Dear Mystery Guy (Magnolia Sisters Book 1)

by Brenda Barrett

Tonight with her sisters showed her that they had much more interesting lives than she did, by far.

  Hazel was probably going to marry the old man because she wanted to fight to get her son back. Brigid was planning to become an escort because she wanted to go to med school and Caitlin was a dreamer; her life could get very interesting at the drop of a hat, like that time when she was fourteen and dreamt about the guy that she was going to marry.

  She had started drawing him since then. Painting after painting of the same guy. They had all been envious. Caitlin would never have to wade through a pool of men to find the right guy. All she had to do was wait to find the guy she was to marry or have him show up in her life, because God had already showed him to her in a dream. Lucky girl.

  She looked at the blank page again. She couldn't tell her mystery guy that. The counselor had said she should write about herself, not her friends, and in the process sort out her thoughts. She bit her lip and considered what to write.

  It was late. The apartment complex was so still she could even hear her roommate Keisha snoring through the door.

  At this time of the year, winding down to the Christmas holidays, it was unusual for the place to be so quiet. There was a bar a few chains up the road and a twenty-four hour car wash that played their music unconscionably loud even at ungodly hours.

  A quiet night in her part of town was a blessing. And to think she had been so excited to get the apartment when she had moved from Magnolia House. It had been one bus ride from the university branch where she had won a scholarship. She could walk to the Havendale town center, but she had slowly come to appreciate over the three years that she had lived at the apartment that living close to a town center could be a double-edged sword.

  Her apartment complex was not the quietest place to be in the best of times, nor was her apartment, which was located on the second floor, the most spacious either.

  She and Keisha took turns sleeping in the poky hall on the sofa bed. This month was her turn for the hall. The sofa bed was more comfortable than the one in the bedroom, though, so Della did not mind, but she was thinking that it was time that she found her own place.

  She was looking forward to that: a place in a quieter area. She would have to find a job, though, that paid her a lot better than her supermarket job.

  The arrangement with Keisha had lasted three years; it was longer than she thought that it would last, but Keisha was a relatively easy girl to get along with. She was also an alum of a girls' home, but with the state.

  If it was one thing that living in a girls' home taught them, it was how to get along with each other, and they both had been doing a fine job of it. Keisha knew sign language too, and that was a blessing; sometimes it was easier to sign instead of waiting for people to read her lips.

  She considered the page again and started to write.

  Dear Mystery Guy,

  I have no memories of my life before I was nine. They had to estimate my age with dental x-rays. I have no birthday; every day of the year I get up and I wonder if today could be the day that I was born.

  At the home Matron insisted that I choose a day, and I chose March 1, the very first day that I moved to Magnolia House with my neck heavily bandaged to protect a knife wound I had at my neck. I still have pictures and sometimes seeing them makes me cry.

  I have no real name. I was assigned my first name because the lady who named me liked the sound of it.

  I am like a ghost.

  Anonymous.

  Maybe I was dropped from the sky, kicked off a humanoid planet and left to die on Earth. Just kidding, but that could be a possibility, couldn't it?

  I have a fifteen-inch puckered scar across my neck, which reminds me every day that someone wanted me dead but I am still here. God spared my life for a reason. He also closed off my memories, because I can't remember anything from before I was found. Unfortunately, the injury damaged my larynx, too, and I cannot speak. I am mute. I sometimes speculate that maybe whatever happened was so traumatic that to remember would make me go crazy.

  And sometimes I conclude that it's for the best that my mind is as blank as ever. But even though technically I assure myself that it's better that I don't know, I still want to know what happened.

  Sometimes I want to know so badly that I drive myself mad with questions.

  I always wonder about my past. Who am I related to? Who slashed my throat? Who am I?

  Sometimes I must confess, I think God is getting tired of me because I ask him this question a lot. I mean a lot. Matron used to tell me that God would reveal everything in his own sweet time.

  And I believe he will. But I still wonder, you know, and I do get impatient. I feel like an incomplete puzzle. A piece is missing but where is it?

  God knows but he isn't telling me. The older I get the more urgent the question becomes. Where is my puzzle piece?

  Some days I stand and look in the mirror and I search my features one by one. I have light brown eyes. They are very distinct--my best feature, I think. They look like clear honey with a ring of darker brown around them. Caitlin calls them mysterious pools of light gold. She's the writer. I went researching one day and found out that amber eyes are pretty rare.

  Anyway, I look for my eyes on every person I meet. Every day, I wish that I could meet somebody with my eyes. It has been twelve years since I was rescued and not once have I seen anybody that has my eyes or even looks remotely like me.

  Maybe that's why I am feeling so down lately.

  How are you feeling? I am curious about you. Well, curious is putting it mildly. Of all the people in the entire world, of all the men on the planet, you are the most fascinating one I've never met.

  LOL, got it? I've never met you and yet...a part of me feels so attracted to you. I wonder about you. Where do you live? What do you do? Are you married? Do you have children? Have you ever seen me at the supermarket? If you did, would you like me?

