CHAPTER 22

“A re you sure?” she asked. “I can postpone.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” her mom told her. “I won’t leave this bed, I promise. You’ve got everything I need right here on my table. And don’t think I didn’t notice all those corner covers you’ve now put all over the house.”

“I don’t want you to fall again.”

“The biggest risk I’ll take is rolling over,” her mom replied. “Go on your date, Hollis. I want you to have a good time tonight and not think about me, okay?”

“Well, that’s not possible,” she said. “I will be thinking about you.”

“Not while you’re on a date with a pretty girl, you won’t,” her mom replied sternly. “And if you and Raleigh have such a nice time that you want to stay over at her place, I’ll be fine here until the morning. I’ve got water and some snacks. I’ve also taken my pills for the night already, and I have the morning ones on the table. I’ve got the remote to the TV, too. I’m all set.”

“I’m not staying the night, Mom. I barely got her to agree to give this a chance. I won’t risk going too fast for her.”

“For her , huh?” her mom joked.

“That’s not what I meant,” Hollis smiled and took her mom’s hand. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Yes! You’re hovering again.” Olivia coughed lightly. “My cell phone is right there on the charger, so I can get to you or help if I need to. And you’ve already got it plugged in, so I’m not at any risk of it dying in the night.”

Hollis swallowed at the use of those choice words to refer to the phone because that had been her exact worry about going out with Raleigh. Her mother could die in the night, and Hollis would have been at dinner and a movie.

“I’m just going to postpone,” she said, reaching for her phone in her pocket.

“No, you’re not. You’re going to go out with Raleigh and enjoy the night. Like you said, you barely got her to go out with you to begin with. Don’t give her a reason to rethink this, Hollis.”

Hollis nodded reluctantly. Then, she kissed her mom on the forehead to check her temperature more than to say goodbye with it. Feeling as satisfied as she could that her mom would be okay for the night, Hollis grabbed her purse and keys and headed to the car.

She’d chosen to dress casually for the date. It was a bit of a risk, though. They hadn’t talked about what they were doing. Hollis had made a reservation at a restaurant in town, which wasn’t fancy but wasn’t fast food, either. She just thought if she dressed to the nines and booked a five-star place, they’d both feel stuffy and uncomfortable. It wasn’t their style. They were the diner-coffee kind of women, not the entrées-they-couldn’t-even-pronounce kind of women.

When she got to Raleigh’s place, she thought about the flower her mom had told her to pick from the back garden. She hadn’t tended to it at all that season and hadn’t realized that, with the lack of attention and the weather, it wasn’t in good shape. There were no flowers. Hollis had meant to stop somewhere and pick up flowers for Raleigh, but in her quest to make sure Olivia was taken care of and to be on time, she’d forgotten to do so. Now, she’d arrived to her first date with someone she really liked, and she was empty-handed.

Having gotten out of the car, Hollis walked slowly toward the door, tossing her keys back and forth in her hands nervously. She’d left her purse in the car, but maybe she shouldn’t have done that. Raleigh might invite her inside for a few minutes before they’d leave for dinner. When she looked back, though, thinking about grabbing it, she heard the door open. Hollis turned to see Raleigh standing in the open doorway, wearing a pair of dark jeans and a nice off-the-shoulder gray sweater. She looked like the perfect definition of date casual. Hollis smiled because she hadn’t been wrong to go with jeans herself.

“Just give me one second,” Raleigh spoke. “I need to grab a coat.”

“Okay,” Hollis replied, walking toward the house now. “I would’ve rung the bell, you know?”

“I know,” Raleigh said from behind the open door, where Hollis knew the hall closet and Raleigh’s coat were. “I was just on my way to grab my jacket when I saw you through the window,” she added, closing the closet door and then reemerging in the open doorway, slipping into her coat. “How do you not wear a coat?”

Hollis smiled and said, “It’s not cold.”

“Yes, it is,” Raleigh replied, laughing.

“Not to me,” Hollis argued. “Are you ready, or–”

“I’m ready,” Raleigh told her, closing the front door and locking it before she turned around and stopped. “So, hello.”

“Hello,” Hollis said, giving Raleigh a shy smile. “You look great.”

“You too,” Raleigh replied.

“It’s nice to be able to say that.”

“That you look great?”

“That you do,” Hollis said. “I’ve thought it a lot, but I’ve never been able to say it. At least, not in this context.”

“What’s the context?” Raleigh asked, but Hollis could see the mischief in her eyes.

“A date, not two friends going for coffee.”

Raleigh nodded and said, “It is nice, yes.”

They walked to Hollis’s car, and Hollis wanted to open the door for her date but thought that might be too much. She’d been right. Raleigh had rushed to the car, opened the door herself, and climbed in. When Hollis joined her, she figured out why.

“I’ll crank the heat up,” she said, shaking her head as Raleigh cupped her hands around her mouth and blew, trying to warm them.

They arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes later, but it was on the main drag in town, so finding a parking spot hadn’t been easy. When Hollis finally managed to find one a block away, that meant they’d have to walk that far, with Raleigh likely freezing, so Hollis decided to go back around the block and in front of the restaurant and double-parked.

