CHAPTER 23

‘N o new leads.’ That was an expression Raleigh never thought she’d hear on repeat in her life. She wasn’t a sales rep. She didn’t work in marketing. She hadn’t really needed leads to get VA clients – her business had operated mainly on recommendations and referrals, along with good, old-fashioned word of mouth – but as she hung up the phone for her weekly call to the local police, she was given that phrase yet again.

“I’m sorry, Miss Leonard, there are no new leads. As we’ve told you before, we’ll notify you as soon as we have something,” the detective had said.

“Nothing from the FBI, either?”

“No, nothing from them, either, Ma’am.”

“Okay. Thank you,” she’d said and hung up, knowing she’d just call them back the following week, as she always did and always would until she found her child.

Still, she was getting so tired of not having anything new come in. She scrolled through her phone, figuring she was on a roll, and called Dylan, who didn’t answer.

“Hey, Dylan. It’s Raleigh,” she said after the call went to voicemail. “I was just hoping you’d been able to track down those other two women and maybe had an update for me. Feel free to call me back or text me. Whenever is fine. It doesn’t matter how late. My phone isn’t ever on do-not-disturb.” She paused, hearing how desperate she sounded. “Anyway, sorry to bother you.”

She hung up and stared at her computer screen, where she had work waiting. One of her clients had requested a call with her for that afternoon, and Raleigh had been dreading it because this client had been the one who’d recommended Mr.Roman to her, so there was a chance she’d tell Raleigh that she no longer wanted to work with her, either. Still, the appointment had been made, so Raleigh had to dial the number.

“Would you be available for another two to four hours this week, if I needed you?” her client asked right off the bat.

“Oh, sure,” Raleigh replied, surprised.

“Can you wrap up the two projects I have you working on this week instead of next week, then?”

“No problem. Did the deadline get moved up?”

“No, Raleigh. I’m moving into an office in a month.”

“Okay,” Raleigh replied, confused.

“I was going to wait to sign a lease on a place until the end of the year, but a friend of mine found an office space in their building that’s within my price range, and that would make us office neighbors. We’re going to knock down the wall and share the place.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Raleigh said, still not understanding what this had to do with her needing to put in more time this week.

“Raleigh, she has an admin already that I can share for now while I decide if I want to hire another one or if one of the new employees I’m looking to hire can fill in the gaps.”

That was the other shoe dropping.

“I see. So, you need me to finish the two projects this week and send you my final invoice,” Raleigh replied.

“Yes,” the woman on the phone said and sighed. “I’m sorry, Raleigh. You always knew this was temporary, though. I told you I was expanding.”

“No, you’re right. You did.”

“And I talked to Mitch,” the woman continued. “He mentioned that he’d let you go, too. I’m sorry about that.”

Mitch was Mitch Roman.

“No worries. It happens a lot. I want my clients to be successful, so when they expand in office, that’s a good sign. It just sometimes means they don’t need a VA anymore.”

“Exactly. And I’ll still be a referral for you. Mitch said he had some issues, but I never have. You’ve been good for me. So, thank you. ”

“Thank you ,” Raleigh replied. “I’ll get everything done by Friday end of day and send the invoice over.”

“Great. And good luck, Raleigh.”

“Thanks,” she replied.

This had been her best client for the past year and a half. She was polite and never demanding. She only called during regular business hours and didn’t seem to get stressed. Raleigh also could always count on her for extra work, and the woman paid all of Raleigh’s invoices on time, which had been something that not all of her clients had been able to do. It meant that recently, paying bills by their due dates hadn’t always been a guarantee since she counted on her clients to pay on time, but she’d been getting by. Now, though, things would really get tight, so she pulled up her finance spreadsheet, being a bit old-school like that. Well, old-school with a computer: Raleigh didn’t like any desktop or online software programs to record her bank info, preferring to create and maintain a spreadsheet. She felt closer to the numbers this way anyway, enabling her to keep better track of where her money was going.

