The Forgotten Child

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  Mindy, now in her mid-to-late forties, sat before the computer wearing a plain black T-shirt. Her pretty, slightly round face was devoid of makeup, and her black hair, showing the faintest hints of gray at the temples, was pulled back in a ponytail. Her freckles seemed to have faded over the years. Her eyes drooped a little. Riley wondered if she’d been having a rough day when she recorded this, or if this was just what life had done to her.

  “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mindy Cho, and I was the sole survivor of … of Orin Jacobs. I have tried for a year to get the producers of Paranormal Playground to not feature the ranch where I was held captive. It’s a novelty for most, but this was my life. All I can ask now is that people boycott this episode. Of all the shows they’ve done, this one is the only one where the victim of a crime committed at one of the locations is still alive. Please don’t let them monetize the worst years of my life.”

  Mindy continued, but Riley’s attention had zeroed in on the room behind her. The webcam faced what looked like a backyard beyond the wall of windows. Cream-colored curtains were drawn open, letting in what looked like afternoon light. And on either side of the windows were two dark-wood stands, each topped with small white vases.

  “Oh shit,” Riley whispered to herself, sobering slightly.

  As of the recording of the video, some two years ago, Mindy still lived in her childhood home.

  Riley had to hope she was still there. And was willing to talk.

  CHAPTER 13

  Riley awoke on her couch, cheek resting on a patch of dried drool. After slithering to the floor and plugging in her dead cell phone—which had somehow ended up under her couch—she popped two aspirin before showering. It was the first day in a while that she’d felt really rested, headache notwithstanding. Thank you, Merlot.

  In the middle of brushing her teeth, she heard her phone come to life—ping after ping to alert her to missed calls and unread texts. Both her mother and Jade had called. Her mother no doubt wondered how Riley’s trip had gone, as she would have been heading back home by now had she stayed. Two missed texts from Michael.

  Morning, sunshine! was sent at ten.

  Afternoon, sunshine? at 12:15—twenty minutes ago.

  She fired a quick text back: Hey, sorry, just woke up a little bit ago. Text me your address. Will be ready in 20!

  No rush. I’m ready when you are.

  Both Jade and her mother left voicemails. Jade said everything had gone fine and that they’d be heading back to the city within the hour. They wouldn’t be in town again until well after two. Riley’s mom was just checking in and wanted Riley to call her when she could.

  She sent her mom a text: I’m fine. Long weekend. Met a guy! Will give you details soon!

  That’s great, honey! She added the toothy emoji that usually meant “everything is a trash fire but I’m trying—and failing—to stay positive.” Her mother’s emoji skills were hit and miss.

  After deciding on her favorite Tiana’s Circle shirt and a pair of shorts, Riley braided her hair, slipped on some flats, and texted Michael. Just before walking out the door, she gave her apartment a quick once-over. “Don’t break anything while I’m gone, Pete.”

  Michael lived in the back unit of a duplex. He texted to tell her to pull into the long driveway behind his car. Riley had just parked when Michael emerged.

  He wore jeans and another just-tight-enough shirt, this one blue. Damp hair curled slightly at his neck, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. Despite all the time she’d spent with him yesterday, the sight of him still caused a nervous flutter in her stomach.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” she said, walking up the two steps to his porch.

  “Wanna come in for a few? I need to feed the cat before we head out, otherwise he’ll shred the furniture.”

  “You have a cat?”

  “I inherited the cat from my ex. I sort of grew attached to the furball, and when I told her it was over, I told her I was taking Baxter too. Kim didn’t put up much of a fuss.”

  “I should hope not.” She followed him inside.

  The duplex was a two-bedroom, one bath—and though it was small, he’d done creative things with the space available. His dark brown sofa sat in the middle of the living room slash dining room area, surrounded by wraparound, low bookshelves. A shorthaired orange and white cat sat perched on the sofa’s arm. His tail twitched, then curled around his feet. Michael wandered past the couch and the small dining table with four high-backed stools, turning into the kitchen.

