CHAPTER 8

“S o, all in all, I think I’ve lived in at least fourteen cities,” Hollis shared. “Not all of the places we’ve stayed in were in actual cities, though. Sometimes, we were in cabins. We went camping for weeks at a time, too. I’m not sure if we had a place and we were just taking a trip, or if he’d packed all our stuff and we went to a campsite because there was someone getting too close. It’s weird now. And I was so used to packing and leaving that I’d stopped asking questions. We never had much, so it wasn’t like he had furniture in the back of the truck when we went camping. We usually ended up renting places that were furnished. I guess it made it easier when he wanted to run.”

“He basically brainwashed his own daughter,” Raleigh replied and took a sip of her coffee before putting it back down. “That’s insensitive. I’m sorry. I–”

“No, it’s okay,” Hollis interrupted. “You’re not wrong. The more I think about it, that’s exactly what he did. I don’t think I’ve slept a night through since I started figuring out what happened to me.”

“Finding Kenna’s book; you were in the right place at the right time, I guess.”

“I guess so. But it wasn’t just her book,” Hollis said. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ve had this memory of my mom in my head for as long as I can remember. Well, a few of them, technically.” She leaned over on the sofa they were sharing in the café. “I was so young. My mom was younger, too, obviously, and she looked healthy, like she does in the old pictures. She looked happy. Occasionally, I could hear this woman’s voice, but I didn’t know who she was. I mean, I think I knew. I think, deep down, I always knew that was my mom, but my dad told me she died. At first, she was just dead. But I remembered her, so I felt the pain of losing a mother I’d spent my life with. Then, he started to tell me that she’d died a long time ago, like when I was a baby, and I didn’t understand him. I’m sure I questioned him, but I don’t remember that part. It was like the memories of her started to change. Have you ever seen a movie about time travel? They go back in the past and change something, and then, in the future, things kind of fade away.”

“Like Back to the Future ?”

“Yeah. He’s playing the guitar on stage in the past, and because his parents aren’t falling in love, it means he won’t exist, so his hand starts to fade away.”

“It’s one of my favorite movies,” Raleigh told her and smiled. “Well, I liked the second one the best.”

“Me too,” Hollis replied, laughing. “And I normally hate sequels. I loved how they depicted the future, though. I wanted a hoverboard so bad.”

“Me too,” Raleigh shared. “You know, when they started coming out with them, I actually thought about getting one and trying it out. Then, a bunch of them caught on fire, and I was glad I didn’t.”

“I couldn’t have afforded one even if they hadn’t been catching on fire. Those things were expensive, and I like food.”

Raleigh laughed again and said, “So, hoverboards aside, what were you trying to say?”

“Oh. Just that it’s like that with my memories sometimes. I would see her handing me a balloon, and then she’d fade away, and it was just the balloon. Sometimes, I’d see my dad in her place. I never knew what he was doing back then, but with all these sleepless nights recently, I’ve been playing back things that he told me. Now that I have my mom back, I’ve been trying to ask her what’s true and what’s not. I don’t want to bombard her with everything, and I also don’t want our relationship to be all about the past, so I’m learning little by little.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’s in jail,” she replied. “And he’s called a couple of times. I haven’t accepted the charges to take the call. ”

“You don’t want to talk to him?”

“Of course, I do. I want to ask him a million questions. But when I tried right after he got arrested, he just gave me excuses. They were going through a bad divorce. He only got supervised visits. He wanted me full-time, so he took me. He makes it seem like him kidnapping me and taking me to another country was my mom’s fault. He’d been a drunk, I guess, and couldn’t hold down a job.”

“Was he… Did he…”

“No; that’s what’s weird. When my mom told me about his drinking, I didn’t believe her at first. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have alcohol. Maybe a beer. But even then, I don’t know if I’m just remembering something wrong again. He never held on to a job for too long, but I don’t know if that was because he couldn’t keep it or because we needed to go. I’ve been going through all the leads my mom said they got about me over the years. The FBI gave me what they had, too, and it’s like I can plot my life by them. We moved when someone reported seeing someone who looked like me here. We moved again when there were rumors of me there. He must have kept a close eye on the investigation and moved us whenever he worried someone was getting too close.”