A while ago now, right after she’d joined the support group, she’d hired a private investigator, and that had been yet another thing that had cut into her savings. He’d come highly recommended by someone she’d met there, but that person hadn’t shown up to group in a while. Raleigh could guess why. After the PI had taken her money and had hardly done any actual investigative work, Raleigh had cursed the person out before the meeting had begun. They hadn’t been to the group since. She’d known that hadn’t been fair, but the PI charged hundreds of dollars an hour and hadn’t done anything. His notes had been sloppy, and he’d presented her with no leads and only a big bill that she’d paid because she hadn’t known any better.

The current state of the spreadsheet didn’t yet have any red on it, but it also barely had any black, so she’d need to make up this client, and not with extra work from other VAs. She went to her own website and decided to put out an email blast to a few networks. She did this whenever she needed a new client, but this time, she needed more than one. Raleigh could really use three to four new clients to get her savings moving in the right direction again. That college fund she’d started after Eden had been born was gone now, and she wanted it back, even if Eden never got to use it.

Blasting the networks with the exciting news of her availability to take on more clients, Raleigh decided to take a break and go to the kitchen to make herself another cup of coffee. Having done that, she walked back to her office but stopped at Eden’s door. Pushing it open, she looked at her little girl’s bedroom and then stepped inside, staring at the safe space she’d worked so hard to create for her kid. The walls were a pastel green because Raleigh hadn’t wanted a stereotypical pink for a girl. Green, on the other hand, meant rebirth and renewal, so she’d gone with that. It had also worked out that Eden had loved the color green.

“Dinosaurs are green, Mommy,” she’d said once.

“You’re right,” Raleigh had replied, watching Eden color outside the lines.

The bed was a toddler bed, but before, she’d had a crib in there against the side wall with a mobile of the solar system hanging above Eden’s bed, playing soft music to her each night as she’d stared at the planets and the moon. Raleigh sat on the toddler bed now, missing the mobile again. The first time she’d missed it had been when she’d changed the crib out for the bed because Eden had started to jump high enough to touch the planets. Taking it and the crib down all at once had been a hard parenting day for her. It meant her baby was growing up. Raleigh wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked at the floor where Eden had colored that morning.

“This is it,” she said to herself. “This is my life now.”

She knew that to be true; this would be it. She’d work to make ends meet while she spent everything she could to find her daughter. She’d call the cops once a week, check on Dylan’s progress for as long as Dylan was willing to put up with her, and she’d come into Eden’s bedroom and cry. Every so often, some other crime show like Kenna’s would come calling on an anniversary. Maybe it would be a local newspaper next time. Raleigh would do the story because there was always a chance someone would see something.

When she went back to her office, she pulled up the dedicated Facebook page she had for Eden. She checked the posts and comments of people praying for her, finding nothing new in there otherwise. Then, she opened Eden’s website. Nothing new there, either. How had Molly done this for a decade now? Raleigh was miserable, and the only thing that had made her not miserable in over a year had been Hollis.

“You fucked that up, didn’t you?” she said to herself.

God, Raleigh had had a chance to really try to have something she’d never thought she’d get again, and she’d messed it up. She hadn’t been able to sleep well since that night. Well, she didn’t sleep well at all these days, but she’d been tossing and turning constantly for several nights now, wishing she’d reacted differently to a perfectly reasonable request to talk about anything other than what had happened to Eden and Hollis on their first and now, probably, last date. Hollis had been searching for a bright spot for one night, but Raleigh had provided her with only darkness.

Truthfully, she didn’t want any more darkness, either. She wanted everything to be bright again. Eden was brightness and smiles and baby giggles. Raleigh missed those giggles.

Hollis, in her own way, was brightness, too. She represented possibilities and second chances, along with warmth and kindness. She was safety and comfort, but also excitement and calmness at the same time. Hollis was adorable when she couldn’t cook and beautiful when she dressed up for a date by only wearing jeans and a sweater, with no makeup.

