What Comes Next

by Desni Dantone

  I swallowed hard. “What news do you have?”

  “I got a letter from Ana about four months ago,” he answered. “Said she’d left Richmond, and ended up in Philadelphia.”

  “What’s in Philadelphia?”

  “Nothing.” Jeffrey shrugged. “I think that was point of going there. No ties, no memories.”

  I rubbed at the ache starting behind my temple. “You don’t happen to have the address, do you?”

  “No return address. She said she didn’t have a place to stay yet, but she’d met a girl who had an apartment with an extra room. Name was Michelle, I think.”

  “No idea what part of town?” Philadelphia was far too big to go door-to-door in search of someone who may or may not still be there. Then again, I wasn’t above trying that, if that was what it took to find Ana.

  “All I know is that she’d met this Michelle girl at the diner she’d gotten a job at. They were both waitressing, and she said the apartment was on the same block as the diner, which she needed since Pop’s Pontiac died.”

  Despite learning that she was essentially stranded in a big city with no vehicle, I felt a ripple of excitement. No car meant she couldn’t leave before I found her.

  “Got a name of the diner?” I asked.

  Jeffrey shook his head. “I swear, Ben, it’s . . . it’s like she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I’m starting to suspect that,” I muttered at the floor.

  “It messed her up,” Jeffrey said softly, and my eyes lifted to his. “I know it wasn’t your fault, but . . .” He stepped back with a sigh as if conflicted over how much to tell me. “What happened nearly destroyed her. I saw it, every day. I told her I would stay, tear up my enlistment papers, do whatever I had to, but she insisted I do what I wanted. Ma and I were the only things keeping her in Stone Creek, and when Ma died . . . I don’t think she ever plans to go back, so you need to find her. Let her know the truth.”

  Three days after I promised Jeffrey Maxwell that I wouldn’t stop until I found his sister, I tackled the streets of Philadelphia. I took the photograph I had of Ana and me into every diner I could find. No one recalled seeing her. Two diners had waitresses named Michelle, but a few questions confirmed that neither was the Michelle I was looking for.

  I had lost a lot of daylight and confidence by the time I strolled into the thirteenth diner. After walking the narrow alley outside, lined with broken street lights and rowdy bars, I prayed that this would be another dead end. I couldn’t stand the thought of her working here, and living somewhere in this neighborhood.

  As I’d come to expect, the high-school aged boy behind the counter shook his head when I showed him the picture.

  “I’ve only been here a week, though,” he offered. Over his shoulder he called, “Hey, Shelly, come here and take a look at this!”

  A college-aged brunette approached us with curious eyes, and I sat up in my seat a little straighter when I noticed that her name tag read Michelle. I watched her closely as she glanced at the photograph, and caught the flash of recognition in her eyes before she darted a wary look at me.

  I tried to keep a lid on my excitement. The last thing I needed to do was to scare off the only connection I had to Ana. “You recognize her?”

  The girl folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe. Who’s asking?”

  I snapped my mouth shut on my name. If there was any possibility that Ana had told this girl about me, dropping my name right now would only scare her off. I was supposed to be dead, and I had a feeling she wasn’t going to give me the time to explain what happened and why she needed to believe me. I only needed to convince her to let me get close to Ana so she could see for herself.

  “Mitch.” I introduced myself with my brother’s name. “I’m a friend of Ana’s from high school.”

  She smirked, and started to turn away.

  “Actually, she was engaged to my brother,” I called out to her in audible desperation.

  She stopped, and her eyes dropped to the photograph on the counter between us. “You look just like him.”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  Her arms dropped to her sides. “What happened to him?”

  Ana hadn’t told her everything?

  I ran a hand over my face, contemplating whether or not to tell her the truth now. Surely, she’d believe me. She might even already suspect with the photographic evidence in front of her. Something held me back. I couldn’t risk letting her run.

  “Declared KIA a little over a year ago.”