Hollis’s phone dinged, so she glanced down at where she’d placed it between them.

“Your food?”

“No, it’s my dad’s lawyer, actually,” she said, picking it up and reading the message. “He has a public defender. The guy’s messaged me a few times asking me to visit or, at least, speak as a character witness if it goes to trial.”

“He’s got a lot of balls, asking you to do that,” Raleigh suggested.

Hollis swallowed and said, “I don’t know. I might do it. I haven’t decided yet. It’s crazy, but as much as I can’t understand what he did, and I hate that he did it, he’s also my father. Prison is supposed to be about preventing people from committing other crimes, right? ”

“While they pay for the ones they already committed.”

“I think he should be in prison – at least, for a little while – but I don’t know that he should be in there forever. He’s not going to kidnap anyone else.”

“Maybe,” Raleigh said.

“You disagree?”

“No, it’s not my place to disagree.”

“But you have an opinion,” Hollis prompted, taking a drink of her coffee.

“I just know that if it were my daughter, I’d want whomever took her to be locked up forever,” Raleigh said, placing her own coffee on the table in front of them. “It’s not the same thing for you, though. This is your father. You’re right: he won’t do it again. I don’t know who took Eden, so I can’t really compare. It’s just how I feel.”

“If it were my daughter, I’d think the same,” Hollis told her. “I’d probably want to kill them myself. No jail.”

Raleigh looked at her, as if surprised by the comment, and said, “I’ve thought about that.”

“Killing them?”

“I’ve never been a violent person. I carry spiders outside when I find them in the kitchen. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But this person… took my child from me. If they were standing in front of me right now, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t do something. And I honestly don’t even think I’d regret it. That’s awful, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Hollis replied. “She’s your baby, and someone took her from you.”

Raleigh nodded and asked, “So, do you ever think about kids?”

“Having them?”

“Yeah. Just trying to change the subject here. I could use a break.”

“Well, I haven’t really thought about that seriously, no. I mean, I’d like to start thinking about it – I’m thirty-five, so I’m behind already – I just never thought I could be a single parent. I don’t know how you do it.” She smiled at Raleigh. “ And I didn’t have any prospects to share that with, so I just worked and figured it would be better not to have a kid. Besides, I hadn’t had the best childhood, so I wasn’t sure I was even capable of being a mom because of it.”

“I always knew I wanted to be a mom. My ex did, too. She’s older than me and was ready to start a family. I was, too. It seemed like perfect timing when we started to try, but Millie couldn’t get pregnant. We kept trying, and things got worse between us. She didn’t want to adopt. She didn’t want me to have our baby; not our first one, at least. It got really bad, and things ended. Then, I tried to get pregnant, thinking maybe she’d stay once she knew there was a baby. It was na?ve and stupid, and it didn’t work.”

“I’m sorry,” Hollis said.

“I was, too. I wanted Eden to have two moms, not just me. Millie was great when Eden went missing, though. It was like I had the old version of my girlfriend back, but she’d already found someone else and gotten married, so she wasn’t mine anymore. She helped as much as she could, but her wife had a child from a previous relationship, and they have a family now, so she couldn’t keep coming over to check on me all the time.”

“Wait… She has a stepchild now, but she didn’t want you to have a baby?”

“I know,” Raleigh said on a sigh. “It didn’t make sense to me, either. She’d been so firm that she had to have a baby herself. She’d wanted the entire experience. I never faulted her for that, and I wanted it for her, too. But when it wasn’t happening, she wouldn’t even entertain any other options. Now, she’s a stepmom, and a good one, too, but I just felt like I never really knew her there for a while. How could she be with me for years, plan and try to have a baby with me, and then marry someone else so quickly and be okay with being a stepparent when she wouldn’t even consider adoption with me? I just had to realize that she was supposed to be with someone else, and the life she has now is the one she always wanted to have. ”

“Still. It’s pretty shitty,” Hollis replied.

