Finding Erin

by America Leigh

  My mornings were pretty much the same. A long cold shower to douse the ache that was the constant reminder of Maggie. The walk through my apartment to grab coffee and my keys. Making a mental note to ask Lucy to come round and tidy round this week. The late nights and early mornings meant that I was hardly ever here, but the takeout food and the bottles could get out of hand on occasion. I tended to get someone in to take care of my mess. Lucy was a quiet girl with dark blonde hair that reminded me of Maggie. She was the daughter of a friend of mothers. That was all I saw when Lucy came around, was Maggie. I think I'll remind her to come while I'm at work again, I thought. The truth was it hurt to even look at someone who reminded me of Maggie. It was better this way. No misunderstandings and no visions of Maggie in my home, where she should have been all along. I needed to get my head together. After everything had gone down at Maggie’s house after her disappearance, I was left broken and bitter. The fear and anger drove me for the first few years, but now I’ve become so good at the façade, no one questioned it anymore.

  The drive to the office was done on autopilot, as much as everything else these days. After Maggie had gone, I couldn’t even acknowledge the fact that she may be gone permanently. I had to believe she was out there somewhere. I poured all my efforts to finish up school and go in search of her. It’s funny how the plans you have can suddenly change. I finished up school and it wasn’t long after that, me and Rafi built Vance Media from the grown up. My father was after moulding me into this corporate tycoon version of himself and Rafi’s family was no better. Their money and connections had us fighting to gain control of our own futures for a chance at a future we wanted. Vance Media was one the fastest growing Media companies in Europe and was becoming globally recognised with our advanced prototypes that were changing the face of Media alongside the likes of Virgin Media and Sky.

  After ten years I had realised that, Maggie may never be coming back to me. That big part of my soul may never be restored and wasn’t that just the shitiest thing imaginable. I was destined for a life of solitude. The lift had brought me out of my thoughts, noticing that Rafi was already at his desk, hard at it. I crossed the entry way of our combined floor.

  “Morning sunshine, was it a late night or an early start?” I asked teasingly. He scowled at me and threw me the finger. I take it was an all-nighter. Asshole. Laughing.

  The new American acquisitions were messing with Rafi’s ability to actually leave at a reasonable hour or even leave the office at all.

  Noticing he had finished up on the call, Rafi’s lousy mood was suddenly making my nightmare filled dreams, drift away in my amusement at him.

  “Was that the delightful Adrianna or the scrumptious Annabella I heard?” I asked, openly mocking him now as I leant against his desk. His anger was rolling off him in waves. I shouldn’t really be riling him up after the late night or early morning he was practically pulling, but Rafi had always been too easy to torment. University wasn’t much fun for either of us after Maggie went missing. I was in constant darkness. The nightmares came shortly after that, reminding me that I would never see or hold her again. That fact alone was tearing me apart slowly, stitch by stitch. My life was unravelling, but Rafi had stood by me and slowly pieced me back together.

  “Asshole” Rafi muttered under his breath as he got up and knocked my shoulder, nearly sending me fucking flying off his desk.

  “Jesus man, what the hell?”

  Rafi stood by the full glass windows. He was staring off into heart of London. I looked out at the crisp morning sunrise, that’s when I noticed it. The trembling of his left hand and the strain in his body.

  “Ah, Hell no!” My heart sank. I rushed over to the window, putting my hand on Rafi’s left shoulder to steady the trembles.

  “Have you took your pain meds?”

  “Fuck No, that shit sends me loopy and you fucking know it Eddie” Rafi’s accent nearly evaporated at his anger at me. His whole body sagged against the window now and I was the only thing keeping him standing.

  “What did Marley say about the tremors restarting?” I questioned him.

  Rafi remained silent. The tremors resided and his balance returned, but I was worried. How long as this being on for? Rafi suffered with a hereditary neurological disease that didn’t process his functions correctly. The pain medication had stabilised it for years, but there was no cure for it.

  “I’ll take the fucking silence as you haven’t spoken to Marley” I barked at him with his back still facing me. I walked over to Rafi’s desk and picked up the phone.