  Baxter mewed, stood, and stretched, butt arched in the air in the way only cats could. He hopped to the ground with a muted thud, walked over to her and, quite dramatically, flopped onto his side.

  Riley laughed, bending down to give his belly a scratch.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Michael, walking into the room with a fork and a small bowl in his hand. “He doesn’t even let me do that.”

  Baxter’s eyes closed and he purred so loudly, Riley could feel the soft vibration in her flats.

  “C’mon, you flirt,” Michael said, clinking the fork against the side of the bowl.

  Baxter perked up immediately and scampered after Michael, back into the kitchen.

  A low, dark-wood TV stand stood against the wall near the front door, a slightly obscene-sized flat screen resting on top. The bottom of the stand held row after row of DVDs on one side, and a gaming console and a slew of games on the other.

  A framed, vintage map of the world hung on the wall near the dining table. Two bookshelves sat on either side. He had a mix of memoirs and biographies, as well as an eclectic assortment of fiction.

  Riley was in the middle of perusing his fiction titles when she felt his gaze on her. A decidedly better feeling than being under the watchful eye of a spirit. She looked over to find him leaned against the doorway of his dining room.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just like looking at you.”

  “You are so corny.”

  “And you like it,” he said. “I’m corny a good sixty percent of the time. You spent hours with me yesterday and yet here you are again.”

  She couldn’t argue with that logic.

  “How do you feel about arcades?”

  “The same way I feel about pizza.”

  He grinned.

  To Riley’s utter delight, Michael was absolutely abysmal at air hockey. Every time she sank a shot, he let out an involuntary grunt like an old man upset that his lawn had been invaded by teenagers.

  After several hours of driving games, shooting games—Michael gunned down zombies with a fierce accuracy she’d never seen the likes of—and a rematch at air hockey, they wandered next door to a fifties-themed diner and gorged themselves on burgers and fries.

  “My buddies and I used to come here back in high school. We’d spend most of our money at the arcade, then pool our remaining cash to get food here,” he said, polishing off the last of his fries.

  “Were you as bad at air hockey then as you are now?” she asked.

  Glaring, he said, “I’m not bad at it. You, dear lady, are an air hockey hustler.”

  She laughed.

  After a moment, he asked, “So did you sleep in until noon today because you were just that tired or were you out partying all night?”

  Though he’d clearly meant it as a joke, the question caught her off guard and her hand stilled on its way to reaching for her last fry. Would she scare him off by telling him a ghost had followed her home?

  “Oh,” he said. “Do tell. What level of debauchery are we talking here?”

  “Defcon level two.” She popped the fry in her mouth. “I was deep in an internet wormhole until three.”

  His eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “What kind of wormhole?”

  “I get kind of obsessive about true crime stuff. I spend a lot of time reading up on local cases, watching documentaries about serial killers … I think it’s be
cause of the medium thing. I want justice for the dead or whatever, even if them swinging by to say hello scares the crap out of me,” she said. “I’ve seen the Orin Jacobs episode of Dateline four times.”

  “Whoa.”

  Biting down on her bottom lip, she kept her gaze focused on her empty plate. “Last night’s wormhole was mainly Mindy Cho.”

  “What’d you find?” When she glanced up at him, he had a slight smile on his face. “Gonna take more than that to scare me off.”

  “Pete the ghost moved into my apartment. I got semi-drunk on wine to deal.”

  Michael nearly choked on his soda. “Wait, are you serious?”

  She told him about the two sightings, as well as the beanie that had appeared in her belongings.

  “How … how is that even possible?”

  “Hell if I know.” Tears inexplicably welled in her eyes when the memory of a laughing, spinning Pete filled her mind again. She had to help him. Had to reunite him with his father. But it all scared her so damn bad.

