The Forgotten Child

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “You want me to take it back? I’ll eat both.”

  She cradled the dessert from his grabbing hand. “Don’t you dare.” He watched her as she took a bite, careful not to send ice cream everywhere. “Oh hell.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling.

  “And everything’s fine. I was just talking to Jade. Everyone made it back in one piece.”

  “Good. I got a text from Donna earlier. They’re gonna take Carla’s car over to my place to pick up Donna’s.”

  “Thank them again for supplying the getaway vehicle.”

  “Already done.”

  The movie started about twenty minutes later, the park nearly full. It was an indie sci-fi movie about an alien invasion. Riley wasn’t sure how well a PG independent sci-fi film would go, and after about half an hour, she had her answer: not well. The acting was so bad, Riley honestly couldn’t tell if it was a spoof or not.

  During a terribly choreographed fight scene, Riley did everything she could not to laugh. Michael seemed riveted, so she kept her opinion to herself. He saw movies here all the time; maybe this was some really deep, artsy movie she just didn’t “get.” For all she knew, it could have been full of biting subtext she was too slow to pick up on.

  Michael leaned toward her, his hot breath whispering past her ear. “This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Riley choked back a laugh.

  They stayed close, sides flush, and offered their own commentary. When a scene looked particularly tense, they supplied their own dialogue.

  Riley offered a line that so surprised Michael, he let out a sputtering laugh that earned them a scowl from a nearby family. Their kids seemed to be enjoying the movie, while the mother busily played a game on her phone.

  “Wanna go for a walk until the next one?” Michael whispered to her.

  By way of answer, she grabbed her purse and scrambled to her feet.

  When they were out of earshot, Michael said, “Holy shit. I’m sorry. It’s like they took all their worst ideas, threw them in a hat, then said, ‘You know what? Fuck it. Let’s do all of them.’”

  “Someone was killed by a sentient umbrella in the first fifteen minutes!”

  “Someone paid to make that. They spent actual money, edited it, watched it, and went, ‘Yes, we are ready.’ I wonder what got cut.” Michael laced his fingers through hers. “Hopefully the second one isn’t as bad.”

  “I mean … how could it be worse?”

  It was, in fact, worse, as the second movie was a rather racy sequel set on Mars. When the alien queen declared that she “would show the humans how one truly experienced bliss” before using her alien powers to literally disintegrate the clothes off an unsuspecting man, Riley flopped onto her back with her hands clasped over her mouth, trying to keep herself together. She heard the sounds of the human man’s rapturous pleasure and kicked her feet in delight at the sheer horror of it.

  Michael laid down next to her, propped up on his side. He looked from the screen to her and back again. His mouth dropped open. “She just sprouted three extra hands.”

  The man on screen let out a sound somewhere between a moan and a scream and Riley lost it again, hands still over her mouth, body shaking. Tears leaked out the sides of her eyes. The rest of the audience—the younger, more hip crowd—seemed to be laughing just as much as she was, at least.

  Riley lowered her hands, her head turned toward Michael. “Is it all a joke?”

  His mouth still hung open. When there was a collective gasp from the audience, he too winced. He looked at her, eyes wide. “My god.”

  She cracked up. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “You don’t. I … I can’t tell if this is horrible or ingenious.”

  “Fine line, I guess.” Biting her lip, she smiled softly at Michael’s profile.

  This evening had been what she needed. Something to get her mind off the fact that a nine-year-old ghost boy now haunted her apartment.

  With his head still propped up on his hand, Michael asked, “Are you having fun even if this is a crime—I think—against film?”

  The dim lighting, only punctuated periodically by the flicker of the movie, cast soft shadows over his face. Why’d he have to be so damned handsome? “Yes.”

  “Good.” The just-past-casual stare was back and his gaze shifted to her mouth for a moment. “I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to keep myself from kissing you.”

  She flushed. “Maybe you shouldn’t keep fighting it.”