  “Get me Marley on the phone Now, Elaine” I said before hanging up on my assistant. It had only taken a minute when the phone was ringing again.

  “Marley, its Vance. Yes, I need to bring Rafi in for an immediate consult. Today” I listened for another minute while the doctor briefly questioned me on his symptoms and when he could fit us in. I shot Rafi a stern look. His face was ashen and his grey eyes were flashing anger at my interference. I sat back in my office chair whilst finishing up the call. His whispered words shocked the hell out of me, “Prego non.” I put the receiver back down and gave him a pleading look. Rafi’s head bowed. “Prego” I pleaded with him in Italian. Rafi sighed and nodded.

  “Two o’clock and Rafi” raising my eyes up towards the door, noticing that Rafi was existing.

  “Yes?” He turned to face me before he reached the door.

  “Take the fucking week off. Marcus can finish off the American contracts” He was going to argue, but I was worried about his health. Obviously he hasn’t been taking proper care of himself. He looked like he had lost weight. To think of it. We both have been running ourselves into the ground. With the new contracts that we had acquired recently with the new software we were introducing into the mainframe as of next week, we would be stretched. I shot him a challenging look and he left his office. I sat at Rafi’s desk in utter silence, feeling that things were spiralling out of control. The nightmare this morning and now Rafi was having tremors again. Could my day get any fucking worse?

  * * *

  “Sabine is in your office, Mr Vance” I winced. My day could get worse.

  I pushed my office door open. Sabine’s long auburn hair sat precisely in waves down her back. Her black silk suit was fitted around her petite frame. Sabine sat in my leather up-holstered chair and turned on her charm.

  “Edward. I wondered where you had gotten too.” Sabine purred seductively.

  “What are you doing here Sabine.” I demanded with a tone Sabine should have been accustomed too. She was has false as her hair and nails. She gave me a wink.

  “To fuck.”

  “What makes you think I would want you.” I stated. Sabine sucked in her bottom lip and released it with a pop.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “You know that answer. It is the same one I gave your father.”

  “Baby, don’t be difficult. You know what Daddy wants. He wants to make me happy.”

  “Leave.” I threatened through my clenched jaw.

  “I can give what you need.” Sabine boasted, running her manicured fingernails down my chest and resting just above my pants.

  “I would rather not take sloppy seconds.”

  “Ouch, baby. That hurt.” Sabine mocked.

  Before I knew what she was doing. Sabine was on her knees, unzipping my pants.

  Her mouth was warm and welcoming. Sabine’s moans around my cock had me envisioning a set of caramel eyes and waves of dirty blonde hair. Maggie took over my every thought. I pistoled my hips into Sabine’s mouth, unrelenting. My cock thickened making my spine tingle when my balls tighten. I emptied my load into Sabine’s mouth, making her swallow every last drop. I stepped back. I tucked myself back inside my pants and fixed my clothes. Sabine knelt there waiting for something.

  “Leave.” I told her firmly. Sabine got up and stood expectantly in front of me.

  “How about you return the favour Eddie.”

  “You
got what you wanted Sabine, to feel empowered and wanted. You should have negotiated the terms if you wanted more. Lucky for me, you’re as naïve as you are conceited.

  “You are crueller than they give you credit for you know.”

  “I know.”

  “They call you the tyrant.” Sabine gloated.

  “They don’t know the half of it.” I told her sarcastically.

  Sabine huffed out of my office, slamming my door in response to my dismissal.

  * * *

  “How about a week in the Caribbean?” I asked, standing at Rafi’s office door studying his pale face. The top floor of Vance Media had been divided into areas that we each could concentrate on our particular tastes in design or technology, before the other departments came and made the idea marketable. His office was to the left of the lift and mine directly opposite on the right.

  His eyes found mine. He was exhausted. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? I needed to get him out of this office and make him relax or I was going to lose my best friend and that was not an option, loosing Maggie nearly broke me and Rafi. I couldn’t lose him as well.