  She nodded at the floor and murmured, “I always suspected. She never wanted to talk about what she was running from, but I thought it might have been something like that.”

  “I really need to talk to her,” I pleaded. “It’s important, and it’s about him.” I tipped my chin toward the photograph, and her eyes flicked from it to me, then back again.

  Finally, she turned toward the rear of the diner and disappeared. My pulse pounded as I considered something I hadn’t thought of until then. What if Ana was back there? What if Ana rounded the corner, and found me sitting here?

  My breaths were rapid and shallow as I waited. What if Ana ran because I told this girl that my name was Mitch? She’d run from Stone Creek to avoid Mitch, and Mama, and everything that had to do with me. Too late, I realized my mistake and pushed away from the bar with a muttered curse.

  Michelle reappeared, and nodded her head for me to follow her as she headed for the door. “My shift was over in twenty anyway,” she explained as we stepped into the street. “Roger was fine with me leaving.”

  “Ana’s not working tonight?”

  When no answer came, I peered down at Michelle to find her chin tipped down and eyes on the ground. Guarded. Reluctant.

  Not good.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets and fell into step alongside her as she led me deeper into the dark street. On either side of us, rusted fire escape ladders hung from the brick walls lined with small box windows. Near the end of the alley, the flickering light above a narrow stoop framed by a large box of call-buttons beckoned to us.

  Michelle stepped forward to slide a key into the door, and finally broke the silence. “Ana moved into an empty room I had in my apartment about four months ago,” she explained as she pushed the door open.

  She talked to me over her shoulder as she led me down a narrow hallway. “I always knew something was haunting her. She never told me the details, but I knew from the way she interacted with the soldiers that came into the diner, that the war had gotten her too.”

  We stopped outside a faded green door, and Michelle slipped another key into the lock. My heart hammered in my chest as she ushered me inside. She flicked the lights on behind me, and all my enthusiasm evaporated.

  The apartment felt empty. Ana wasn’t there.

  Michelle moved through the kitchen, tossing her keys on the counter. “She grew restless about a month ago. I came home two weeks ago, and she was gone. Left a letter, said she was heading down to the capitol with a few friends. They were going to do some traveling, no idea where they were going, or how long they’d be gone.”

  I sank onto the barstool beside me. “Who were these friends?”

  Michelle shrugged. “Some girl she met not long after she got here, named Cindy, and Adam.”

  “Adam?”

  Michelle shrugged. “Regular at the diner, kind of infiltrated my small group of friends through Ana. A little infatuated with her, but otherwise harmless. They took his car, as far as I know.”

  I sighed into my hands as I rubbed them gruffly over my face. “She didn’t say when she might be back?”

  “No idea.” Michelle motioned for me to follow her down a short hallway. She pushed a door open, and flicked on a light. “This was her room. She left almost everything behind. Said she’d be back eventually, just didn’t know when.”

  I moved farther into the room, and breathed in the faint scent of strawberry and mint that lingered in the air
. For the first time in over two years, I breathed in Ana.

  “You’re welcome to look around if you want,” Michelle offered softly. “Maybe you’ll find what you need.”

  I shook my head at the small pile of boxes in the corner. I knew without looking that none of that stuff could help me. “I need to find her,” I muttered.

  Michelle backed out of the room with a sad smile, and I ventured toward the corner. I flipped open a few boxes to find some clothes, books, letters, and pictures. I riffled through the letters, hoping to find something to point me in the right direction. They were all my letters.

  She’d kept them. All of them. Stuffed into a box with pictures of her mama, grandparents, and brother. The photograph of the two of us wasn’t there, and I wondered if she had it with her. I wondered if she carried it on her like I did.

  I withdrew the photograph from my pocket, and stared at it.

  She could come back tomorrow . . . a month . . . six months . . .

  How would I know?

  I needed to find a way to get her home, to Stone Creek.

  An idea formed as I stared at the photograph in my hand. A loose idea, but all I had to work with.