“Yeah, I thought so, too.” Raleigh laughed lightly. Then, she asked, “Does it bother you?”

“That she left you and–”

“That I’m gay.”

Hollis stared at her. Raleigh had this shiny brown hair that she’d worn down for the show and had brushed behind her shoulders when they’d sat down on the surprisingly available sofa with their coffees. Her eyes were a beautiful hazel that kind of shimmered. No, they definitely shimmered. Sometimes, it was, unfortunately, with tears, but right now, they were just shimmering. It was nice, the shimmer.

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t date a lot, and I haven’t in a while, but my last ex was a woman.”

Raleigh’s eyebrows lifted.

“Couldn’t tell?” Hollis asked, smiling at her.

“Your last ex?”

“I’m bisexual,” she replied. “I’ve had three adult relationships, if you count college. One was with a guy I met in class. We dated my senior year and a little after graduation. Another was a couple years after that. She and I were together for about two years but never got close to moving in together. I went on a few dates after that, men and women, but nothing came from them, really. Then, I met a woman, fell for her, and we were together for a year and a half. We broke up a couple of years ago. There hasn’t been anyone since.”

“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“I’m not easy to be with,” Hollis replied. “I never knew I’d been kidnapped by my own father, but because of those weird memories and the confusion that came with them – I don’t know – it’s been hard to trust people. My first boyfriend was a nice guy, but once we graduated and he’d gotten a job, he started staying late and traveling for work, and I started wondering if he was cheating on me. He swore he wasn’t, but I wasn’t ready to trust another person like that. My first girlfriend was great. She just wanted me to take those steps couples do. She wanted us to live together. I needed my own space, though. We broke up when she got a job somewhere hours away and I didn’t want to go with her. My last girlfriend struggled with my inability to sleep some nights. I’d have dreams of a past life I had no idea was real. She stopped wanting to sleep over because I kept her up all the time, and then, when I thought I really was ready to live with someone for the first time, she broke up with me. She wanted someone to go to work parties with and someone who could hang out with her friends without being awkward instead of someone who just wanted to go home and get under a blanket with a book. I’ve never been that person, so it ended, and I’ve been alone ever since.”

“No offense, but she sounds like an asshole.”

Hollis laughed and looked down when her phone dinged again.

“My food’s ready,” she said.

“I’ll walk with you,” Raleigh replied.

They left their mugs on the table and walked next door to the Mexican restaurant, where Hollis picked up her to-go order. Then, Raleigh walked to the deli, where she ordered the soup for Hollis’s mom. They left the deli and stood by their cars for a second while Hollis put the food in the back seat.

“I should get going. I don’t want it to get cold.”

“I hope your mom likes it. Tell her there’s a grandma inside that deli who makes the stuff. It’s always better when you know it’s homemade.”

“I will,” Hollis said, opening her door. “And thank you.”

“Thank you ,” Raleigh replied.

“For what?”

“For being there today. I don’t think I knew that I needed it, but just knowing someone was there for me made it easier.”

“You’re welcome,” Hollis replied, giving her a soft smile.

“I’ll see you at group?”

“I’ll be there,” Hollis told her.

“Can I ask you something? ”

“Sure.”

“Do you think you’d watch the episode with me? When it airs, I want to watch it, but I don’t want to be alone.”

“Oh. Sure,” Hollis said. “If you want.”

“I’m a glutton for punishment, but I want to see it. I don’t really know why.”

“I’ll be there,” Hollis said, repeating her words from before. “I’ll find out the air date before you, probably, so I can text you when I know.”

“Thank you.” Raleigh smiled and gave her a little wave like she had earlier that day. “Good night, Hollis.”

“Good night. Drive safe.”

“You too,” Raleigh replied.

Hollis got into her car, pulled into traffic, and waited at the red light. Instead of thinking of that balloon and her mom holding it out to her, this time, she thought of shimmering hazel eyes.