  Michael reached across the table and placed a hand on hers. When she finally made eye contact with him, he offered her another small smile. “I’m still not deterred.” Giving her hand a squeeze, he said, “Tell me what you found out about Mindy.”

  “I think she might still be in Albuquerque. I just have to find her. I figure I can start with the phonebook—those things still exist, don’t they? There might be a landline at her house—maybe there’s still a listing under her father’s name. I swear they never update the listings. Shouldn’t be too many Jinwoo Chos.”

  Just before bed last night, Riley’s searching had turned up Mindy’s father. But she’d found little about the man himself.

  Michael was quiet for a moment. “Okay, let’s say you can track her down. What would you say?”

  “Ask her if she knows anything about Peter Vonick. Maybe the name will jog a memory. Maybe Orin talked about him.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “There’s something so off about that interview. There’s something she’s not saying.”

  “Do you think she’ll even talk to you? If she’s been quiet for this long, why would she talk to a stranger now?”

  “No clue,” she said. “But it’s the only idea I’ve got. And I was wine-drunk when I came up with it.”

  Michael laughed. Then he fell silent, clearly mulling it over, given the way his mouth was bunched up at the side. “Want me to help you?”

  She perked up. “Really?”

  “Really.” He checked the time on his phone. “We’ve got about an hour and a half to kill before the next thing.”

  “What next thing?”

  “The next thing is a secret,” he said. “But if you wanna head back to my place for a little bit, we can try to find Mindy or her dad in the White Pages—that thing is digitized by now, I think.”

  When they got back to his house, Baxter greeted them at the door. Riley put her purse on Michael’s small, oval coffee table and plopped down on the couch. The cat promptly jumped into her lap, curled into a ball, and started purring.

  “Geez,” said Michael, sitting next to her once he’d snagged his laptop. “He largely ignores me unless there’s food involved.”

  Riley gave Baxter a scratch behind the ears. He turned his purr up to a level ten.

  While Michael searched for Jinwoo, Riley tried to hunt down Mindy. Riley looked up Melinda Cho, too, realizing Mindy could be a nickname.

  Michael turned up four Jinwoo Chos in Albuquerque, but only one had an address listed.

  Riley found eight Mindy Chos and three Melinda Chos. Few of them had addresses listed either, and of the ones who did, none matched the one Michael found. They then compared listed phone numbers, hoping the listing hadn’t been updated since Mindy’s father died. But no luck there either.

  After calling all four of his numbers and striking out—all four Jinwoos were still alive—Michael took the second half of Riley’s list while she worked through the beginning.

  They collectively settled on, “Hi. I’m doing an article about Jordanville Ranch and hoped you could answer a few questions about Peter Vonick.” If she had no clue what the Jordanville Ranch was and/or had never heard of Pete, it likely wasn’t their girl. If she hung up or hesitated for a long time, she likely was.

  They both left messages when no one answered. One of the last numbers Riley dialed had a voicemail message that said, “This is Mindy Cho. Sorry I missed your call. Please leave a message after the beep. If you’re calling about anything to do with the Jordanville Ranch, Paranormal Playground, or that serial killer, just hang up now—you’ve got the wrong Mindy.” Riley hung up.

  They’d just worked through the entire list, feeling no more enlightened than when they started, when Michael glanced at his watch. “Oh shit. We should probably head out or we’re going to miss the thing.”

  “What thing is this thing?”

  Michael shut his laptop, deposited it on the coffee table, and stood up. “Baxter! Unhand her. We must get to The Thing!”

  Riley rolled her eyes and gently placed Baxter on the couch. He curled back into a ball and continued dozing.

  After grabbing a duffel bag out of the bedroom, he said, “This is for The Thing.”

  “You’re so weird.”

  The Thing turned out to be a movie in the park, and the duffel held two blankets, a couple bottles of water, and a few random snacks.