“Why don’t you go inside and tell them we have a reservation? I’ll park and join you.”

“I can walk with you,” Raleigh replied.

“I don’t want you to freeze before we get inside. I’ll find a spot and be right there.”

Raleigh smiled at her and got out of the car, and Hollis drove a little too fast to see if that spot was still available. Sadly, it wasn’t, but she found another one about half a block away and parallel parked; one of her least favorite things to do, but something she’d gotten very good at over the years when she’d been in and out of the city. She then walked quickly and made it to the restaurant, where she found Raleigh waiting for her in the lobby.

“They just needed a minute to get the table ready,” Raleigh told her. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?”

“I have this weird thing that I’m usually cold, but when I get nervous, I get extra cold. I don’t know what causes it.”

“You’re nervous?” Hollis asked.

“For my first date in half a decade? Yeah, I’m nervous. Are you not?”

“No, I am,” Hollis said, smiling.

“Right this way,” the hostess told them to follow her as she carried two menus and walked them through the rows of tables.

“Raleigh, hey,” a man wearing a tie and a button-down light-blue shirt with his sleeves rolled up said as he approached them once they’d arrived at their table. “I thought I saw you out front. ”

“Hey,” Raleigh replied.

“I haven’t seen you in here in forever.”

“It’s been a while, yeah,” Raleigh said, sitting down.

“I’ll send an appetizer your way. What do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m here with someone, so give us a minute to look over the menu.”

“It hasn’t changed much,” he noted.

“I know. But my date hasn’t been here before,” she said, nodding in Hollis’s direction.

“Sorry,” the man said, looking at Hollis. “Taking the hint. It’s good to see you.”

He walked away, leaving Hollis wondering what that had been about. When they sat down, the hostess handed them their menus, wished them a good meal, and left.

“So…” Hollis said.

“I used to work here,” Raleigh explained. “In college, for a couple of years. That’s the owner. I waited tables at first and then moved behind the bar where the tips were better.”

“I’ve managed to take you to a place where you used to work? You’ve probably had everything on this menu a hundred times.”

“I haven’t been here in years.” Raleigh smiled as she opened the menu. “I think the last time was one of those last-chance dates with Millie.”

“Last-chance dates?”

“Oh, you know, the ones where you already know it’s pretty much over, but you put in the effort one more time. We did that a lot. We had last-chance dates all over town.”

“You really wanted it to work,” Hollis said softly, opening her own menu.

“We were together for years – you don’t just give up when you once thought that this person was the person,” Raleigh replied. “Now I know that she wasn’t, but back then, I couldn’t see how our relationship could end. It seemed particularly awful because we still loved each other. Millie was miserable about something neither of us could control or help, and that made me miserable, which meant I wasn’t always nice to her. It was this vicious circle of sadness turning to anger, turning to apologies, and back to sadness and anger.”

“I’m sorry,” Hollis offered in response.

“Don’t be. She’s where she should be.”

“And you?”

“I’m trying to move on,” Raleigh said.

They ordered an appetizer and drinks first before the waiter came back and took their entrée order. Hollis had gone with sparkling water since she’d driven, but Raleigh had ordered wine that she’d offered Hollis a sip of.

“Dylan texted that she was able to eliminate one of the women in the pictures.”

“Yeah?” Hollis asked, looking down at her salad.

“Yeah. She owns a daycare, I guess, and takes kids to the park regularly. I’d never noticed her, but she checked out. Dylan told me she talked to her on the phone, and the woman assured her that no one else, outside of the people who worked at the daycare, came with her to the park when she went. They all have fingerprints on file with the state and have clean background checks.”

“Kenna invited me out for drinks next week with her and Ripley,” Hollis said, changing the subject.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think she’s turning into a real friend, which I don’t have many of. And I haven’t spent much time with Ripley, but I like her.”

“That’s good.”

“Kenna told me to invite you, too,” she added. “I don’t know if I’m going yet, though. It’s TBD because of my mom.”

“How is she?” Raleigh took a bite of her own salad.

“Making me nervous,” Hollis admitted. “She’s more tired than ever and forgets stuff as well. She told me to pick flowers for you in the back garden.”

“This time of year?”

“Yeah… And that garden hasn’t had any work done on it in years, either; probably since she got really sick.”

“Can I do anything to help?” Raleigh asked .

“Not unless you’re a miracle worker.”

“If I were that , Eden would be home. So would all the other missing people on the planet.”

“Right,” Hollis said with a nod. “How’s work?”

“I haven’t lost another client yet, but I’m picking up projects from other VAs to make up for losing Mr.Roman. It sucks because they get a cut for giving me work in the first place, so I’m making less for the same effort, but it helps when I need the extra cash. It’s now time to replaster fliers, and I’m also thinking about doing a billboard off the highway, which connects everything around here. It’s not cheap, but I can probably afford to do it for a month. Dylan thought it might be a good idea since it’s been over a year, and people have moved on.”

