Don't Let Me Go Read online

  Don’t Let Me Go

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Former Broadway dancer and current agoraphobic Billy Shine has not set foot outside his apartment in almost a decade. He has glimpsed his neighbors—beautiful manicurist Rayleen, lonely old Ms. Hinman, bigoted and angry Mr. Lafferty, kind-hearted Felipe, and 9-year-old Grace and her former addict mother Eileen.

  But most of them have never seen Billy. Not until Grace begins to sit outside on the building’s front stoop for hours every day, inches from Billy’s patio. Troubled by this change in the natural order, Billy makes it far enough out onto his porch to ask Grace why she doesn’t sit inside where it’s safe. Her answer: “If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And then nobody will help me.”

  Her answer changes everything.

  By the bestselling author of WHEN I FOUND YOU, SECOND HAND HEART, and PAY IT FORWARD, DON’T LET ME GO is the heart-breaking, funny, and life-affirming story of a building full of loners and misfits who come together to help a little girl survive—and thrive—against all odds.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Billy | Chapter 2: Grace | Chapter 3: Billy | Chapter 4: Grace | Chapter 5: Billy | Chapter 6: Grace | Chapter 7: Billy | Chapter 8: Grace | Chapter 9: Billy | Chapter 10: Grace | Chapter 11: Billy | Chapter 12: Grace | Chapter 13: Billy | Chapter 14: Grace | Chapter 15: Billy | Chapter 16: Grace | Chapter 17: Billy | Chapter 18: Grace | Chapter 19: Billy | Chapter 20: Grace | Chapter 21: Billy | Chapter 22: Grace | Chapter 23: Billy | Chapter 24: Grace | Chapter 25: Billy | Chapter 26: Grace | Chapter 27: Billy | Chapter 28: Grace | Chapter 29: Billy | Chapter 30: Grace | Chapter 31: Billy | Chapter 32: Grace | Chapter 33: Billy | Chapter 34: Grace

  About Catherine Ryan Hyde | Praise for Catherine Ryan Hyde | Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde | Preview: SECOND HAND HEART | Preview: WHEN I FOUND YOU

  Copyright

  In memory of Pat, who got me into my first writers’ workshop…somehow.

  Billy

  Every time Billy looked out his front sliding-glass door, he saw the ugly, gray L.A. winter afternoon move that much closer to dark. A noticeable difference each time. Then he laughed, and chastised himself out loud, saying, “What did we think, Billy Boy, that sunset would change its mind and break with tradition just this one night?”

  He looked out again, hiding behind his curtain and wrapping it around himself as he leaned in front of the glass.

  The little girl was still there.

  “We know what this means,” he said. “Don’t we?”

  But he didn’t answer himself. Because he did know. So there was really no need to belabor the conversation.

  He pulled his old flannel bathrobe over his pajamas, wrapping it too tightly around his stick-thin frame, then tying it with a rope that had replaced the robe’s sash some half-dozen years earlier.

  Yes.

  Billy Shine was about to go outside.

  Not out the apartment door and on to the street. Nothing that insanely radical. But out on to his little first-floor patio, or balcony, or whatever you might properly call that postage-stamp-sized piece of real estate adorned with two rusty lawn chairs.

  He looked out again first, as though he might see a storm or a war or an alien invasion brewing. Some act of God that might justify his failure to follow through. But it was only a tiny bit closer to dark, which was hardly unexpected.

  He unwedged the broomstick — the improvised burglar-proof lock for his sliding-glass patio door — coating his fingers with dust and lint as he did so. It hadn’t been moved in ages. And it shamed him, because he prided himself on cleanliness.

  “Note to self,” he said out loud. “Clean everything. Even if it’s something we think we won’t use anytime soon. On principle, if for no other reason.”

  Then he slid the door open just the tiniest bit, sucking in his breath, loudly, at the feel of the chill outdoor air.

  The little girl glanced up, then down at her feet again.

  Her hair looked almost comically disheveled, as if no one had brushed it for a week. Her blue cardigan sweater had been buttoned incorrectly. She could not have been more than nine or ten. She was sitting on a step, her arms wrapped around her own knees, rocking and staring at her shoes.

  He’d expected something more from her, some more dramatic reaction to his presence, yet couldn’t put his finger on exactly what he’d thought that might be.

  He sat gingerly on the very edge of one rusty chair, leaning over the railing, looking down at the little girl’s head from maybe three feet above her.

  “A gracious good evening to you,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, in a voice like a soprano foghorn.

  It made him jump. He almost upended the chair.

  Though hardly an expert on children, Billy reasoned that a girl who looked that depressed should speak in a barely audible voice. Not that he hadn’t heard this little girl’s voice through the walls many times before. She lived in the basement apartment with her mother, so he heard her often. Too often. And she’d never sounded only barely audible. Yet, somehow, he’d expected her to make an exception on maybe just this one occasion.

  “Are you my neighbor?” she asked, in the same startling voice.

  This time he was ready for it.

  “It would seem that way,” he said.

  “Then how come I never met you?”

  “You’re meeting me now. Take what you can get from this life.”

  “You talk funny.”

  “You talk loud.”