  A handful of families were spread out in the grass when they arrived. Kids ran around screaming and laughing, enjoying the late springtime air, most heading to or from the playground on the other end of the park. Riley didn’t see a screen anywhere, but the park was flush with the backside of a large building, its back wall a pristine white.

  After they set up near the back of the group, the sounds of kids playing a near-distant hum, they plopped down on the blankets.

  “I used to come here all the time as a kid,” he said. “Parents were big on family outings that didn’t require a ton of talking.” He handed her a bottle of water.

  Taking it, she said, “I’ve never done this before. Well, my parents and I went to the drive-in a couple times.”

  “The only problem with this place is that they never announce the movies beforehand. So sometimes you get a super recent one, sometimes a real old one, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get an indie one from a local studio. I saw one once that actually ended up at Sundance.”

  “I’m mildly impressed again.”

  “Mildly. Ha,” he said, bumping her shoulder with his. “They usually play two: one PG for the families, then a PG-13 or R for later. The audience shift from families to twenty-somethings is kind of funny. The food trucks should be showing up soon, too.”

  “How often do you come here?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Most Sundays. Sometimes I can get my buddy Jupiter to come, but he spends most of his time hitting on whatever unfortunate girls happen to be nearby.”

  “Hold up,” she said, turning to him. “You have a friend named Jupiter?”

  He laughed. “His parents are a little … strange.”

  “So when Jupiter isn’t with you, you come by yourself?”

  “Are you fishing for information about any potential lady friends, Ms. Thomas?”

  “You asked about my partying habits!” she said. “I just … seems like it could get kind of sketchy here at night alone.”

  “I’m an old-ass white guy,” he said. “No one is going to look twice at me.”

  An elaborate series of horns blasted from somewhere on the other side of the playground. This was followed by an elaborate series of shrieks from the children, and then a mass exodus of tiny humans toward the parking lot.

  Riley arched a brow in Michael’s direction.

  “There’s a local dessert shop that makes ice cream sandwiches with fresh-baked cookies,” he said. “Want one?”

  “I would like seven,” she said.

  “I’ll be back!”

  “Nothing with nuts!
” she called after him. “Or raisins!”

  He jogged toward the other end of the park but shot a thumb into the air to acknowledge he’d heard her.

  Figuring she had ten to fifteen minutes until he got back—given the insane line that had already formed—she quickly fished her phone out of her bag and called Jade.

  “Girl!” Jade said by way of greeting. “Why haven’t you called me!”

  “I’m calling you now!”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “You got home okay? And Donna and Carla? Jonah didn’t starve?”

  “I’m home safe and so is everyone else. Jonah is alive but he asked me not to leave him, like, ever again. I left him twelve prepared meals to last him three days and he ate all of them by breakfast yesterday. I don’t know how that’s even possible.” Jade sighed loudly. “Now! Give me what I want.”

  “He’s currently getting us ice cream sandwiches before we watch a movie in the park.”

  “Oh my lord.”

  “I know.” Riley told her about the ten-hour date yesterday. “He’s kind of fantastic.”

  In a voice subdued for Jade, she said, “I’m … I haven’t heard you this happy. Like ever. Even before or, hell, during stupid Casey ‘Daddy Needs to Play’ Donovan.”

  Riley looked down, suddenly feeling sheepish—she wasn’t sure why. She pulled out a blade of grass poking between the two blankets.

  “I’m so glad I forced you to experience the scariest moment of your life if it means I get to eventually go to your wedding.”

  “Slow your roll.”

  “My roll will not be slowed. You deserve someone great.”

  After a few minutes of catch-up chit chat, Riley saw Michael returning with their sandwiches. “Oh, he’s almost back. I’ll call you later.”

  “If you let the hound into the foxhole, just make sure you use protection!”

  “Oh my god. Bye, Jade.” Riley hung up.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as he sat beside her.

  She took her sandwich from him, two slightly-warm chocolate chip cookies with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream in the middle. “If I keep seeing you, I’m gonna need to start going to the gym.”