“Well, if Dylan thinks it’s a good idea,” Hollis said, looking around the restaurant.

“John, from group, said that when he did a billboard, they got nine new good leads. Nothing came of them, but there were two kids that people thought might be JJ. They weren’t, but it was something. I don’t know if it’s better to think that I might have found her, only to be told that it’s not her, or to not get my hopes up at all.”

“Hey, Raleigh?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Something else?”

“We usually talk about this stuff, and… I don’t know. I thought maybe tonight, since it’s our first date, we could talk about something else. Work, friends, even Millie or my exes.”

“Oh,” Raleigh said, placing her fork on her salad plate. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry. I’ve just attempted to change the subject a few times, and then I thought I should just say it.”

“That you don’t want to talk about Eden?”

“Not–” She met Raleigh’s eyes. “Not just that. I don’t want us to talk about what happened to me, my mom, or John from the group, either. I just thought we could get to know other things about each other tonight.”

“Other things?” Raleigh asked.

“Yeah. Like, more about each other; normal first date stuff.”

“Hollis, this isn’t a normal first date.”

“It’s not?” she asked.

“No, it’s not. We met in a support group. We became friends because you were kidnapped, and someone took my daughter.”

“That’s why we became friends?”

“Well, we didn’t meet at a dinner party.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hollis remarked. “I know how we met, Raleigh. But you’re making it sound like the only reason we became friends was because we have that in common, and I don’t think that makes us friends. I think that’s what we are to the rest of the group we meet with each week, but we don’t hang out with them. I don’t hold them through the night when they’re sleeping.”

“You held…”

“Yeah, you cried in your sleep. I held you until you stopped,” Hollis explained. “And is that how you see me? Someone you only spend time with because my dad decided to get revenge on my mom when I was a kid?”

“What? No. I’m not saying this right. Can we start over?”

“Raleigh, this is a date. So, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to talk about the case all night. I don’t really want to talk about Dylan, or fliers, or John. I just want–”

“That’s my life right now, Hollis. You knew that.”

“I know.”

“So, why are you so surprised that that’s all I have to talk about?” Raleigh asked.

“I’m not surprised,” Hollis said. “But it’s also not all you have to talk about. I didn’t know you worked at a restaurant in college, for example. And you grew up here, but I don’t know much about your life before Eden other than you and Millie were together for a while, and then you weren’t. ”

“We’re supposed to talk about my childhood, then?”

“Why not?” Hollis asked.

“Because none of that matters,” Raleigh retorted. “When your daughter is taken from you, nothing else matters, Hollis. Don’t you get that?”

“Why did you agree to this date, Raleigh? You said you wanted to try. Did you think we’d only talk about Eden on every date? What kind of relationship is that?”

“Not a very good one,” Raleigh replied. “This was a mistake, Hollis. I should have trusted my first–”

“Are you kidding me?” Hollis shook her head back and forth as she looked away from her date. “You can’t do this, Raleigh.”

“I’m not ready.”

“ You called me. You said no. You said you still wanted to be friends. I said okay. I prepared myself to just be your friend. Then, you tell me that you want to try. We’re here, Raleigh. All I’m asking is one night without–”

“It’s not one night, though, Hollis. It would be every night. It would be all the time. I can’t not think about her or not talk about her.”

“I’m not asking you to do that. Hell, I’ll help you hang the fliers.”

“Can we just…”

“I’ll take you home,” Hollis stated.

“No, Hollis. Just–”

“Just what?” She waved her arm in the air, which made her look like an impatient asshole, but the waiter saw her, gave her a confused expression at first when Hollis mimed signing the check, and then nodded at her.

“Hollis, I… I thought I could.”

“You can. But let’s just go.”

“I wasn’t prepared for your comment,” Raleigh told her.

“What comment?”

“About not talking about Eden.”

The waiter dropped the check and went to leave .

“Here,” Hollis spoke quickly as she slipped her credit card into the padfolio and handed it back to him before he could go.

“Was everything okay? Do you want your entrées to go?”

“No, thank you,” Hollis replied. “Everything was fine. Something came up, though.”

He nodded, took the card, and walked off.

“Hollis, come on…”

“Raleigh, what? I made one request. My whole life right now is about what happened to me, my mom, and my father being in jail for it. I just wanted one night where it wasn’t about all the dark stuff.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It scares me, not to talk or think about her.”

“I’m not telling you not to think about her,” Hollis remarked.

The padfolio was dropped on the table, so she signed the receipt, left a generous tip, and took her card.

“Can we just stay and talk?” Raleigh requested.

“I don’t think I’m in the mood anymore,” she replied.

“So, that’s just it?”

“For tonight, yeah. Can you wait here? I’ll pull the car around.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“I think I’d like to walk alone.”

Raleigh stood abruptly and said, “Why don’t you drive alone, too, Hollis? I’ll get myself a car to take me home.”

“Raleigh, don’t–”

“No, I think you’re right. I’d like to be alone, too.”

Hollis watched as Raleigh grabbed her purse, turned, and left her there in the restaurant.