Finding Somewhere to Belong

by C. C. Masters

  I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I had gone too long without sleep, and my body ached. I could feel a deep pit down in my stomach that was not solely due to the starvation that I put myself through the last couple of days. I had not really eaten all day Sunday or today.

  The little I had eaten on Sunday had come back up while I was in Evelyn’s house, and the small protein bar I managed to choke down at lunch today was hardly a sufficient meal for a human or a wolf. Despite the emptiness inside me, I couldn’t make myself care enough to leave the room in search of food.

  I just wanted to sink down into the oblivion that sleep could offer and forget everything for now. I could figure everything out tomorrow, I told myself. For now, I was safe - even though I felt anything but. That was my last thought for the night as the sleep meds kicked in and darkness rose to swallow me whole.

  Chapter 4

  Almost twelve hours later, I woke up. My initial confusion at waking up in a strange place faded as the events of the last couple of days came back to me slowly. I sat up in the bed and leaned forward with my elbows leaning on my thighs.

  I still felt a little drowsy, but that was most likely due to the after effects of the sleep med I had taken. The nausea in my stomach had faded and was now replaced by a gnawing hunger. I reached over to the desk by the bed to grab my phone and check the time. I had two hours until I needed to be back in the pharmacy. I had no missed calls or messages, but that was not surprising; Evelyn was gone, and Kelsey wasn’t speaking to me.

  I swung my legs over the side of the cot and stood up slowly. My body still ached, and I took five minutes to stretch out a little. I needed a good thirty minutes to go through my yoga routine, but I decided that a shower and food were higher up on my list of priorities at the moment.

  A hot shower helped to soothe the aches from sleeping on the lumpy cot. I decided to dress in my gym clothes for now and stop at the scrub machine for some fresh scrubs before reporting back to work. I picked up some snacks at the NEX and headed over to the food court to take advantage of the Wi-Fi there.

  I spread my selection of snacks out in front of me and opened my bottle of diet Mountain Dew. My appetite had come back with a vengeance, and after inhaling some food, I was feeling a little more like myself. A full night of sleep, food, and caffeine had helped to clear my head, and I was ready to make a game plan. I needed to stay focused and not let myself get lost in my emotions. I could give myself time to grieve after I figured all of this out.

  I pulled out my phone, ready to make a list of everything I needed to do. I decided to start with listing what I already knew. I think now it was safe to assume that wolves had murdered Evelyn. I think it was also safe to assume that the pack Evelyn grew up with was responsible.

  I chewed on my lip as I thought about my next step: identifying the pack. Evelyn had never told me where she came from, but she had occasionally dropped hints without realizing it. Over the years, she had mentioned taking day trips to the mountains, snowstorms in the winter, and a waterfall that was in biking distance of her house. That list was not exactly something I could Google and have a location pop up.

  The one hint that I had was the photos that I had gotten a brief glance at all those years ago. She had found them on the Internet, and so could I. If only I knew her real name, I sighed in frustration. I know she kept her past secret from me to keep me safe, but right now I regretted that I had never pushed her to reveal more than she wanted. I had thought that we had years before ever worrying about anything happening to her. I felt tears forming, and I struggled to push them back and focus on the mission.

  I tried my best to focus on the yearbook pictures that I had seen and bring those images back in my mind. I knew there had been a photo of her daughter at a football game. I think the team high school was called something like Wildmere High or Windfall High. I could try searching for that, but for now time was up; I had just enough time to get my new scrubs and report to work. I sighed in frustration but stood up to start my day of work.

  Chapter 5

  Within the first couple hours of work, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to focus on anything pharmacy-related today. I was squirming in my seat, antsy to get out of here and back to solving a murder. It was taking me ten times longer than normal for me to do anything, and I had not accomplished anything productive yet today.

  I caught a flash of my supervisor’s red hair out of the corner of my eye, and after only a second of hesitation, I followed her.

  I caught up with her as she made it to her office. “Good morning, Carol! Is there any way that I could talk to you for a minute?”

  She turned and frowned at me. I gave her a small smile with a hopeful look in my eyes.

  “All right, come in my office.” She sat down in the chair behind her desk with a sigh of unhappy anticipation. I doubted anyone chased her down the hall early in the morning to give her good news.

  “You remember Evelyn?” I had brought Evelyn to a couple of the civilian work functions where attending with your family was expected. Carol’s eyes lit with recognition. I didn’t have anyone else to bring to events like that, so I just introduced her as my grandmother. No one questioned it; Evelyn was the type of grandmother everyone wanted. Evelyn felt safe, and she was sure that wolves would not be able to infiltrate my workplace. “They are too rough to be able to blend with civilized folks,” she had sniffed.

  “Of course. How is Evelyn doing?” Carol asked.

  Carol and Evelyn had bonded over their love of baking when both had brought a pecan pie to a potluck. The memory of that event brought my pain of losing her sharply back into focus. I swallowed the lump that was forming in my throat and looked down at the floor, taking a moment to let the emotion pass before I could speak.

  “She passed the other day,” I managed to whisper. My attempts at pushing my emotion down were not going well, and I could feel tears forming in my eyes. I squared my shoulders back, determined not to be so unprofessional as to cry at work.

