The Aftermath

by Matayo, Amy

  It’s after seven o’clock at night, but the police station is full of people. So many people waiting, most with issues that are much more pressing than mine. But I made a promise, and I don’t take those lightly. Besides, even though I’ve been here once already and had no luck, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  There’s the bakery, but I’m beginning to feel a little stalkerish showing up there again. So far Riley seems to like me, but there’s a fine line between love and fear, and I’d rather not cross it, unintentionally or not.

  “You’ll have to prove yourself another way…”

  I can no longer decide if I’ve been chasing after my dad’s words all these years, or if I’ve been running from them, but I’ve crossed lines before. The line between adoring and annoying, more specifically, in an effort to prove something. Apparently, when I like someone, I go all-in with both clumsy feet and funny thing: not everyone likes that. What I see as affectionate, others see as smothering. But I guess in hindsight, sending dozens of flowers to someone daily just to convince them to go on a first date might be considered a little much. I won’t make that mistake with Riley Mae or anyone else for that matter. Old habits die hard, but they can, in fact, die. Whether it’s a slow death or a quick slash to the throat, I suppose that’s up to who’s doing the killing. In my case, I’m attempting to cut and run.

  “Can I help you?” The receptionist says from behind the desk, startling me from my thoughts. A tip: thinking about murder in a police station is disorienting and guilt-inducing, even the murder of bad habits.

  I refocus and step forward. “Yes, I came in this morning to check on a little girl I found who appeared to be abandoned and just wanted to see if there is any new information on her. Her name was Bella. Did you locate her parents?”

  “Are you a relative?”

  And here comes the lecture. “No, but I found her and—”

  “If you’re not a relative, I can’t give you any information. Sorry.”

  “Can’t you just—”

  “Next,” she says, and I’m dismissed…again. Powerlessness is one of the worst human emotions, especially when your heart is involved. You might be able to see a clear picture of a happy ending for everyone, but when things are taken out of your hands, you’re left with only an ending. Open-ended and unsure and often painfully isolating, but it’s the ending in front of you regardless. The only thing I can see is that little girl falling apart in my lap. It plays like a bad highlight reel on repeat inside my brain. Stuck on the same sad scene. To pretend that doesn’t rip my heart to shreds is to pretend I’m not breathing. It’s an image I won’t soon forget, maybe not ever. Unlike real life, I can’t turn off the mental screen.

  With a long sigh of frustration, I slump into a chair against the wall and rest my head in my hands. It’s been one of the longest days in recent memory, second only to the days when my brother was missing, and I was unsure I would ever see him again. It’s the way life works, isn’t it? Ups and downs accompanied by highs so heady and lows so flattening you’re never quite certain which one changed you most. Whoever said, “life is like a bowl of cherries” never had to deal with mine. Mine’s a single prune with the pit still intact.

  “I saw that child here last night,” a quiet voice says from beside me. I glance over, unsure he’s talking to me. When I meet his stare, I frown. Do I look as sad as him? Is it reflected in my eyes and disposition, hopelessness as my window decoration? I clear my throat, suddenly conscious of my own self-image. I’m here to help people, not bring them down even further. I sit up straighter.

  “You saw her here last night? Her name was Bella?”

  He nods, eyes tired and countenance severely defeated. He looks like so many others I’ve seen; someone who’s lost so much they may never recover. Whether a loved one or worldly possessions, the losses hit hard when stacked up on top of each other and compared to everyone else’s missing things.

  “Two officers brought her in around six-thirty. She was crying at first, then she sat in the corner right there and ate a cupcake while she waited. Colored a few pictures, watched a cartoon on that television.” He points to an old screen to the left of the front desk. My pulse speeds up when his description of Bella seems spot on. “About two hours later someone claimed her. Looked like an aunt maybe? The woman looked happy to have her, but a little stressed out too. She filled out loads of paperwork, and then they left. But I heard that she lives midtown on Sherman Avenue. That’s the best I could make out. Sorry I don’t have more for you.” He clutches a steaming cup of coffee and takes a sip. “You seemed worried when you came in here this morning. I thought the least I could do is give you some answers now.” He takes another drink, then lets his head come to rest against the wall. “At least one of us is getting some.”

  My stomach drops. So much grief, despair everywhere you look. This guy is no exception.

  “Have you been here a long time?” I ask him.

  His laugh is completely without humor. “Nearly thirty hours now. I’m waiting to hear news about my wife and son.” He nods in the general direction of the room. “We’re all waiting on something, hoping maybe today will be the day. Do me a favor, okay?’

  I’m puzzled at his change in direction, but I nod. I’ll do anything he says if it will help him at all. “Anything.”

  “Go find that girl. She’s lucky to have someone who cares, even if you aren’t a relative. Life’s short, so find her and make sure she’s okay. You’ll feel better once you know.”

  He says it with so much conviction and longing that I have no choice but to obey. To dismiss his request with a flippant promise that I don’t mean seems cruel. I tell myself I’ll find her.

  “I’ll come check on you tomorrow if that’s okay,” I say. At this, he gives me a shadow of a smile. It’s slight, but it’s sincere.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  I stand and clap him on the shoulder, then leave the police station with a new conviction and purpose. The man is right. Life is too short to waste. And it’s too important to say things you don’t mean. I’ll find Bella. For me and for Riley.