Raleigh smiled, just thinking about her. But how could she have this? How could she try to have a relationship with someone when her whole life should revolve around finding Eden? She pulled up one of the documents she needed to finish for a client and rolled her eyes. Her heart just wasn’t in this. Her mind was focused on something else, and for the first time in forever, it wasn’t her daughter.

There should’ve been guilt there. Once the realization hit that she’d been thinking about Hollis, wishing she could take back that first date and do it all over again, there should have been instant guilt because she’d been thinking about that and not her daughter, but the guilt didn’t come. It was just that warmth again at the thought of Hollis cranking the heat in the car because Raleigh was freezing, even though Hollis herself was clearly burning up after five minutes. It was warmth because Hollis had let Raleigh get out of the car at the entrance of the restaurant while she’d walked all the way from where she’d parked.

“Can we talk?” she asked when Hollis said hello into the phone.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m ready to talk about being friends after our failed attempt at a date, Raleigh. I’m sorry. I feel like I have whiplash from it, and I need some time,” Hollis told her.

“I’m sorry,” Raleigh said.

“It’s fine. I just should have said no when you told me you wanted to go out. You were pretty clear about not being able to before. I shouldn’t have let myself get excited about the possibility.”

“It’s not fine, Hollis,” Raleigh replied.

“Can you hold on one sec? I need to check on my mom,” Hollis said.

“Okay,” Raleigh replied.

Then, she waited.

“Raleigh, I can’t talk right now. She just threw up on her nightgown. I need to get her cleaned up.”

“Do you want me to come over? I can help.”

“No, it’s okay,” Hollis replied. “I actually have a night nurse coming over.”

“A nurse? ”

“Well, it’s her first night. Mom might not like her. She didn’t like the last three I tried.”

“I didn’t know you were doing that.”

“I didn’t try until this week. We haven’t talked since…”

“Right,” Raleigh said.

“It was my mom’s idea. She has one during the day now for when I’m at work, but she said she wanted one at night, too, because she’s waking up at midnight or four in the morning at times, and she doesn’t want to have to wake me up anymore. I told her it was fine, but she’s stubborn, and her insurance will cover it a few nights a week.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yeah, but I’ve got to go now. The nurse won’t be here for another half hour, so I need to take care of this.”

“Hollis?”

“Yeah?”

“After your mom goes to bed and the nurse is there, can you maybe come over so we can talk in person?”

“I don’t know.”

“I made a mistake,” Raleigh told her. “I don’t want this to be my life, Hollis.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that you are the one bright spot in my life, and I tried to push you away because I haven’t had a bright spot in a while.”

“Raleigh, we tried. You–”

“Messed up big time. Please. Come over, if you can. I just want to talk to you face-to-face about this.”

“I’ll see what I can do. If my mom doesn’t like the nurse–”

“Yeah, okay. I understand.”

They hung up, and Raleigh looked around her office.

“I don’t want this to be my life,” she said to herself. “I want her .”

She closed her computer, made herself dinner in the microwave, and ate it while she looked through her closet for something to wear if Hollis did show up. Choosing a pair of soft jeans and a T-shirt she hadn’t worn in a while, she went to the living room and straightened it up. Then, she opened a bottle of wine just in case and let it breathe. After that, Raleigh went to her bedroom and made the bed for the first time in a long time before she decided to vacuum and wipe some of the dust away. Finally, she opened the curtains, letting in the moonlight, and stared out into the backyard where she’d intended to put a swing set but had never gotten around to it. Maybe a garden would be good in the spring. Planting flowers and some vegetables would be good for her, she decided.

Then, her doorbell rang, and her eyes widened. Her lips formed a smile. Hollis was here. She’d shown up after all to give Raleigh a chance to explain, and Raleigh was determined not to screw it up this time.