The floodgates broke and she started to sob, as if not speaking about her daughter had been the last thing holding her together. I did recall Arthur mentioning something about his friend that kidnapped her using her daughter as leverage. I guess it had slipped my mind with everything going on at that time, along with the two of them having the same last name. I winced, only a little thankful her crying made it so she couldn’t see my face very well.
I sat down next to her at the bar. My hands twitched and my fingers laced around each other a few times. With a deep breath, I mustered the courage to put an arm around her shoulders. While not revolting for me, it was weird from not hugging people often. The biggest issue was that I didn’t know how to comfort someone very well. I sort of just lightly pulled her close to me and rubbed the shoulder I held. She leaned into my chest and cried into that, so I took that as a sign that she didn’t completely hate it herself.
“When that man came for me,” Rebecca began, finally calming down enough to speak, “I thought he’d just need me to remove someone’s power. Or maybe even mimic a voice to trick someone. I was good at that stuff. No, he took me to that damn cave, and next thing I knew, I was with you guys.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that was on you.” I didn’t really know what to say, so I was trying to tread lightly. I was already feeling the energy I had for the day sapping away. Helping her find info on her daughter would be worth it, though. “I’m here for you.”
“Are you?” she asked. “Just like you’ve been there for Megan the past month?”
Even though she was talking into my chest, I turned to look away. I was ashamed and embarrassed about my behavior. I knew I was doing wrong by Megan. I wasn’t proud of it either. I was the one who found her. I was the one she seemed to gravitate to the most. I was the one who needed to be there for her.
“I’m sorry, that’s not...I didn’t...” Rebecca fumbled with her words.
“You’re right. I should have been there for her.” I started chewing on my bottom lip. I suddenly felt sick. “I didn’t mean to vanish on her or you. I want to be there for both of you.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” she said. “Kids are important to me. You have a responsibility to help take care of her. I shouldn’t have been snappy about it though.”
“No, no, I agree. I’ve been moping for too long.” My throat felt tight. “It’s not helping anything. Maybe I could at least help her. Maybe I could help you. I know I did a bad job at showing that the kiddo is important to me too.”
“It kills me to see what she’s going through.” Rebecca sniffled against my chest. I said a silent thanks for me wearing a freshly washed shirt. “When Arthur told me what year it was, I couldn’t handle the idea of being without my daughter like that. If I hadn’t agreed with that kidnapping bastard, maybe I wouldn’t have left my daughter alone. I can’t make the same mistake with her. That’s why I got so snippy with you there.”
“I’ll try to do better. I can’t promise it’ll be perfect on the first try, but I’ll do my best to be there for her again.” I gave her shoulder a little squeeze, hiding my surprise at how normal and natural it felt to hold it. “For now, let’s go back to Rose. When was she born? I’ll try to look her up by adding in a birthyear. Oh, almost forgot, what city?”
“Eighteen fifty-seven in Forks, Kansas.” Rebecca finally pulled away from me to grab a paper towel. She used it to wipe the tears from her face. The hug-like thing could have been a lot worse.
I entered the info and numerous results popped up again, albeit fewer than before. I could tell right off the bat that more than a few weren’t what we were looking for. I was worried that there wouldn’t be much, if any, documentation of a random girl from that period. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. There was a hefty amount of information to sort through, so we got to work. She leaned in extra close as we shared her phone screen. Rebecca was able to easily steer me away from ones that had no chance of being right. Then we started digging into ones we thought had better chances, which we narrowed down pretty well. She let me do the navigating on the phone, expediting the process by a lot.
“Disappeared mother...” I read aloud, finally coming across an article on a site that talked about unsolved mysteries before the twentieth century. I turned the phone toward Rebecca. “This is dated eighteen fifty-seven. Check it out.”
She quickly took the phone from me and scrolled through it with wide eyes. Her mouth moved silently while she read the information. When she reached the end, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. There was an old photograph that showed a woman with a striking resemblance to Rebecca. The photo was black and white, so I couldn’t tell exactly what color her hair was, though my gut was telling me it was likely red. They certainly shared the same freckles across their faces.
“That’s her,” Rebecca confirmed in a tiny, squeaky whisper. She held the phone to her chest and resumed her crying. I was glad it was much happier crying the second time around. She hugged that phone to her like it was her actual daughter. “That’s my Rose.”
“What did it say?” I asked, putting my arm around her again. She managed to nudge even closer to me to show me the screen.
It was a bit of a long read that took me a few minutes to get through thanks to Rebecca’s shaky hands holding the phone. The gist was that after her mother disappeared, Rose was taken in by a farmer and his family. Under their care, she worked hard on their land. Eventually, she ended up marrying a man who became a wealthy businessman nearing the turn of the century. After that, she was able to live a quiet and happy life with her family. Even with her comfortable life, she did want it documented that her mom disappeared in such a strange circumstance. She never wanted her mother’s name to be lost to history.
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“She’s so beautiful. What a lovely family.” She looked longingly at the photograph, her face alternating between sorrow and joy. “I hope that she doesn’t think I hated her and left.”
“There’s no way.” I gave her shoulder a small squeeze. “She went out of her way to make it known that you just vanished with no trace. She held onto that well into adulthood, which for a kid that young, is pretty impressive. Rose never stopped thinking about you.”