  I have a feeling both girls need to know that some men care.

  CHAPTER 9

  Riley Mae

  I’ve grown to despise the hospital in three short days. But I’m here. There’s still no word on Paul or Bella, but my grandmother is alive and improving. I’ll take what I can get, though not knowing the whereabouts of so many is its own kind of torture. As days go by, assumptions increase in size. What are the odds of people turning up unharmed and alive now? Small, at best. Miracles still happen is the mantra I keep telling myself since the idea of Paul being gone is nearly unbearable.

  Taking a deep breath, I push through my grandmother’s door and walk into her room. A nurse stands by her bedside, taking her vital signs and recording them on a clipboard. A machine beats steadily at my grandmother’s head. She’s asleep, so I take care to whisper.

  “How is she?”

  “She has a little fever, and she’s been asleep most of the morning. She tried to get up earlier, but I gave her a stern talking to, and she’s been lying down ever since. Stubborn woman, that one. It’s a wonder anything can heal at all.”

  “Should I be scared? Of the fever, I mean?”

  She shakes her head and checks my grandmother’s urine output. “It’s fairly normal with a surgery like this. Just make sure she stays put, and push the nurse’s button when she wakes up. I’ll just be down the hall.” She hesitates before walking out and turns to look at me. “Try not to worry. I know you want your grandmother whole and healthy, and she will be eventually. If she doesn’t try to push her body into doing something it isn’t ready for. Remember, she’s one of the lucky ones.”

  The room fades out as I tumble headlong into memory.

  “You’re one of the lucky ones,” my grandmother tells me.

  “How?” I sniffle into her shoulder, soaking her blue sweater with the grief of m
y teenage tears. Her words don’t make sense. How can you be lucky when everyone you love becomes nothing but a memory? “Grandpa left, and my parents are dead. How can you call that lucky? It feels more like cursed.”

  “You’re not cursed. You’re alive, and you’re strong. That’s what I call lucky—blessed, even. You could have lost your life in that wreck, Riley Mae, but you didn’t. Don’t waste the opportunity you’ve been given. Life is short, and it’s precious. Wasting yours would be the biggest shame of all.”

  I moved down to lay my head on her lap, comforted by the feel of her fingers slowly gliding through the strands of my hair. Everyone may have left me, but my grandmother was still here and showed no signs of going anywhere. That was something, wasn’t it? It was everything.

  “I’ll try not to waste it.”

  “Don’t try—decide right now that you won’t waste it, and then don’t. Live your life, Riley Mae. Live your life hard. And never give anyone the power to take your joy.”

  This part I understood perfectly because I’d decided that the day my grandfather left. For a long time, he took my grandmother’s joy. She cried, she grieved, and for a few days she didn’t eat or get out of bed. Eventually, she moved on, but she was never quite the same. As for me, I wouldn’t love anyone enough to let them take anything away from me. Not my ambition, not my trust, and certainly not my heart. Men are unreliable and selfish.

  That belief has served me well so far.

  “Miss Floss, did you hear me?”

  I blink up at the nurse and feel my face color with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, no. What did you say?”

  She smiles. “I said just push the button if you need me. I’ll be down the hall.”

  I nod and lower myself into a chair to wait. Against my better judgment, I pull out my phone. They say never to google medical issues because the only thing you’ll learn is how to give yourself higher anxiety levels, but when have I ever listened to professionals? WebMD pops up in record time, and I begin to read.

  Within two minutes, my anxiety levels have skyrocketed, and I’m cursing that bad decision.

  Did you know people can die from undetected slivers of glass buried underneath the skin? Even worse, entire limbs have been lost because of paper cuts, misshapen moles are almost certainly cancer, and floaters in vison are likely early signs of impending blindness.

  I’ve spent a good while blinking into the room and examining my skin in the mirror before I realize what I’m doing.

  Tossing my phone in the chair next to me, I push it as far away as possible, then open the paperback I started last week but haven’t read since. Even now, I find myself reading the same paragraph over and over without comprehending anything. There’s a game show, and a wedding, and two people who hate each other but need to stay together to get the money blah blah blah. If I wanted to watch The Bachelor I would. I drop the paperback into my purse and stare at the floor, counting the number of times my leg swings back and forth. At fifty-two, I think about leaving and heading for the bakery. At fifty-four, that thought fills me with guilt. So many are hurt, and all I want to do is bake something. There’s just so much going on here, and crowds make me nervous.

  The hallways are noisy and jam-packed with people. The hospital lost an entire wing in the storm, and patients were relocated to the remaining three. This wing seems especially busy, likely because the newborns are upstairs and they’re keeping people as far away from them as possible as a safety precaution.

  I look at my grandmother, snoring softly across from me, still sound asleep. It suddenly seems like a good time to make a visit upstairs. Newborns might be what I need to change my mental state, which has taken a serious nose dive in the past two days. No one can be depressed around babies, right? It beats the heck out of inspecting my skin for signs of cancer. I step on the elevator and let it carry me up.