  “You serious?” he asked with a shocked expression on his face. His eyes had brightened up at the mere mention of a vacation. He lounged back into his chair and began weighing my offer up. He shuffled uncomfortably waiting for me to answer.

  “Yep, sun, sand and sex” I said wiggling my eyebrows at him. Making Rafi burst into laughter at my lame attempt at humour. He ran his hand through his almost black hair and shrugged his shoulders at me. Weighing my proposal up.

  “We can’t this week, we have that conference for the Mackenzie account on Friday”

  “We can. What’s the fucking point of us owning the company, if we can’t play hooky once in a while?” I shrugged my shoulders in return. Elaine took that precise moment to enter the office, saving me from Rafi’s further excuses.

  I had her taking down everything that needed to be done while we were away, not giving Rafi the choice or room to argue. By the end of play that day, we were booked on the seven forty five to the Bahamas from Gatwick.

  * * *

  “How you feeling?” I asked nudging Rafi feet has I passed his sun lounger. The water had cooled me off briefly. It was over an hundred degrees today and the pure white sand of the hotel was soothing beneath my feet.

  “Good, better than good man. I think I need to move here permanently” Rafi chuckled with his eyes closed.

  “Don’t be getting any ideas, our agenda is packed solid for the next year. No immigrating to foreign countries, Raf. Come on, I saw two red heads going into the Jacuzzi” I commented, getting to my feet to follow them.

  Rafi gave me a knowing look.

  I hated that look. He knew me better than anyone. I couldn’t escape the facts of the last ten years. The façade was easy to maintain, even in a different country. This had become the norm for me now and Rafi knew that that wasn’t going to change. Both of us picking up woman to find a release, just for the night. Quick. Easy. Painless. Anything more than that, had already been taken from me ten years previously. My Laptop pinged at the arrival of incoming mail. The subject header read Urgent, all I could read was NEW LEAD. My heart was slamming into my chest.

  Oh dear God. Maggie.

  The idea of everything else ceased.

  * * *

  “Rhodes, have you found her?” I asked after he answered my call on the first ring.

  “I’m not sure Eddie, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t look like her” That made my pulse race. What if it wasn’t her? It has been ten years. This is all I had thought about since that day. Had anyone been found after being missing for ten years? The possibility seemed unlikely, but that didn’t stop my mind wandering to the possibility of seeing Maggie again.

  “I’ll be back in the morning, I want a full brief in my office first thing” I demand, ending the call. I searched Rafi’s face who stood astutely in front of me. His face had darkened and his body was tense.

  “You ok man” I asked, assuming he had heard my entire conversation with Rhodes. Rafi just shrugged his shoulders. This wasn’t a good sign. Rafi had never dealt with emotions very well. The older he got, the stricter he got with himself. Everything had to be in order. Now this and the tremors from last week, made me wonder if Rafi was strong enough to deal with the fact that we might have found Maggie. Then there’s the disappointment if we never did.

  Chapter Two.

  Erin - Ten Years Later.

  The keys on my laptop had been sweeping at a steady pace. My latest blog was taking a little more work than normal this week. I had been inundated with emails, tweets and phone calls about the impending purchase of the blog. The repetitive messages of excitement over the sale and the future of the blog had kept me extremely busy all week. I had been staring at the same screen for the last twenty minutes typing and then deleting it, leaving just the intro for the blog. It had been the same intro for the last eight years, when I had first started. The words were so familiar now that I could recite them by memory. It wasn’t just the words that made me stare at the screen. It was the reminder that after ten years I was still no nearer to finding who I truly am.

  Have you ever been so lost, that’s there nowhere to turn? Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. How about not knowing anything. Waking up to find, you don’t even exist. That your memories are lost, forgotten or even insignificant that no one knows who you are. That’s me. The girl with no past, the girl with no future. They say to know where you’re going is to know where you came from. But what if that’s your biggest obstacle, that one tiny detail, to know who you truly are?