  Della stopped writing and closed her eyes. Maybe she should cross that bit out. She sounded like a desperate person starving for male attention. And that was far from the truth. She got male attention, and frequently. She wasn't unattractive. She even had a boyfriend of sorts: Mike from church.

  He said that he loved her. He learned sign language so that they could communicate easily. He sent her flowers. He bought her chocolates every week and sent little love notes with them and he didn't mind her scar. He barely noticed it.

  To top it off, he had a good job as an IT supervisor at a bank and he recently bought an apartment in a nicer side of town and he wanted to marry her. He had asked her three months ago. Mike should have been perfect for her and yet...

  She imagined his kind eyes as they had looked down at her. His hands had trembled as he clutched her hand. She had waited with a kind of nameless dread as he cleared his throat and stumbled over his proposal. His Adam's apple had looked huge against his slim neck as he had asked the question, "Della will you marry me?"

  For the first time in her life she was happy that she couldn't vocalize her thoughts because she knew she was going to say no. She had stood there and summed him up as he waited nervously. He was tall and gangly; he had a great personality, very pleasant. Very ordinary.

  And she just didn't like Mike like that. Not like she liked a total stranger that she only saw on Thursdays.

  Her first thought after Mike asked her to marry him was that she didn't even know her real name. She was not really Della Gold. That was a name given to her by the home. She couldn't get married to a man she didn't love and with a name that was not hers.

  She wanted a genuine marriage. Everything else about her was fiction; she needed to have a real sort of marriage.

  She closed the book. She hadn't even told her sisters about the proposal. She was pretending that it never happened. She had told Mike that she would think about it but she hadn't really given it a serious thought.

  Maybe that was what was bugging her and causing her nightmares. Mike had proposed in
the same week that she had started working at the supermarket and she had been putting him off.

  Why couldn't she like him with the kind of intensity that she liked this stranger?

  *****

  "Wake up, sleepyhead!" Keisha walked into the hall and stretched. "It is near ten o'clock; don't you have classes today?"

  "Yes!" Della jumped up. She had slept as soundly as ever after writing in her journal. She yawned. It felt good to wake up rested.

  "Listen," Keisha said, heading for the kitchen, "I am spending the weekend with Scott and his family."

  "Really?" Della mouthed and started tidying up the bed.

  "Yup." Keisha grinned. "It's getting serious. I hear wedding bells. I know Scott is working up to a proposal and I am going to say yes if he asks."

  "I am happy for you." Della gave her a thumbs-up.

  Keisha grinned. "I thought that you would be the one who would be proposed to first. Mike, is certainly keen."

  Della slumped her shoulders.

  "Ah, don't give up, he likes you a lot," Keisha said, putting on the kettle. "He was looking at your fingers last time he was here. Kind of a fixated look, like he wanted to know your ring size."

  "No," Della shook her head. "I don't want to marry Mike. I like somebody else."

  "Mmm," Keisha grinned, "who is it?"

  "Not telling." Della signed, and then headed for the bathroom.

  Keisha laughed. "Okay. You can keep your Mystery Guy to yourself."

  "Exactly." Della signed.

  "Exactly what?" Keisha frowned.

  "He is a mystery guy." Della signed. "My mystery guy."

  *****

  Della reached Brick Place ten minutes before her shift was to begin. She sat in the break room listening to the girls talking. They always tried to include her, but they didn't understand sign language and sometimes they misinterpreted what she said when she mouthed to them. She preferred to sit in genial silence and listen as they chatted.

  This evening Sally and Olivia were laughing and chatting away. Sally had recently had a baby so she was giving anecdotes about her newborn.

  Della listened to them absently until Olivia said excitedly, "You owe me. I can't believe that I forgot to collect yesterday."

  "What do I owe you for?" Sally snorted. "I can't recall us betting each other on anything."

  "Yes, we did." Olivia grinned. "One hundred dollars. I said the handsome guy's eyes were really gray and not contacts. You said they were contacts because no one could have those kind of eyes in real life. Honey child you were wrong."

  Della sat up straighter, suddenly alert. They were talking about her mystery guy.

  "You asked him?" Sally folded her arms.

  "I did." Olivia grinned. "And he said they were real."

  "Okay, fair is fair." Sally went into her purse and got the money.

  What's his name? Della wanted to squeal. Did you get his name? In times like these she wished she could speak. She grabbed a pen and scribbled the question on a piece of paper and flashed it before Olivia.

  Olivia squinted down and looked at the paper. "No, I didn't ask him his name." She grinned at Della knowingly. "You like Mr. Handsome too, huh? Girl, you'll have to join the long, long line of us working in the supermarket and the long, long line of women out there in the world."

  "Not that any of us stand a chance," Sally mused. "Did you see the faint ring line on his wedding finger? He is either married or divorced. I doubt it's divorce since no woman in her right mind is going to give him up. So I say married. He probably has a job where he is required to leave it off."

  Della felt a shaft of disappointment take her by the throat.

  "Oh honey, no need to be disappointed," Sally said sympathetically. "You are young and pretty; you will find a handsome guy for yourself one day. There are plenty of fish in the sea."

  "Break's over." Ted came into the break room, glancing at his watch.

  Della got up hurriedly.