  He grinned at her, scooting closer so his chest was pressed to her side. Reaching out his free hand, he caressed the side of her face with his thumb, his palm cupping the back of her head. He stared at her for only a moment longer before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  He smelled like soap and grass and tasted like chocolate. One of her arms snaked around him, her fingers in his hair. He adjusted himself so their chests were pressed together, one of his legs tangled up in hers.

  Their mouths parted and his tongue glided against hers. He let out an involuntary groan that was far sexier than his I-just-lost-at-air-hockey-again groan, and it sent a spark of heat down her body.

  They broke apart for a moment, her arms around his neck, and one of his hands resting on the bare skin of her hip. She hadn’t registered his hand sneaking under her shirt. They breathed heavily, foreheads pressed together.

  “Have I mentioned that I like you?” he asked, thumb sweeping slowly back and forth across her side. It felt like her skin was on fire.

  “I think I figured it out,” she said.

  Someone very loudly clearing their throat caught Riley’s attention. She managed to turn her head, despite the weird position she was in, and lock eyes with an irate woman who’d stuck around despite the drastic shift in the audience’s average age.

  “Get a room,” she mouthed, then proceeded to whisper to the woman next to her.

  Then the second woman shot them a death glare.

  Riley snorted, looking away. “I think we’re offending the patrons of this fine cinematic event.”

  “Maybe we should go,” he said, voice soft. He ran a thumb down the length of her jaw, looking at her like it was taking all his willpower not to take her right here in front of the offended old biddies. “If we’re going to continue taking this slow, we need to be somewhere where I’m not lying next to you—hell, sitting next to you—because you’re driving me fucking crazy.”

  Riley bit her bottom lip, cheeks flushing.

  “Not helping,” he said with a sigh.

  “Okay, tiger, let’s go,” she said. “Gotta walk it off.”

  He groaned in disappointment as she disentangled herself from him.

  After gathering up their things, Michael offered an, “Evening, ladies,” to the grumpy pair beside them.

  The women scoffed at his politeness. Riley was fairly certain one of them uttered a “Why, I never …” at them as they left.

  They dropped their things off at the car, then went on a stroll through downtown Los Lunas. Stores and restaurants started to close for the night, but handfuls of people were still out and about. A pair of rowdy boys ran down the street with ice cream cones in their hands, two adults walking hand in hand behind them. Riley figured one boy wasn’t their child, due to the lighter tone of both them and one of the boys. The other boy looked a few years younger, his skin a creamy brown.

  Riley and Michael moved at a safe distance behind them, fingers laced together, keeping up a steady stream of conversation that Riley hoped was helping to cool Michael down. That and the light breeze.

  They walked past a few bars, a Middle Eastern restaurant, and a couple of little clothing shops Riley was sure she couldn’t afford. A busier street was a block ahead, and Michael told her there was a really great coffee shop on the upcoming corner.

  Riley’s attention kept shifting to the little boys running out in front of them, getting further and further away from the pair. The adults didn�
��t seem worried, but Riley had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. They were getting too close to the busy street ahead.

  Her fingers instinctively squeezed Michael’s.

  “What’s up?” he asked, glancing over at her.

  But she couldn’t take her eyes off the boys. Their excited chatter and gleeful shouts seemed to echo, bouncing off buildings and trees.

  When they came to a stop as they reached the intersection, the boys turned to look over their shoulders. Ice cream cones still firmly clasped in their hands, melted chocolate ran over the fair fingers of the older boy.

  Riley and Michael caught up with them, the six waiting until the red neon hand flipped to the walking sign.

  The woman glanced back at Riley and smiled weakly—just acknowledging that someone was there behind her. Her face was pale, bags under her eyes. Riley had never seen the woman before but felt a sudden urge to ask her what was wrong. To ask her why she looked so miserable.

  “Race you!”

  Riley’s eyes snapped to one of the little boys who now dared the other to chase him just as the walking signal changed. They bolted across the intersection, focused on outracing the other. Focused on licking melted, sticky chocolate off hands. They didn’t see the car run the red light.

