Lucky 13

by Rachael Brownell

  That’s where Libby comes in. She comes over almost every day. Sometimes with Chester, other times with Megan or Angie. When she does come alone, I spend most of the time crying. I think that’s why she likes to bring other people with her.

  Now with graduation upon me comes more responsibility. I take my role with the Foundation seriously, working hard every day and playing hard on the weekends. My days are spent finding ways to raise money and my nights are spent searching for any clues that might lead me to Grant. For the first few weeks, both felt like dead ends. Then Amber showed up and my life took on a whole new meaning.

  A single mother of one, Amber is here to get away from an abusive husband. Her daughter, Eva, is only three and the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen. Amber’s skills are minimal, but her passion and conviction to start over and get away from her husband are amazing. She reminds me a lot of Lucy. That’s when I put it all together, how I’m going to find him.

  With Lucy’s replacement, Susan, on vacation, I’m left to take care of Amber and her daughter. I begin the paperwork for Amber immediately. It’s my first time going through the system, but I quickly learn the way it works. I’m amazed I didn’t think of this before. My answers were here the entire time; I just happened to be looking in the wrong place.

  It’s a six-step process to enter the program, but it’s rather simple and extremely quick. Everything happens in a matter of hours, and then the person you used to be magically disappears. Poof!

  Step one: Enter them into the system.

  Step two: Wait for an email from an anonymous person who will send me their new identities.

  Step three: Forward that information to an anonymous person who will reply with a new location, randomly selected from a list of places that the Foundation supports.

  Step four: Have Amber initial a contract stating that she will never talk about the program or her old identity to anyone outside of the Foundation.

  Step five: Arrange for Amber and her daughter to leave the city.

  Step six: File the paperwork, alphabetically by NEW last name.

  As soon as I finish taking care of Amber and Eva, I arrange for them to be taken to my father’s house to rest for the evening. After explaining the situation to him, he’s more than happy to help for the night. I promise to come over after I finish up and help them get settled. Amber is extremely appreciative of everything, and as we hug, she cries tears of joy. I cry along with her, but for an entirely different reason.

  Her paperwork is sitting on my desk, staring at me when I walk back into my office. I pick it up, hug it to my chest, and say a silent prayer thanking Grandma for working her magic. Unlocking the records room feels wrong. To anyone walking by, it looks as if I’m following through with the final step of the process. I know better than that. I may be filing Amber’s paperwork, but I’m also looking for answers. Answers that I know I’ll find somewhere in one of the seven filing cabinets in front of me. The question becomes … which last name would their file be under?

  Assuming Lucy and Grant utilized the Foundation to disappear again, would they have a new file or would they use their “real” last name again? I start by looking under F for Fisher. I’m disappointed when I don’t immediately find a new file for them. The cabinets are jam-packed with records, and after almost forty years of helping people, I’m not surprised.

  It’s going to take me all summer, but I will find the file I’m looking for. For now, I’m going to put Amber’s file away and head to my father’s to make sure they are settling in. Before turning the light off, I take one final look at the cabinets. I pray that I find the file quickly. I only have eight weeks before I leave for college. After that, it’ll take a plane ride to come back and look through the files.

  Knowing that Grant and his mother wouldn’t stay in the immediate area, not by choice but by design, I applied to schools all over the country. I declined my acceptance to anything within driving distance. If I could make it home in less than six hours by car, it wasn’t a good option in my opinion.

  I also only selected schools that have amazing business programs. Grant knew the conditions of my grandma’s will. If he’s looking to find me like I’m looking for him, he’s taking any clues he can to try and piece the puzzle together. After debating with my father about my decision for weeks, I finally settled on the University of Colorado in Denver. It’s far enough away to be plausible and their business school is one of the best in the country.

  Once Amber and Eva are settled for the night, I head back to my place to make a game plan for the rest of summer. I figure if Grandma helped a minimum of one hundred people a year for the last thirty years, I have three thousand files to go through. That means, working five days a week for the next eight weeks, I would need to go through a minimum of seventy-five files a day to make sure that I get through most of them. That’s a lot of files.

  My instincts tell me to go for it, to at least try. Start with the letter A and get moving. My gut tells me that something about that plan is wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something is off. Maybe I should consult my father on this? With all his military training, he might be able to help guide me in the right direction before I get started.

  ***

  I meet with my father before work the next morning. Amber and Eva are leaving as I arrive. She hugs me one last time, thanking me for everything. I promise myself I won’t cry, but as soon as they’re out of sight, one tear escapes. This job is both rewarding and heartbreaking at the same time.

  “Dad,” I holler, walking through the front door.

  “Madison,” he replies, sounding surprised to see me as he walks out of the living room. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have a favor to ask you. Do you have a few minutes to talk?” He motions for me to follow him back into the living room and I take a seat on the couch across from him. “So, I know how I can find Grant, but I need your help.”

  After eying me suspiciously for a few minutes, he finally speaks. “How?”