  I found a pen in one of the boxes, flipped the photograph over, and wrote COME HOME in big block letters so that she wouldn’t recognize my handwriting. My intention wasn’t to scare her, but to encourage her to return. I didn’t want to let her know I was alive until I was there, with her, to soften the blow.

  What was important to me now was just getting her to come home.

  All I had to do now was wait.

  The waiting was the worst. I busied myself with work. The construction company my brother and I worked for on the coast was successful, very busy, and offered plenty of overtime. Between the paychecks I collected from them, and the money I got from my service in the Army, I had more than enough to buy Mr. Pebble’s property outright this time around.

  I had enough left over to start building the house I’d wanted to build on the hill. We started from scratch—me and Mitch—and after three months of weekends and late nights, I had enough of it finished to move out of my room at Mama’s and start my own path.

  A path I fully intended to meet Ana on someday soon.

  When soon didn’t come soon enough, I found other ways to stay busy. Not good ways, but they worked at helping me forget, and there was a lot I wanted to forget. Along with the sights, smells, and sounds I still heard when I closed my eyes, I buried the memory of Luke Davis under bottles of liquor.

  I never forgot the promise I made to him before he died, but I wasn’t ready to fulfill it yet. Not when I couldn’t think about what happened without reaching for a bottle. Someday, I would pass on his letter. Someday, when I could look his widow and son in the eyes, and tell them the truth. Someday . . . after I got my own shit together.

  Working on the house helped. It provided me with purpose.

  Six months after I returned from hell, and five months after I started building it, the house was completely finished. I still wanted to build a deck, but that could wait until next summer. For now, my brother was celebrating our accomplishment, and I was drowning myself in Jack because the house still didn’t feel finished to me. Not without Ana in it.

  A new bar had opened up a few miles outside Stone Creek, and it was opening night. Drinks were half off.

  “Might want to slow down,” Mitch advised from his seat next to me at the bar. “We’ve got all night.”

  I stared at the golden brown liquid in my glass a moment before tossing it back. I wasn’t to the point of forgetting yet. If anyone understood that, it should have been Mitch.

  One night, about three months ago, he’d finally told me what he’d seen over there. He’d told me about the men he’d been forced to kill, and the buddies he’d seen fall. He’d done it in the hopes that I would open up about my experience. It might help to talk about, he’d claimed, as it had helped him. I’d told him to fuck off, and drank myself into a stupor for three days straight until I was able to forget again.

  But it was only temporary. The images, the nightmares, everything always came rushing back with sobriety.

  I functioned. I got my work done, and did it well. I didn’t drink and drive. I paid my bills. I sat through Sunday service with Mama when she insisted that I go. I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Mitch muttered beside me. I lifted my head to follow his gaze across the bar. “That’s a mighty fine ass I haven’t seen in a while.”

  My eyes drifted up a slender pair of legs, over an ass-hugging skirt that left little to the imagination, and across a sliver of exposed midriff peeking out beneath a mane of long dark hair. Something about the girl seemed familiar, but I didn’t register who she was fast enough. Not until she pushed away from the table she was leaning across, and shot a look over her shoulder like she felt my eyes on her.

  “Shit,” I muttered before quickly dropping my gaze.

  Mitch shifted in his seat excitedly, and I knew she was on her way over. “I see why you kept her to yourself all that time, little brother. She’s smoking hot.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Mitch,” I hissed. “Don’t encourage her.”

  God knew Tracy Ryder didn’t need it.

  “Well, well . . .” Her slender fingers curled around my bicep as she squeezed into the space between me and Mitch. I glanced up long enough to find her eyes settled firmly on me. “I heard a rumor you were back from the dead.”

  “Guess it wasn’t a rumor.” I flagged down the bartender, and waved my empty glass to indicate I needed another. Or two or three.