  “No!” Riley called out, yanking her hand free from Michael’s and slamming into the pair in front of her.

  She came to a sudden stop on the curb, heart pounding violently, holding her breath as the giant SUV zipped through the intersection. Riley waited for the crash of bodies against metal, to see ice cream cones smashed in the street. But there was no sound.

  The SUV—with a license plate frame stating that the driver would rather be fishing—blasted through the intersection, and after half a block just … disappeared. Poof. Into thin air.

  Riley stumbled back a step, right into Michael who had rushed up to grab her. Swaying, she sat hard on the sidewalk, head in her hands.

  Michael squatted before her. “Riley? Ry, Jesus, what happened?”

  Those boys weren’t there. Well, they had been. Just not today.

  Swallowing, she looked up again, eyeing the intersection. And then it changed, just as it had back at the ranch. Two boys running into an intersection too soon, a driver not paying attention, limbs at awkward angles, chocolate ice cream mixing in the street with blood.

  “You didn’t see them, did you?” Riley asked, attention shifting to Michael’s concerned face. “The little boys with the ice cream?”

  “What are you talking about?” He placed the back of his hand on her forehead. “You’re pale. Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a—oh. Oh! Shit. You saw a ghost.”

  “Two of them. Two boys.”

  A strangled sob shifted Riley’s attention again. This time to the sad woman who’d been standing in front of her. She hadn’t crossed the street.

  “You … you saw them? My Henry? You saw him?”

  Shit. Why was her … gift … flaring up now? Her apartment wasn’t safe, and now the outside world wasn’t safe either. How could she avoid all this if it kept coming to her?

  The trip to the ranch had altered something in her. She wanted to turn it back off.

  “It was a hit and run.” The woman’s tone sobered, and her husband—who looked supremely uncomfortable—tried to pull her away, but the woman wouldn’t be moved. “My baby and his cousin were run over and left here to die in the street like animals. That bastard ran over my baby and just—” She didn’t finish her sentence, choked off by her own sobs.

  The man wrapped his arms around her. “She insists on walking down here every night. It’s been three months.” It almost sounded like an apology.

  Riley looked down the street, seeing a flash of the speeding SUV again. Voice hollow and distant, she said, “I saw the license plate.”

  The couple froze for a moment. The woman furiously wiped her face with her hands. “You were here?”

  With an exhausted sigh, Riley told these two broken people about her ability. When doubt crept onto the man’s face and pulled his brows together, she told them what the boys had been wearing. What kind of ice cream they had. How one of Henry’s shoes had been found in the intersection—she left out the detail that Henry had been hit so hard that his shoe had been knocked clear off him and his body had been dragged several feet before rolling off into the gutter.

  Thankfully, they believed her without her needing to get too far into the gory details. She told them the license plate number and what had been on the frame. Maybe police could get a warrant for checking out the SUV and luck out and find blood on the front fender. Thanks to her penchant for Dateline and cop shows, she knew all too well that blood hung around even after a good cleaning.

  Riley hoped it would help them.

  When the couple walked off, holding each other up as they both cried, she looked at Michael’s shell-shocked face. “I think I need to go home.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Though Riley’s shift at the Laughing Tiger wasn’t until two, she sneaked in just under the wire. Every time she’d fallen asleep last night, she’d relived the accident. Sometimes the victim was Michael. But usually it was a twin pair of Petes—one in his black-and-blue-checkered jacket, and one in his Scooby Doo shirt and Batman pajama pants. Over and over and over.

  Luckily his spirit hadn’t made an appearance all night, though she wondered if he somehow was responsible for her nightmares.

  At the end of her shift, half starved, she checked her phone as she walked to her car parked behind the restaurant. It was just after ten and she hadn’t eaten since noon. With a bag of leftover food clenched in her hand, she read her texts from Michael—all with some version of “I’m here if you need anything.” She also had a voicemail from a private number.