  I tell him about the filing cabinets and my plan. He listens intently as I rattle on about the process and the system. Once I’m finished, I ask him what I came here to ask.

  “Where do I start? If this was a military assignment and you were looking to find someone who didn’t want to be found, where would you start?”

  “That’s a tough question, Madison. The problem is, it’s not a military thing. It’s your grandma’s thing. She and I never saw eye to eye, and she never would have listened to my suggestions when it came to something like that. She probably would have done the opposite, in fact. Maybe that’s where you should start?”

  His response makes sense, but it doesn’t answer my question. “So, where would the military start? I’ll do the exact opposite.”

  “We’d start at A and try our best to move to Z as quickly as possible. What information is stored in the files again?”

  “It’s filed by the last initials of the new last names. The full last name isn’t even on file. The only information in the file would be original first names, relocation city, and their signed contract which only requires initials.”

  “I say go against the grain, start at Z and work your way backward. It doesn’t feel like it’s the right way of doing things, which means it probably is since it’s your grandma’s system.” He pauses for a moment. I know he’s not done talking judging by the way he’s looking at me. “What are you going to do once you have what you need?”

  “Find him.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  I never saw Grant’s father after that day. He didn’t follow me home from school and I haven’t seen him lurking around since then. I’m still waiting to catch him watching me out of the corner of my eye. If I were him, I would be. He has to think that I know something. After all, he showed up at my house, looking for Grant. Either way, I’m glad he’s gone. Grant’s somewhere else, safe, because he showed up here.

  “I’ve been constantly awa
re of my surroundings like we talked about. I haven’t seen his father or anyone else watching me. I think it’s safe.” I’m surprised by the amount of confidence I hear in my voice when I speak.

  “Please be sure before you go to him. You can’t be too careful. When you do go, make sure you let me help you get there. Just because you don’t see him, doesn’t mean he isn’t watching you. He could be tracking your phone records or credit cards. You said he was a cop, right?”

  “Yeah.” I never thought of that. At first I was pissed off that Grant didn’t at least call me and let me know he was safe.

  Now, it all makes more sense.

  “Assuming you find him, I’m going to get you a new credit card to use when you leave. I’ll put it in my name in case he is tracking you. You can’t be too careful, Madison. I’m sure the last thing you want is to lead him right to Grant.”

  I thank my father and rush to work, my spirit renewed and ready to get started. I have a plan to find Grant, and that’s more than I had last week. I may not know where he is right now, but I will find him before I leave for college. All the answers are two doors down.

  I have a long list of things that need to be done each day. As soon as those are completed, I set myself up in the records room and go through file after file. I stay late most nights, skipping lunch and eating a late dinner before crawling into bed mentally exhausted.

  After six weeks of searching for anyone that might be him, I finally come across a lead. There’s a slim chance that it’s him, but I have to check it out. After talking to my father, he decides to accompany me on my trip. We fly out of Raleigh on Friday night, straight to Madison, Wisconsin. The little town is only an hour north of the city, so we stay the night in Madison and plan to drive up in the morning.

  “What’s your plan when we get there?” my father asks as he merges onto the highway.

  “I have a picture of me and Grant. I plan on asking around town, showing people the picture. If anyone recognizes him, then I know we’re in the right spot.”

  “I thought you said that the name in the file was Joshua.”

  “It was. His name was Joshua when I first met him,” I explain.

  “What if it’s not him?”

  I know there’s a chance that I’m wrong, but it’s the first real lead I’ve had all summer. If I didn’t at least check, I would regret it for the rest of my life. It probably isn’t him, but I need to know for sure.

  “Then I move on and keep looking.” Nodding his head, I can see the concern on my father’s face as he stares at the road ahead. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he replies quickly, trying to brush me off.

  “I can see it on your face. Say whatever it is you’re thinking. Please.”

  “I’m just worried about you. You’ve dedicated so much time looking for him and I don’t want you to be disappointed. If it’s not him, I know it’s going to hurt, and I don’t want to see you hurting.”

  I let his words sink in. Our relationship has grown so much in the last nine months. Times like this make me pray that it stays this way. For years, it felt like my father didn’t care about me. I was treated like a responsibility and felt like I was a burden. Not anymore.

  “Thank you for coming with me,” I say, genuinely meaning it.

  “I’m here, Madison. Whatever you need, I’m here.”

  I pull the picture of Grant from my purse, tracing the outline of his face with the tip of my finger. I miss him. It took me a while, but I now know how he felt for five years, waiting to see me again. Waiting on me to come back. The painful part is that when I did, I had no clue who he was. He needed me to fall in love with him all over again. Lucky for the both of us, I did. I fell head over heels in love with the man he had become as I began to remember the boy he used to be.