  I met Carol’s sympathetic eyes as I looked back up at her. “I could tell you weren’t feeling yourself yesterday.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands. “If you need time, we just received word that the Solace isn’t going out on their planned training exercises this week, so I have two extra pharmacists to add to the schedule.”

  I was genuinely grateful at her offer. I was the type of person who never called out and hated to ask for time off. Our hospital was responsible for staffing the USS Solace, which was a medical ship that mainly was deployed for humanitarian efforts when disasters occurred. The Solace had just recently gone out to Puerto Rico after hurricane Irma had left a trail of destruction through the country. Almost a quarter of the hospital staff had gone on the ship then, but for training exercises a much smaller crew went.

  “Yes, thank you.” I blinked away the tears that had formed and were threatening to drop at any moment.

  She stood and motioned to the door. “Take the rest of the week, go home and get some rest. I’ll have LT Giles and LT Michaels cover your shifts.”

  I tried to smile and murmur my thanks, but I had to hurry out the door before I managed to embarrass myself by letting any tears drop. I wiped at my eyes as soon as I left the office and tried to summon back my determination. I was getting frustrated with all the sudden mood changes and overwhelming emotions that kept hitting me. I tried not to make eye contact with any of my co-workers as I headed back to my desk. My emotions were still dangerously too close to the surface, and I did not want to have to explain my emotional state to anyone.

  I grabbed my bag on the way out and was soon changed into civilian clothes and sitting in my car, unsure of where to go. The business card that the police had given me on Sunday was still on the passenger seat of my car where I dropped it. Since I was indecisive about where to go, I decided to stay right here and make some phone calls.

  I dialed the number the detective had given me, but I was forwarded throu
gh a couple other people before I had Detective Finn on the phone.

  “Hi, this is Anna. I met you in regard to the Evelyn Heights case.” I hesitated. I wanted to get info from him, but he might be more likely to share if I offered to help first. “I was calling because you had mentioned that you needed me to make a statement?”

  There was quiet on the other side of the phone, but right before I was going to check and see if he hung up on me, I heard his voice. “We have closed that case already, but thank you for checking in,” he told me gruffly.

  “Closed it?” I said in disbelief. “I heard that she was murdered? Did you catch the guy who –”

  “Ma’am,” he interrupted me, “it was ruled as a natural death. There’s nothing to be investigated.”

  My jaw dropped. “Natural?” What could possibly be natural about a werewolf attack?

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s my understanding that the family has already claimed the body. You may want to contact them for details on the service they have planned.”

  “I wasn’t aware that Evelyn had family,” I told him with a frown. Who would have claimed the body? Could it be the same pack that murdered her? Now were they trying to hide the evidence?

  “I can give you the number for the liaison to the morgue. They might be able to help you,” he told me. I could tell by the impatient tone in his voice that he had already told me everything he was going to, so I accepted the phone number he gave me and thanked him for his help.

  After I hung up the phone, I sat in the car for a few moments in disbelief. This was not what I was expecting at all. Could someone be covering up the fact that Evelyn was killed by wolves? How could they convince anyone that had actually seen her body that she died of ‘natural causes’?

  I shook my head but called the number that Detective Finn had given me. A polite young woman named Violet answered the phone and informed me that the body had been sent for cremation by her son. I knew for a fact that Evelyn did not have a son, so this made me even more suspicious.

  I asked her for contact details for Evelyn’s son. I told Violet it was so that I could help with planning the services and offer my condolences to the family, and she was more than happy to provide a name and a phone number. She told me Evelyn’s son’s name was Robert Heights. Evelyn’s real name was not Evelyn Heights, so I highly doubted that this man’s real name was Robert Heights. As soon as I was able to get off the phone with Violet, I called the number she had given me for ‘Robert Heights’ with my heart pounding.

  Who would be on the other end of the phone? I was disappointed when the phone line rang once and then gave the ‘you have reached a disconnected number’ message. I sat in my car and stared down at my phone blankly. I had gotten nowhere fast with my investigation, and I now had even more questions than I did an hour ago.

  I was having a difficult time processing that Evelyn was truly gone. It seemed unbelievable that she was suddenly torn from my life, not leaving much evidence behind. I was sad that I would not get to hold her hand one last time and say goodbye. It seemed unfair that someone had just gone into the morgue, taken her body, and disposed of it. She deserved to have her remains treated with love and respect, not disposed of by a stranger.

  Rationally, I knew she was gone and that she wouldn’t care what had happened to her body, but I did care. I wanted to be able to say goodbye to her and make closure with her death. I wanted to plan a service for her so that I could celebrate her life with all the people who loved her.

  I decided I wasn’t giving up just yet. How many places could there be in this area that provided cremation services? I could call them directly and see if I could stop things in time. I Googled it, and there were a lot more than I thought. Nineteen different places came up in my search, and I sighed; this was going to take a while.