  Time had passed quickly, but I could still smell the hospital room and the fear of not knowing who I was. I leaned back into my chair and looked around my office. The cool browns and creams ran throughout the house, but this had been my favourite room when me and the girls had moved in. The soft furnishings I had bought sat purposely around the room, a cream vintage lamp and the antique cream desk that housed my laptop and the endless supply of work piling up. My view caught sight of the photos on top the sideboard. The smiles on Faith, Peace and Justice’s face were warm. That picture had only been taken last month at the lake. We had spent two days swimming, taking the boat out and lazing in the sun. The stress of work slowly crept back and reminded me that I had a blog to finish and a meal to prepare. It was my turn to cook tonight, as the others had either late class or a late shift. What was I feeling today? I thought. Well…I wanted to be back at that lake seeping back into my subconscious, instead of writing about how I was feeling. My alarm brought me out of my melancholy state. This time of year always sent me into a tailspin, as soon as June was done, July was here. The reminder of when I woke up alone, all those years ago have been swimming around my thoughts for days now.

  I got up and headed for the bathroom, it was time for my injection. Opening the cabinet remembering I had to take it at the exact same time each day to keep my epilepsy under control. I haven’t had an attack since I was admitted to Sheffield Memorial on the Kennedy Ward. The sharp scratch to my right side was another prick to my frail consciousness.

  “Erin” I heard Faith call from downstairs. I shoved the empty needle into the trash safely and hurried down the stairs.

  “Hey, I thought you was on…” My words dying in my throat, when I saw Faith’s ashen face.

  “What’s wrong” I asked, rushing over to her. She was shaking her head at me now. If it wasn’t the fact that Faith was shaking, it would have been the black in her eyes that had darkened from her naturally brown eyes. Faith pulled me into her arms. Stroking the back of my hair. I found comfort in her touch, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what had Faith in such a state. I leaned back and looked at her again. This time, she had managed to school her features. I wasn’t sure if this had been for my benefit or her own. Faith and I had been friends throughout school, to be honest, all four of us had been friends since I was fifteen. Faith was the quietest on
e in our little group. Her long blonde hair was slick and straight and she was tiny in that quirky kind of way. She looked up and gave me a hesitant smile.

  “Someone has been checking into our personal files. I got a call from Cassie at the social services office. She told me that someone had asked about our connection to each other and where we lived and how we all met. Cassie had thought it was strange and gave me a heads up” Faith finished rambling. She let a long and frustrated sigh out, she pulled at her hair, it was messy now. I hadn’t seen Faith this worked up since her exams a few years ago to qualify as a nurse. I rubbed her shoulder in small circles, calming her down. Faith looked exhausted.

  “How long have you known about this?” I gave Faith a questioning look.

  “A few days” she added, looking sheepish, “Peace and Justice also mentioned a man asking locals about our connection….to you” Faith looked down at the floor, trying to hide the concern she had over this new information. “I didn’t think anything of it until they mentioned that this morning”

  “It’s probably nothing” I shrugged my shoulder at her, getting up to make a start on dinner. Faith just stood there, expecting something more from me maybe I should have been worried, but I wasn’t the type of girl to panic over the littlest things, anymore. Especially since I’ve learnt that worrying never accomplished anything. I turned round and looked at Faith, giving her a soothing look.

  “It’ll be fine, trust me” I told her, giving her wink that had her giggling at me. These girls were my life. When I had walked into social services with my escort form the hospital. I noticed the three girls, around my age sat close but weary of each other. My escort had left me standing near the door way to fill in my paperwork. I had spent three weeks in that hospital bed alone. Faith sat there with her fine blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun at the back of her neck. Her dark blue jeans and black vest top hung to her every curve. To her left sat Peace. Her pure black hair curled down her back in long swirls that reminded me of liquorice wheels. She had jeans on that were a size too big and an oversized sweater on. Peace was breathtakingly beautiful in a very natural sort of way. On the right side of Faith sat Justice, her bright red hair and red lips were striking but her clothes were as load and surreal as her hair. I looked over at her with interest, I had never met anyone has comfortable in her own skin as Justice was. It was in that office that I had met my best friends and I thanked whoever it was looking down on me that gave me them.