unfolding in front of him.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good. See you later.”

  Sweat burst into his armpits, along his lip, in the small of his back. Heat that had nothing to do with the sun shining through the glass or the fan lazily circulating sun-warmed air in this small room weighted him like a quilt. Ryan grinned hard at his wife’s back as she left him, then turned again to face the TV. He looked at the computer, at his empty notepad.

  There was so much more to this than he’d even thought. A book about his father’s work had seemed like a natural place to start. Focusing on his dad’s most famously successful case of young Mariposa Pfautz, a no-brainer. Bringing them back here had seemed financially wise, not to mention that, yes, of course he’d hoped that by returning her to the