  I called each one of those places, pretending to be Evelyn’s daughter, ‘Emily.’ I figured if the mysterious ‘Robert Heights’ could get away with it, then so could I. Each one of those places had never heard the name Evelyn Heights before, and I had to sit through quite a few sales pitches on why I should use their services for the death of my beloved mother. After I had called each and every place within a thirty-mile radius, I felt the weight of failure pressing down on me.

  It was possible that whoever ‘Robert’ was had taken Evelyn further away to avoid people like me, but I couldn’t call every single place in the country. The more I thought about this, the more upset I started to get.

  Why had I waited this long? I should have done this immediately, not waited around and let someone steal Evelyn from me. Instead, I had buried my head in the sand and avoided dealing with the problem because I was too weak to handle it. I had a difficult time processing the emotions that came with loss, and so I tried to distract myself with other things.

  Why did I have to be like this?! I had also assumed that I had more time. I had watched plenty of episodes of Law and Order, and investigations always seemed to take a long time. That’s what I get for trusting TV representations of real life. I should know better; I’ve seen quite a few episodes of Teen Wolf.

  I needed to regroup and come up with a new plan now. I had to figure out a different way to approach this problem. I was going to have to take a step back and look at this from the outside so I could get better perspective.

  My stomach chose that moment to growl, and I looked down in irritation. I had not eaten yesterday, other than the protein bar I had for lunch. I had eaten a bunch of snacks and Mountain Dew this morning for breakfast, but it clearly was not enough to make up for the past two days of starvation. Lunch would probably give me to opportunity to clear my head and then start over.

  I decided to err on the side of caution and avoid my home for the time being. There was a bar and grill called Greenies not far from base that had great burgers, and I was craving real food. The snacks that I had hurriedly consumed earlier today were not ideal fuel for a wolf. The restaurant staff there did not care if you sat outside on their patio for an extended amount of time during their off-season slow hours, so I would have place to gather my thoughts for a while.

  I headed in and waited in line to speak with the hostess. “Anna!” I heard a slightly familiar voice call. I looked around through the crowd of people that had formed behind me. My eyes were caught by a familiar pair of blue ones. It was the random guy I met yesterday, Cody. Was it only yesterday? It felt like that had happened years ago.

  His eyes glanced quickly up and down my body as he headed in my direction. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your white coat, but not many people have your hair color.”

  I ran my hand over my ponytail self-consciously, trying to smooth it down a bit. He was right, not many people had white blond hair without the help of peroxide. I was dressed casually right now in jeans and a long sleeve tee. The jeans were snug, but the T-shirt was comfortably loose. In comparison to my clothing from yesterday, it probably looked like I had instantly shed 30 pounds, though.

  He looked good in dark wash jeans and a snug T-shirt that showed off his amazing physique. All rational thoughts went out the window when he was close enough for me to pick up the faint scent of his aftershave; my body was responding to him, despite my best efforts.

  “I was just coming here to pick up lunch. There aren’t exactly any decent options on base,” he told me with a warm smile. He stood a little too close to me, and I flinched away. I hated when I reacted like that.

  I grinned a little to try and hide my discomfort. When uncomfortable, I usually tried to rely on my off-beat sense of humor.

  “You don’t want to try your luck at the galley?” I teased him. The galley was the cafeteria in the hospital. Sometimes they had decent options, like Taco Tuesday, but other times it was a roll of the dice.

  He smirked. “Last time I braved the galley, I questioned them about if my chicken was supposed to be pink on the inside. They told me yes, it was just cooked medium rare.”

  I snorted and then quickly c
overed my mouth in embarrassment. He didn’t seem to notice the awkward moment and continued.

  “I was going to just pick up a few options for you since I don’t know what you like, but I’m glad you are here so I don’t have to agonize over the decision.”

  I gave him a confused look.

  He pouted jokingly, “Oh, don’t tell me you forgot about our lunch date. You would have broken my heart if you stood me up.”

  My eyebrows raised in surprise, but the hostess saved me from answering. “Table for two?”

  Cody looked at me. “Patio OK?” he asked.

  I blinked in surprise, and the hostess took that as assent. No doubt she wanted to get everyone moving; the waiting area was filling up fast with the early lunch crowd. She grabbed some menus and started out towards the patio. Cody gestured for me to go ahead of him. I really did not want to waste time on social interactions right now, but I did feel like a jerk for completely forgetting about him. To be fair, though, I never actually agreed to a date.

  Cody and I were the only ones on the patio. It was a cool day for Virginians. Not a lot of people wanted to hang out here after the temp went below 70, and today it was a crisp 63 with a breeze. I enjoyed the cooler weather and looked forward to fall every year.

  I slid into a chair at the table that the hostess indicated. She waited for Cody to take a seat before leaning forward to put a menu in front of him, giving him a great view of her cleavage.

  To my surprise, he did not seem to notice and had kept his eyes on me. She tossed a menu across the table at me before huffing and turning on her heel. I fought the urge to roll my eyes as she shot me a dirty look over her shoulder before she opened the door to go back inside.

  If any of this had happened a week ago, I would be ecstatic. I had a hot guy practically stalking me, and he was currently looking at me with an interested look on his face. But right now, I just wanted to get this over with so I could get on with my planning.