  Tracy wasn’t deterred by my clipped response. If anything, she pushed closer, purposefully pressing her chest against my arm as she reached for my left hand. “What? No wedding ring?” she asked with a gasp. “I thought you’d be hitched by now.”

  I shifted in my seat to pin her with a dark look. I couldn’t tell if she was messing with me, or if she genuinely didn’t know. I opened my mouth, but shut it when I couldn’t think of what to say. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to talk about what should have happened. Not with anyone, least of all Tracy.

  “I finished up my third year of college myself,” she went on conversationally as I chugged down half of my newly poured drink. “Doubt I’ll go back now that I’ve got this gig. I’ve already made fifty dollars in tips, and I’ve only been working two hours.”

  I nearly choked. “You work here?”

  She leaned back to wave a hand over her getup. “You think I’d dress like this for the hell of it?”

  I hooked an eyebrow, but refused to answer her question with a response that would more than likely earn me a slap to the face. She giggled, and fished a ten out of hiding before slapping it down on the counter between me and Mitch.

  “Have a few on me, boys.” She winked coyly. “You can thank me later. I’m here all night.”

  While the wrecking ball that I had once sort of dated walked away, my brother nearly choked on his beer. “If that isn’t an open invitation, I don’t know what is,” he laughed.

  “Not happening, Mitch.” I pushed the cash toward the bartender, and earned us both another round on Tracy. Only thing I’d get from her tonight, that was for damn sure.

  Mitch grew quiet beside me as I tossed back another drink. The numbness started to set in. Just enough . . . but not quite where I needed to be to get through another night. Especially when my brother decided to pull his all-wise and all-knowing bullshit.

  “You do realize . . .” he started slowly, and I knew exactly what he was gearing up to say. His hand came down on my shoulder to hold me in place when I started to get up. “Ben, you have to realize she might not come back. You have to face that possibility some time.”

  “You think I haven’t done that already?” I fired back. “You think that doesn’t gnaw on me every goddamn morning I wake up, and she’s not here?”

  “Ben, I—”

  �
�I get it,” I hissed. “I don’t need you telling me, too.”

  “I don’t think you do get it. I think you’re waiting for something that . . . might never happen. I don’t want to see you wait forever.”

  “What’s it matter to you if I do?”

  I held my brother’s scrutinizing eyes as he worked up a response. I was prepared for something anywhere within the wide range of harsh to motivational. I wasn’t prepared for the words that eventually came out of his mouth.

  “You keep this up”—his chin tilted toward the nearly empty glass in front of me—“you’re going to end up like Dad.”

  I responded by putting the glass to my mouth and downing the rest of my drink in one swallow. Anything to stunt the impact of his words.

  Two more drinks and the harsh reality faded, along with my surroundings. I’d always feared that I would end up like that man. Ana had once convinced me to forget about him, and his issues, and to be with her. So what was I supposed to do when she wasn’t here?

  Through the haze of alcohol and cigarette smoke, my gaze met Tracy Ryder’s, and I wondered if I had been like my dad all along.

  SUMMER 1973

  “You sure I can’t help you somehow?”

  I slam the trunk of the used car purchased yesterday with every last dollar I had, and turn to Michelle with a small smile. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I’m sorry to leave again so soon, but this is something I have to do.”

  She nods glumly, and I wish I could tell her everything. I wish I had the strength to say the words. Maybe it will make me feel better to say them. Or maybe it won’t.

  “It’ll be boring,” I tell her instead. “I’ve got a ton of legal stuff to take care of with my grandparent’s property. Stuff I’ve avoided taking care of for too long. It should only take a few days.”

  Someday I will tell my friend the truth. Someday, when I can say his name without tearing up, I’ll tell Michelle about my first love. Maybe after these next few days, if I get the closure I need, I will finally be ready.

  Ironically, it took me two years of running to realize that the answers I’ve been seeking have been waiting for me back in Stone Creek all along. Leaving has not solved my problems, only postponed the inevitable.