Free If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

where I’d snagged on barbed wire coming back (empty-handed) from fishing. No wonder Delaney snickered at us. We look exactly like what we are: poor kids. Kids discarded.
“Come in,” I reply to the knock on the door. I sit up and quickly dry my tears.
“Now what?” I groan, seeing Delaney’s face in the doorway.
“Catch,” she says, tossing me a crocheted blanket. “I didn’t think you’d want to wake your sister by pulling down the covers. You can use this one for yourself.”
“Thanks.”
She stares at the garbage bag, her expression different this time.
“What’s this?” Delaney says, toeing the violin case leaning against the bag.
“A violin.”
I almost choke on the v word with the planet-size history curled up inside it, like an embryo bursting its mottled shell. It’s a history that could break me if I let it, spilling out my middle like Gran’s jam cake when you first cut into it.
We exchange glances.
“Can you play it?”
I take her in: her perfect, shiny dirty-blond hair, her embroidered jeans speckled with twinkling jewels, her socks so white, there’s no doubt creek washing wasn’t involved.
“I’ve been playing since I was four. Mama—my mother— taught me. She was a concert violinist.”
“That’s what my dad said. He said your mother could’ve been famous if she hadn’t gotten mixed up in—”
“I’m really tired,” I say, and this time, Delaney blushes. “I still have to settle me and Nessa in—”
“Oh. Okay.” She pauses. Then: “Do you need any help?”
I think of my stuff, Jenessa’s stuff, right fitting to be stuffed in garbage bags when a person really thinks about it.
“Uh, thanks, but I got it.”
She clicks the door shut and I’m alone in a foreign land, this kingdom called New Bedroom, so clean, it makes my brain squeeze. As I sort through my things, I’m careful not to spill the bag onto the rug. I twirl the stem of a stray leaf between my fingers, then press it against my cheek. Home. Shorty hoists himself over to Nessa and goes back to sleep.
“Good dog,” I say, and he opens one eye to let me know he knows.
The door clicked shut with a sticky sound. I sniff. Paint. They actually painted for us.
It’s easy to unpack. There isn’t much. Soon, my few items shiver together on hangers, while the lower closet shelf remains forlorn and mostly empty, except for Mama’s scrapbook and my sketch pad. I place the violin case on the toppest shelf, wishing no one knew about it.
I cringe as I hang my coat on one of the hooks and catch sight of it in the full-length mirror on the inside of the door. It’s a navy blue winter coat patched at the elbows, the color worn out in places, no different from my jeans. I’d found the coat in the woods, the material reeking of wet leaves and cat pee, the latter a scent I couldn’t erase no matter how many times I’d washed it in the creek.
“Don’t pay it no nevermind,” Mama says, her eyes harsh. “You got yourself a coat, a right warm one, just like I prayed for.”
I wish she’d prayed for a store-bought coat, spankin’ new, with the faux-fur linin’ fluffed, not matted, and all the buttons still on it. Not four out of six.
“But you have a coat. A store-bought one with a zipper.”
“Watch your tongue, girl. I’m the ah-dult. I’m the one takin’ care of you girls.”
I don’t say it, but she’s not, not neither one. At least she sure don’t act like it.
“Be grateful for what you got, Carey,” she says, knowin’ me so well that even hidin’ my eyes don’t help. “That coat hits right to your knees. We have no fancy airs to put on here. Warm is warm, no matter how it looks.”
Or smells, I thought, resigned.
But she was right. When winter set in, when Jenessa and I wore socks for mittens, we both had coats so we could play in the snow instead of remaining cooped up in the camper. We slept in the coats, too, so we didn’t shiver all night and wake each other up.
I glance at Jenessa, breathing