  Thinking about Grant and the missing years brings back memories of one of our last conversations. He told me that he would tell me more about that summer and our time together. The one thing he said that he wouldn’t tell me was about the accident. He told me to ask my father. I tried to bring myself to do it after we first reconnected, but I was afraid to ruin the relationship we were just beginning to build. I think it’s time now.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “Did I ever tell you that I’ve been remembering things from before the accident?” I don’t need to tell him which accident. His only response it nonverbal. He grips the steering wheel a little tighter and I see his back stiffen. “Grant filled in some of the holes for me. There’s still a small window of time that I don’t remember, though. I have flashbacks of the beach with Grandma, but then there’s the accident. I don’t remember any of it. Not where it happened, when or how. I asked Grant, but he wouldn’t tell me. He told me that I needed to ask you ...”

  I let my voice trail off and wait patiently for my father to reply. Nothing. I wait a few more minutes before he finally clears his throat. Closing my eyes, I fear that what he’s about to tell me might be what ends up finally causing me to break.

  “It was raining so you left the beach early. Your grandma slipped on the pavement when you stopped for gas and twisted her ankle. She called me to tell me that she slipped and you were going to stay at the beach after all. I told her to get back in the car and make sure you got home on time so we didn’t miss our plane.

  “She said that the car started to skid and she lost control. When she tried to brake, her ankle rolled and slipped off the pedal. She ran a stop sign and the driver of the truck hit the car going close to fifty miles an hour. The impact pushed the car into a telephone pole, crushing you both in the car. Grandma broke her leg and you hit your head on the window from the impact.”

  He stops, abruptly ending our conversation, and turns on the radio. I let it slide, seeing the emotional toll the story has taken on him. Nothing seems familiar to me. I thought hearing what happened would bring back memories of the accident, but nothing was triggered.

  Something’s missing. There has to be something he’s not telling me. I know I was injured and in the hospital for a few weeks afterward. I know that Grandma’s leg was never the same. It sounds like it was a mistake, a genuine accident. Grandma didn’t intend to run the stop sign. The other driver didn’t intend to hit us. My father never would have told her to drive if he had known that it would happen. I need to know what I’m missing.

  “Can I ask one more question?” I mumble, turning the volume of the radio down so he can hear me.

  “I can’t tell you more, Madison. It’s too hard.”

  “Just one more question. Then, I’ll never ask about it again.” My father lets out a breath and nods his head. “It sounds like it was an accident. Why hasn’t anyone told me about it before?”

  “Madison. I can’t.”

  “I need to know. I deserve to know and you’re the only person who can tell me. Grandma’s gone. Grant’s gone. You’re the only one who can tell me, so please. Please, Dad.” I beg him to tell me what no one else has, will or can.

  His voice is barely above a whisper but I hear the two words he utters clear as day. “You died.”

  Chapter 19

  I died.

  How is that possible? I’m here. I’m alive and breathing right now.

  “What?”

  “You were legally dead. I don’t remember for how long. The ambulance got there quick and revived you, but you were gone. When you didn’t wake up …”

  “Oh God,” I whisper. I can’t imagine what he went through. He had just lost my mother then he lost me too.

  “I’m so sorry, Madison. Someone should have told you long before today, but I never had the heart. I did my best to protect you after that, but the memories of that day, that one five second conversation with the doctor, still haunts me when I sleep. I lost your mother and then I lost you. If you hadn’t woken up, I don’t know how I would have gone on. You two were my life.” My father’s voice breaks and I take notice. I’ve never heard him sound any
thing less than strong and steady, sure of each word he speaks. Right now, he sounds weak.

  “I did wake up, Dad. I’m here,” I say, trying to reassure him he hasn’t lost me. I understand he knows I’m physically alive, but I hope he also understands I’m also emotionally fine.

  “I know, and I thank God for that every day. I’m so sorry, Madison. I did the best I could raising you on my own, but I think I messed up. I kept you too close. I sheltered you too much. I didn’t want to lose you, so I was afraid to let you spread your wings at all. You’re all I have.”

  I put my hand over his as the first tear falls. I look straight ahead, my vision beginning to blur from holding back. Wiping away the moisture, I find my voice and tell my father that I forgive him. No other words are spoken as we pull into town and park. We have a huge task ahead of us and I need to change my focus. I take one last look at Grant’s handsome face before putting the picture back in my purse and getting out of the car.

  Game face on.

  We walk from one end of town to the other, stopping at every shop and diner that’s open. Everyone is helpful, but no one recognizes Grant. I try to keep my spirits up as we turn tail and head back to Madison. Our plane leaves in the morning. I was hoping I wouldn’t be on it. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go back and spend the rest of the summer sorting through files. I wanted this to be him, but I think, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t be, the chances were slim. I tried to convince myself I was wasting time even going on the trip to avoid disappointment.

  ***

  Even though we didn’t find him, it was an informative trip to say the least. I let the facts of the accident sink in as we travel back home. It’s all I can think about the rest of the weekend. I’m thankful for Monday morning when I head back into the office and have a pile of work to catch up on. I stop thinking about the fact I was dead and begin focusing on finding Grant again.