  "Well, well, it looks as if Della Gold is finally at work on time," Ted snarled.

  Della looked at him balefully. She really needed to find herself another job pronto.

  Chapter Four

  Dear Mystery Guy,

  I hate my job. That's right. Can't stand it. Well, maybe it's not the job I hate so much. It's not taxing work. It can be really pleasant at times but the thing is, I really can't stand Ted Nepaul, my supervisor. Maybe he is the one that is causing my dreams to come back. He is certainly fearsome and hostile enough to cause me nightmares.

  He makes me mad. He is pompous and arrogant and he can't stand me either. I seem to rub him the wrong way because I can't speak but mostly because of how I got the job.

  You see, when I was younger and living at Magnolia House, Patricia Benedict took a special interest in us, the girls of Bungalow Seven. She considers herself our honorary mother and she has always looked out for us. We were the envy of all the other girls at the home because of it.

  We have even gone to her house in the hills. We've swum in her pool, played tennis and board games with her. She loves us and over the years I think that she has seriously considered adopting us officially but she has a husband who doesn't like kids. He tolerates us but he just doesn't want any children around. I think Patricia is so dedicated to Magnolia House and to us especially because we are the only outlet for her to do some mothering.

  Anyway, I got the job at the supermarket because of her. Her family owns the supermarket too. The Benedicts have business everywhere and they are really wealthy. Ted Nepaul hates that I know a Benedict and have connections to such a family. I have overheard him calling me names like handicapped, etc. I still can't adjust to the hostility that I feel coming from him. It is so malignant and uncalled for.

  I am not used to hostility, believe it or not. Sure, I have always been an oddity because I cannot speak and I have the scar on my neck, but the people around me have always seemed to accept it. Sure, strangers stare and the bold ones will ask questions but people get used to me after a while.

  It feels odd that I am not liked because of my tenuous connection to the Benedicts, and it feels odd to hear myself being referred to as handicapped. I am mute, not handicapped.

  There is a difference, you know? I can do everything but talk. Handicapped suggests incapacitation and I am fine otherwise.

  I wish I could talk but it could be worse. I could be deaf or blind or lame or all of them together.

  It's laughable that Ted Nepaul resents me. I am sure that he knows where he is from and he has family and he knows his real birth date and he has all of his memories intact. I bet you are from an interesting heritage. You have dark skin and real gray eyes. I knew your eyes are real. I bet you are a real down-to-earth guy, too. The girls at the supermarket were speculating that you are married.

  I was down for the whole day when I thought about it but I have a theory. If you were married you would not be coming to the supermarket alone all the time and you would be buying enough food for two.

  So my hope is restored that you are single but I am sure that it won't be for long. Which sucks for me because I like thinking that you are single and available and one day we'll meet, and you will find that you like me, and we will get to know each other, and then we'll get married, and then we'll live happily ever after--like in one of Hazel's romance books.

  When we meet we could have our first date at the Luminous Lagoon in Falmouth. I know it's far but I have been dying to go. The waters are said to light up around you in the night. I want to see it so badly. It sounds magical. My friend Mike wanted me to go with him but I think I'd want to go with you instead. It would be more meaningful somehow. And on our way back from Falmouth we could listen to eighties music and then we could talk and talk and talk until daybreak...that sounds perfect.

  Della drew a heart beside perfect and put down the pen. She was a case of arrested development. It was Saturday night. She shouldn't be home alone writing in her journal and fantasizing about a fir
st date with a man she didn't know.

  Mike had asked her to join him at church for a social. The young people were the ones hosting it; they were a friendly bunch of people. They had tried to include her in their activities from the very first day that she started attending their church.

  She had started going there because it was convenient to walk to from her apartment.

  Her phone beeped and she picked it up. It was a text message from Mike asking her if she had changed her mind.

  Her hands hovered over the buttons and she looked at the clock. It was eight o’clock. She really should go to the social but she was trying to avoid Mike. Ever since his proposal she had been finding creative ways to dodge him.

  She texted back that she was already in bed. Mike sent her a sad face. She put down the phone and closed her eyes.

  She was in water; she always assumed it was a pool. She was very used to this dream. She could make out the squiggly water outlines of a lounge chair; she could hear muted voices as she swam under the water.

  There were children squealing in delight nearby but their voices were muted as well. She really couldn't hear them well; she just assumed they were nearby. She raised her head to get out of the water; she wanted to see who the voices belonged to. She wanted to see where she was. She always tried to see where she was. But someone was pushing her down.

  "No, please," she gasped. "Please, I want to see. Please, just let me see where I am. Please!"

  The person who was holding her down was indistinct and murky but this time something changed. The hold was not as strong and something fell into the water. It looked like a ring, a plain gold wedding band. Just then Della lost the dream. She woke up and blinked. The light was still on in the apartment. She could hear the temperamental refrigerator humming along in the kitchenette. She glanced at the clock. It was just nine o'clock. She hadn't been asleep long.

  She sat up in her sofa bed and closed her eyes. The same dream. It had been analyzed and over-analyzed by the several therapists that she had seen through the years. It was the first time since she was nine that there was a new element to it--a wedding ring. What could it mean?