  “Yeah, that’s what everybody says. Do other people say you talk funny?”

  “Not that I can recall,” Billy said. “Then again, I don’t talk to enough people to gather a genuine consensus.”

  “Well, take my word for it. It’s a weird way to talk, especially to a kid. What’s your name?”

  “Billy Shine. What’s yours?”

  “Shine? Like the stars, or like your floor shines if you wax it?”

  “Yes. Like that.”

  “Where did you get a name like Billy Shine?”

  “Where did you get your name? Which, by the way, you still haven’t told me.”

  “Oh. It’s Grace. And I got it from my mother.”

  “Well, I didn’t get the name Billy Shine from my mother. From my mother I got Donald Feldman. So I changed it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was in show business. I needed a dancer’s name.”

  “Donald Feldman isn’t a dancer’s name?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “How do you find out what is and what isn’t?”

  “You just know it in your heart. So, look. We could sit out here all night and continue this charming exchange. But I actually came out here to ask you why you’re sitting outside all by yourself.”

  “I’m not, really,” she said. “I’m really out here with you.”

  “It’s almost dark.”

  She moved for the first time since he’d come outside, looking up as if to fact-check his sentence.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It is. So, you’re not in show business any more?”

  “No. Not at all. Not in any way. I’m not in any business now.”

  “Didn’t you like being a dancer?”

  “I loved it. I adored it. It was my world. I sang, too. And acted.”

  “So why’d you stop?”

  “I wasn’t cut out for it.”

  “You weren’t good?”

  “I was very good.”

  “Then what weren’t you cut out for?”

  Billy sighed. He had come out here to ask questions, not to answer them. And yet it had seemed so natural, so inevitable, when the roles reversed on him. In fact, he wondered why he�
��d ever thought he could be the grown-up in this — or, for that matter, any other — conversation. Just good acting skills, maybe. But who even knew where those skills had gone off to these days? What you don’t use, you lose.

  “Everything,” he said. “I wasn’t cut out for anything. Life. Life is something I’m just not cut out for.”

  “But you’re alive.”

  “Marginally so, yes.”

  “So you’re doing it.”

  “Not well, though. I am not turning in a suitable performance. Thank God the critics have moved on to more promising pastures, and not a moment too soon. Could you go inside if you tried? I mean, if you needed to?”

  “Sure. I got the key right here.”

  She held it up in the fading light. Held it for him to see. A shiny, new-looking key dangling on a cord around her neck. It caught and reflected a beam of light from the streetlamp, which had just come on. A miniature flash for Billy’s eyes.

  Shine, Billy thought. I do remember the concept.

  “I’m having a little trouble,” he said, “understanding why anyone would be outside when they could just as easily be in.”

  “Don’t you ever go outside?”

  Oh, good God, Billy thought. Here we go again. There was just no way to stay on top of the conversation.

  “Not if I can help it. Aren’t you scared?”

  “Not if I stay this close to home.”

  “Well, I’m scared. I look out and see you out here all by yourself, and I’m scared. Even if you’re not. So maybe I could talk you into doing me a favor. Maybe you could go back inside so I don’t have to be scared any more.”

  The little girl sighed grandly. Theatrically. A girl after Billy’s own heart.

  “Oh, OK. I was really only going to stay out till the streetlights came on, anyway.”

  And she trudged up the stairs and disappeared inside.

  “Great,” Billy said out loud, to himself, and to the dusk. “If I’d known that, I could have saved myself a whole lot of honesty.”

  • • •

  Billy didn’t sleep well that night. Not at all. He wasn’t able to prove definitively that the massive, unspeakable act of going outdoors had caused the upset and the bad night, but it seemed reasonable to think it had. It was a place to which he could direct blame, at least, which was better than nothing.

  When he did drift off, usually for just a few minutes at a time, he experienced the flapping of the wings. A recurrent dream, or half-dream, or illusion. Or hallucination. The more disturbed by life he felt on any given day, the more the wings would beat in his sleep by night.

  They tended to startle him awake again.

  He did finally, eventually, get to sleep for real, but not until an hour or two after the sun came up. And by the time he finally woke, stretched, and rose — for it didn’t pay to hurry these delicate issues — it was well after three thirty in the afternoon.

  He rose, and tied back his hair in the usual manner — a long, narrow ponytail down the middle of his back. Then he leaned over the bathroom sink and shaved by feel, sometimes keeping his eyes closed, sometimes gazing into the plain wood of his medicine cabinet as if it contained a mirror, as it probably had at one time, and as most medicine cabinets did.

  He made coffee, still halfway hearing the rustling of those wings in his head. A kind of non-macabre haunting. But a haunting, nonetheless.

  He opened the refrigerator, only to remember, just as he did, that he was out of cream. And groceries would not be delivered again until Thursday.

  He dumped three spoonfuls of sugar into his sad black coffee, stirred without enthusiasm, then carried the mug to his big sliding-glass door. He pulled back the curtains in order to peek at the spot where he’d seen the little girl the previous evening. Maybe she’d only been a dream or a vision, like the beating of wings, only louder.

  She was still there. So apparently not.