  She flopped into her car, the smell of hours-old shumai, sausage rolls, and dumplings causing her stomach to rumble. As the cabin lights dimmed to black, she dialed her inbox.

  After a long pause—one long enough that Riley wondered if it was an accidental message left by a telemarketer—the message started: “Hi. This is Mindy Cho returning Riley’s call. I, uhh … I don’t know how you know that name. If you’re friends with Ha—if you’re just trying to screw with me, don’t worry, okay? Lips are sealed. Just … leave me alone.”

  Riley’s heart hammered in her chest. She’d actually called back! Mindy Cho was still in Albuquerque. She in no way sounded like she wanted to talk, but that was because she’d figured Riley was up to something. And she’d heard of Pete before! That had to be a good sign.

  She stress-ate four dumplings in as many minutes.

  Calling Mindy back would have to wait until tomorrow. Since the number had come through as private, Riley would have to go through her entire list of numbers again and hope Mindy picked up.

  With similar work hours tomorrow, she’d need to get her act together earlier. And she needed to figure out what the hell to say to convince Mindy to give her a chance.

  The next morning, around ten, Riley set up her laptop, notepad, and a mug of coffee on the coffee table. She sat on the floor between the couch and table. One day, she’d actually buy grown-up dining room furniture.

  The objective of the call was to convince Mindy to meet her in person; hanging up on someone was a lot easier than literally walking out on them. Even if she was uncomfortable, Mindy might be more willing to tough out a conversation if they were in a coffee shop. Especially if Riley promised to pay.

  She scrolled through her call history and dialed the first one. Her heart thrashed around in her chest like a trapped bird. How many calls did it take before one was considered a stalker?

  Chewing on her thumbnail, she gave herself a pep talk. Be polite. Don’t say anything too weird. Remember, she’s been through a lot and has every right to be skeptical.

  Voicemail.

  “Thank you for returning my call, Mindy. This is Riley again. I promise you this isn’t a joke. I just want to talk.” S
he rattled off her number, hung up, and tried the next, leaving an identical message.

  While she listened to the phone ring during her third call, Pete flickered into view, head cocked as he stood in front of her TV.

  Riley yelped and let out series of truly profane curses. “Not now, kid! Really bad timing.”

  “Uh … you called me, lady,” someone said in Riley’s ear.

  Riley’s posture straightened, the ghost child wandering her living room momentarily forgotten. Oh shit. She answered! Shit. “Uh … Mindy? This is Riley. Riley Thomas? I called you on Sunday about the—”

  “Oh. It’s you. I told you to leave me alone.”

  “I just want to talk. Honest.”

  “Who put you up to this? I’m really not in the mood. I’ve had a real shitty week and I don’t need another jackass with a hard-on for serial killers to start blowing up my phone. So what do you want? You’ve got roughly thirty seconds before I hang up and block your number.”

  Jesus.

  “Does the name Pete Vonick mean anything to you?”

  The flickering figure of the boy in question turned at the sound of his own name, abandoning his perusal of her shelf of knickknacks. A delicate glass fairy figurine her mother had given her when Riley had been around Pete’s age had caught his eye.

  Mindy didn’t say anything. But she hadn’t hung up either. Riley’s hold on the other woman felt too precarious to drop the “I see dead people” bomb just yet. She scrambled for something else to say. Something to make Mindy realize Riley wasn’t some nutjob, some freak with a “hard-on” for serial killers.

  Pete shifted in front of her, pulling her attention to his face. When they made eye contact, a name popped into her head again. Frances. The moment she heard it, Pete’s image flickered dangerously—like the disrupted signal from a TV’s antenna. Then he vanished altogether.

  The flash of images she’d seen in Hyssop Room came flooding back. The pair of girls, one with a face beaten so badly the features were unrecognizable, the other sprawled on the floor, legs tangled in sheets.

  “When you were at the ranch, were there two of you there at a time? More? Did you ever stay together in the same room?”