  The elevator doors open to a wall of windows that point straight into the nursery. A few steps forward and I’m there, smiling at the row of newborns swaddled in blankets like tiny blue and pink burritos. Most are asleep, though a couple have mouths that open and close, lips pursing into tiny cupid’s bows awaiting their next meal. One begins to cry, and the instinct to comfort it kicks in with surprising force.

  I want a baby.

  The thought startles me. Never, not once in my entire life, have I ever wanted kids. Clearly, this storm has shaken more than just downtown buildings and structures. Since when was the weather a master of mind manipulation? It should probably fix global warming before trying to mess with my internal ticking clock.

  The thoughts won’t go away. I stare at a particularly cute baby with a head full of black hair and wonder if that’s what mine would look like. Boy or girl? One of each? Dark hair or light? Blue eyes or brown? Basketball or cheer—

  “Cute, aren’t they?”

  I jump back like the window burned me, recognizing the voice. Did I say any of that out loud?

  My baby-loving heart pounds sideways toward the guy next to me with a thump thump thump that hurts, but I refuse to look at him. If I do, there’s a chance I might seem too happy, and I’d rather seem indifferent. Turns out indifference takes much more work.

  “What are you doing here? Looking for more kids to laugh at your jokes?” I press my forehead to the glass and take a deep breath.

  “Very funny,” Chad says. A few quiet moments pass while we stare at the babies. A nurse stands up and wheels one out, the door slowly closing behind her. “Think I could steal a kid before she gets back? Time me. I bet I’m faster than you think.”

  “Probably, if you run real fast. Take one for me too, while you’re at it, and I’ll go get the car. That way if you get caught, I can just drive away like nothing happened. No sense in both of us going to jail.” I nudge him on the arm and point to the dark-headed baby in front of us. “That’s the one I want,” I mouth.

  “On it.” He checks his imaginary watch. “Be on the lookout in five, four, three…”

  Unable to help myself, I give in and laugh. “We probably shouldn’t joke about that. If this is being filmed, they could arrest us for conspiracy to think about kidnapping.”

  He shrugs. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had illegal thoughts lately. Or the first time I’ve been to the police station.”

  I sigh, the moment suddenly sinking into inevitable seriousness. “Still nothing on Bella?”

  “Actually, I have part of an address. Thought I’d casually walk down her street later today and see what I can find out. Who knows. Maybe she’ll be riding her bike on the sidewalk.”

  “Not without me, you won’t.”

  “I figured as much. I planned to stop by the bakery later and tell you, but here you are. What are you doing here? Honestly looking for babies to steal?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” I stare at the babies a long moment. “My grandma is downstairs. She got hurt in the tornado and had surgery. Doctors think she’ll be here for a while, which is probably for the best…”

  His expression sobers. “I didn’t realize…she’s okay, though?”

  I nod. “As okay as can be expected, at least for now.”

  He doesn’t look away. “Want to talk about it?”

  No. But I start talking anyway.

  “Her home is gone, and I’m not sure how I’m going to tell her. She lost everything.” I glance at him. “How do you tell a sixty-eight-year-old woman that everything she’s worked for all her life no longer exists?”

  Chad has gone completely silent. I can’t decide if he thinks I’m merely whiny or just plain pathetic. Just because he offered to talk, doesn’t mean he wanted to hear me complain. Rule number one when meeting someone you might potentially be interested in: don’t unload your sad life story. I want to reach back in time and rewind the clock. Thirty seconds should do it. Maybe two days. That would erase me from Chad’s memory entirely. Yes, that’s better.

  “Do you need help going through her things? Because I’d be
happy to assist you.”

  Happy to assist me? The babies blur in front of me as I try to process what he just said. Men don’t just help strangers without some sort of string attached, at least none I’ve ever met.

  “What?”

  “Her things. Maybe some things are salvageable. Have you looked through them yet?”

  “No, I haven’t had time. But I can’t ask you to—”

  “You didn’t ask. I offered. I’ll leave it up to you. But I’m happy to help, just so you know. In case you’ve forgotten, this is what I do for a living, so I know what to look for.”

  And there’s the string. He wants me to pay him. Disappointment joins us like a third person in this hallway.

  “I forgot about your job. Sure, okay. You can help me.” I’m angry, but I’m not sure why. “Is that what you’re doing here? Helping people?” I say “helping” as if it’s anything but. Taking people at their word isn’t my strongest character trait.

  He tilts his head to look at me, a question in his eyes. “The hospital is insured with the company I work for. I’m here to help with the claims. And for the record, when I say help, I mean help.”

  We’ve just hit the end of his patience with me. I’ve lost enough lately without ruining what could be a potential friendship. I swallow.

  “If you’re not doing anything later this afternoon, I would love the help.”

  “You got it.”

  He grins at me, and give him the phone number of the bakery and tell him to call here when he’s finished working. Whatever tension existed, now it’s gone. I head back downstairs to check in with my grandmother, feeling like I just dodged a major bullet and came out unscathed. If nothing else, I gained a partner for the afternoon. It’s enough to make this day a little less depressing.

  Mayhem has broken out when I walk back into my grandmother’s room.