“You think so?” Her big green eyes were burning holes right through me.
“I know so,” I said, hoping I sounded confident. “She got to live a happy life with a family that she loved with all her heart.”
“It breaks my heart that I couldn’t see her grow up.”
“Do you want to tell me what she was like?” I asked. Rebecca turned to stare at me, her eyes narrowing as she scanned my face. I started to panic and worry I said something wrong.
“You’re the first person who didn’t just apologize that I lost her.” Rebecca shook her head. “You’re the only one to ask about her.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I am sorry this all happened,” I clarified. I scratched the back of my neck and looked at the bar. Talking about that kind of stuff always made me feel awkward and ungrateful. “When I was twelve, I watched my parents get shot and killed in a home invasion. After that, everyone apologized for my loss. Police officers, doctors, kids at school, teachers, and just about anyone else who knew. It wasn’t that that I didn’t appreciate their condolences. They just...felt a little hollow when I heard them so many times. No one asked me what they were like either. They were only sorry I lost them. There’s more to these people than just us losing them.”
Rebecca nodded. “You understand. It wasn’t just my daughter I lost. It was her entire life I didn’t get to see unfold. I never got to see her fall in love, I never got to meet her husband, I never got to see her children. Maybe I would have died before any of that happened, I can’t tell the future. Or I guess it would be telling the past? Anyway, it wasn’t just her I lost in my life. It was all the things she did and the life she lived.”
I looked a bit longer at the picture of Rose’s family. “But as a mom, it feels good to know that she did get to live a nice life, right?”
“It does, you’re right,” she agreed. She stood up and stretched. She still looked a little fragile. Then she did something I wasn’t expecting. She threw her arms around me and pushed her face against my chest once again. The dampness on the front of my shirt told me she started crying again. Her voice was breaking and muffled, making it really hard for me to understand when she said, “I’d been hoping I could find her for this month I’ve been here. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I really did not know what to do with my hands. There were hugs between friends—and acquaintances, apparently—and hugs where a crying woman is burying her face in my chest. I wasn’t well-versed in either with the latter being entirely uncharted foreign territory. I wasn’t sure if I should hug her back, how long it would last, or really anything. I made a quick decision to just return the embrace before I managed to make everything more awkward, if that was even possible. I couldn’t lie, it felt pretty dang nice.
“I’m glad I could help with this,” I told her.
“It’s a hard thing for me to be open about. When I saw you for the first time, I had a good feeling about you. Then you nearly got yourself killed to save me and a little girl.” Rebecca pulled her head back and looked up at me. She took a few deep breaths to settle herself back down. “I had Rose when I was seventeen out of wedlock, which didn’t go over well with my family. They were embarrassed about it, and people in town made sure I was reminded of my actions. He was a real sweet-talking city boy. Could talk the deed to your property right out of your hands. Turns out, he was just interested in getting in my pants. That’s what you call it now, right?”
“Yeah, that’s one name for it. Having a kid before you’re married doesn’t exactly go over well today either.”
“My relationship with my parents was never great. Having Rose only a bigger strain on it. Good thing I just helped out on the farm mostly. Didn’t have to do much but haul a lot of heavy stuff around for my father.” That explained her solid-looking physique. “I wasn’t ashamed that I had her, not at all, but I was ashamed that I couldn’t do more for her. I was...a little embarrassed to let everyone know about her.”
“But I was okay to tell?” I asked, confused.
“You understand what I’ve dealt with better than the others. You understand how it feels to have your family taken away.” Rebecca offered a tiny smile. “And, like I said, I had a good feeling about you.”
I didn’t know what it was like to lose a daughter. I couldn’t imagine how terrible it felt. Losing Mom and Dad was awful enough. Imagining outliving my own child made me feel ill from just the thought. I had no idea how Rebecca managed it. Even knowing Rose lived a good life, the whole situation must’ve torn the woman up inside.
When it came to Mom and Dad, I tried not to make it a focal point of my identity, because there’s no faster way to kill a good mood than to bring up dead parents. So, maybe there was something there that made it easier for her to open about Rose. There was no healthy way to hold a traumatic event like that inside a person either. I wanted to be more than just my dead parents, and Rebecca no doubt wanted to be more than a single mother who felt like she failed her daughter.
“I can’t force you to talk about anything,” she said, “but holding that guilt can eat away at you. I’m just a stranger to you, I know, so you might not even listen to me. I want you to know that you don’t have to suffer alone. You can tell me anything if you ever want to.”
I didn’t hate the idea. With her understanding eyes, and a touch that didn’t make my want to fly off, it felt easier with her. Even considering that, I was getting a bit warm from the hugging. “Do strangers usually hug this long?”
She immediately released her grip and backed away. Her face was almost as red as her hair. My own face felt like it could start a forest fire if I got too close to some trees. “Sorry. Lori mentioned something about touching.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I said with a laugh. The sound almost felt unfamiliar to me after the past month. “It’s been getting better ever since I met Lori. For whatever reason, I don’t get bothered at all by you. Anyway, going back to what you said, I think you’re right. It’s about time I try to do something about this.”