  Well. Not still, he told himself. Inwardly, silently, he corrected his own thinking. She had slept inside. Of course. She must be out there again. Yes, again. That felt at least slightly less disturbing.

  He looked up to see old Mrs. Hinman, the woman who lived in the attic apartment of his building, make her way down the sidewalk toward home.

  “Good,” Billy said, out loud but in a whisper. “Tell her to go inside.”

  The old woman moved in a slow but determined waddle, paper shopping-bag clutched tight, the neck of her single bottle of red wine protruding over the top of the bag. There was always a bottle, Billy had noticed, and it always protruded. Only one bottle, so it wasn’t that she drank all that much. Was she advertising? Or, as seemed more likely to Billy, keeping it close at hand in case it should be needed as a weapon?

  This had been a decent working-class neighborhood once, even as recently as twelve years ago, and Billy could not forget that. He could not release the observation. Some inner part of him always felt he should have grown accustomed to the situation, but it was a habit. And the breaking of habits was not Billy Shine’s strong suit.

  Wanting to know what, if anything, Mrs. Hinman would do regarding the girl’s situation, Billy cracked open the sliding-glass door, as quietly as possible. Then he secured a post behind the curtain, still holding his pathetic black coffee, and watched and listened.

  His heart pounded, but he wasn’t sure why. Then again, in what situation was he sure of…really…anything?

  The old woman stopped at the bottom of the gray concrete stairs and looked up at the child, who was playing with a cheap-looking hand-held electronic game. She didn’t earn Grace’s attention immediately. But in time the girl grimaced, as if she had just lost the game anyway, and looked down to meet Mrs. Hinman’s eyes.

  “Hello,” Mrs. Hinman said.

  “Hi,” the girl said in return. That voice again. She had a voice that seemed capable of doubling as a glass-cutting device.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Inside.”

  “Why are you out here all by yourself?”

  “Because my mother’s inside.”

  “Don’t you think it’s dangerous? This isn’t a very good neighborhood, you know. What if some bad man came?”

  “Then I would run inside and lock the door.”

  “But maybe he will run faster than you can.”

  “But I’m closer to the door than he is.”

  “I suppose that’s true. But it still troubles me. What’s your mother doing in there that’s so important?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “At four o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “I don’t know,” the little girl said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Then, yes.”

  Mrs. Hinman sighed. Shook her head a few times. Then she made her way up the stairs, one apparently difficult step at a time, as though climbing an alp, and disappeared from Billy’s view. He heard her come through the outer door and into the foyer.

  And still the little girl stayed.

  • • •

  A few moments later he was washing his coffee cup in the sink, having poured most of the nasty stuff down the drain.

  “Only a barbarian drinks coffee with no cream,” he said out loud, “and we may be many things, and we deny none of them, but we are not a barbarian.”

  Perhaps he’d make himself a cup of tea later, to replace the caffeine his body had come to expect. But when he checked the refrigerator again, he found he had no lemon. And only a barbarian drinks tea with no lemon.

  He heard a pounding on the door of the basement apartment, just underneath his. It was the apartment where the little girl lived with her mother.

  He waited, still and silent, wanting to hear if the mother would answer. But nothing and no one moved below him — at least, not that he was able to hear.

  Then a much larger pounding startled him, and made him jump, and set his heart to hammering again. It was the sort of pounding a policeman w
ill exact on a door just before breaking it down and entering without the occupant’s permission.

  Silence.

  Maybe the mother wasn’t even home. Maybe the little girl had been instructed in the art of making excuses for her mother while she worked, or ran around with men. It seemed incomprehensible, but Billy knew it happened as a matter of course these days. Motherhood was nothing like what it had used to be.

  Then again, what was?

  • • •

  One more unusual thing transpired on that day.

  It was only a few minutes later. Billy had been hearing the murmuring of voices in the hall, near the mailboxes. But that was nothing unusual, so he didn’t make a point of listening.

  It sounded like Mrs. Hinman and Rayleen, that tall, pretty African-American woman who lived right across the hall from him. The one Billy sometimes envied through the glass, because she had style, and presented herself well. She always seemed sad, Rayleen. But Billy reasoned that to add happiness to your wish list would be to put the whole list of requests out of feasible reach. In the real world, style and appearance would have to do.

  “Take what you can get from this life,” as he had told the little girl. As he would tell other people, if he knew any.

  But then, suddenly, voices were being raised.

  He heard Rayleen say — shout — with an agitation that seemed unlike her, “Do not call Child Protective Services on that poor little girl! Promise me you won’t! Promise!”

  And Mrs. Hinman, obviously alarmed by being shouted at, raised her voice and said, “Well, what would be so wrong about that? It’s what they’re there for.”

  Billy slunk to the door and pressed his ear against it.

  “If you really hate that poor little girl so much,” Rayleen said, still distraught, “you might as well just shoot her. I swear it would be a million times more humane than putting her in foster care.”

  “Now why on earth would you say a thing like that?” Mrs. Hinman replied.

  And Rayleen said, “Because I know. Because I know things. Things you don’t know. Things you’ll never have to know, and just be grateful for that.”

  “Are you a social worker?” Mrs. Hinman asked.