Light the Lamp

by Catherine Gayle

  I missed everything about him.

  In the first few days after I’d left, the longing had been so intense that I wondered if my love for him was deeper than I thought it was. I’d known almost since the moment we met that I cared about him. There was a very real affection between the two of us, of course, but that sort of love required something more. It needed that little bit of him that he kept separate from me, that part of himself that was always trying to do more for me, to give me more, instead of allowing me to return the favor. It couldn’t be the same sort of love that he felt, but that didn’t make it any less painful for me each day I spent away from him. There are any number of ways that love can present itself in life. What I felt for him was definitely love in some form. I just couldn’t see how to make my form coexist alongside his without someone getting hurt.

  Granted, I hurt now. And I knew he did, too. Why did it have to be so difficult?

  I talked with Bonnie a little longer, helping her clean and organize and do all the other chores that needed to be done. But then I had to get myself together and leave for my day of work.

  Once I’d taken my belongings up front to Bonnie’s desk, in case I didn’t make it back before curfew and I needed to pick them up, I put on the black pants and white blouse I’d been given as a uniform.

  “Good luck!” Bonnie said when I headed out the door for the Riverside Country Club.

  “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll be back later.”

  Bright sunshine greeted me, and I pulled my sunglasses out of the tote bag I was carrying. The sunglasses were just one more thing that had been in the bags Liam had brought for me that last day. The tote was from then, too. It had a built-in spot for an umbrella and a poncho, another for the sunglasses. Everything I could need for almost any kind of weather could be found in this one bag. There was even room for my purse and its meager contents. I was thankful for it, but at the same time, thinking about him again brought on another pang that clawed against my chest like a caged animal trying to get free.

  I could only wonder how long this ache would last.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t allow any men inside.” The shelter manager tucked a stray hair behind her ear and came out from behind the main desk, making to usher me and Babs out the door. There was another door on the other side of her desk, one that surely led to the living quarters for the women who were staying here. Noelle could be just on the other side of this wall. She could be that close to me, with nothing but some drywall keeping us apart.

  “Can you just tell me if she’s staying here?” I begged. “Noelle Payne. She’s got long blond hair and blue eyes, and she’s always smiling and laughing.” Except for when I made her cry. “She’s young, in her mid-twenties. I know this was one of the places she’d thought about going.”

  Back on the first night we’d met, she had asked me to bring her here. I couldn’t do it then, and I hated the thought that she might be here now when she could be home with me.

  For a brief moment, the woman hesitated, but then she pointed to the exit again, waving us out with her other hand. “I can’t reveal anything about the woman who are here.”

  “She’s his girlfriend, though,” Babs said.

  “An awful lot of these women are someone’s girlfriend or someone’s wife,” she said, scowling. “And that’s why I can’t reveal anything. Some are here because they weren’t safe at home. Others are here because they don’t have a home. I’m not letting you in, and I’m not telling you anything about anyone who may or may not be here, so you might as well just go before I call the police to have you escorted out. I’m very sorry.”

  She had told me, though, whether she’d intended to or not. Noelle might not be here right now, but she had at least been here at some point. I knew it from the way the manager had hesitated. That short flash of indecision had been enough of a tell.

  “Is she volunteering at the dog rescue?” I asked. That was the next place I planned to look for her. I wished that I’d gone with her on one of my days off so her friends there would know who I was. She’d told me about them, but did they know about me? Maybe they would be more willing to aid me than this woman was. “Helping Hands, I think it was called? She sometimes goes to help them out.”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, sir.”

  There was too much emphasis in this woman’s voice. Noelle had at least spent some time at Helping Hands, then. Maybe she wasn’t there right now, but I had to find out. I had to talk to them.

  This shelter manager was trying hard to do her job, but she was failing. Everything she said revealed a little bit more to me.

  I pulled Noelle’s cell phone and charger and my credit card out of my pocket, and I passed them over to the woman. I’d charged the phone fully last night, just in case I found someone who had seen her. “Please, if you see Noelle, give these to her. I’m not stalking her. I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to be sure she’s okay.”

  She looked at me with eyes filled with indecision. “I can’t—”

  “You can. We won’t cause you any more problems and we’ll go now, but please take these for her.” I pressed them into the woman’s hands and closed her fingers over them.

  In the end, she agreed to take the phone and card and pass them on to Noelle when and if she saw her.

  Babs and I left. The shelter was in Old Town, but Helping Hands was in the Hawthorne District, so we got back in my car and headed that direction. If we didn’t find her at Helping Hands, our next stop was going to be the park she’d taken me to the day I’d bought my car.

  Zee and Soupy had spent the morning calling the police department and hospitals to see if they could learn anything about where Noelle might be from them, so far to no avail. Jonny had organized more than half the guys on the team to divide up into pairs and head out to the various parks throughout the city. Webs and his family were going to every homeless shelter or service in Portland to see what they could learn, other than this one that Noelle had mentioned to me specifically before. Even Jim Sutter and the coaching staff had gotten in on the search; they’d been on the phones, trying to find Noelle’s brothers in case they could help us in any way or point us in a direction to look for her that we might not have thought of on our own.

  Babs used the GPS on his phone to direct me through town. About ten minutes after we left the shelter, we pulled in to the tiny parking lot—four spaces, total—in front of Helping Hands Dog Rescue. It was an old, brick building that had seen better days. I put the car in park and went inside.

  A man with pale skin and stringy, blond hair looked up and smiled when we went through the door. He was kneeling on the floor, a chubby boxer puppy at his feet with its tongue hanging out. “Hi, guys,” he said, grabbing the puppy by its collar so it wouldn’t dart out the door past us. “Are you looking to adopt a dog today?”

  This must be Phil, then—one of Noelle’s closest friends.

  “Not today, no.” I couldn’t stop myself from dropping down to pet the pup. It barked and licked my hand, its lopped-off tail wagging hard enough to make a breeze, at least it would have if it hadn’t been docked. I scratched behind its ears. “I’m actually looking for Noelle.”

  A door in the back opened, and a woman with graying hair and glasses came into the main lobby with us—Cindy, I supposed. “And what do you want with Noelle?” she asked, closing the door before crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at me.

  This woman wasn’t going to pretend with me, then. Was Noelle here? The anticipation of maybe getting to see her squeezed me, like steel bands tightening around my chest. I forced myself to leave the dog alone, and I stood up. Phil did the same, planting his feet apart in a stance meant to intimidate. Babs dropped down to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and took over where I’d left off.

  “I want to know that she’s okay.”

  “You’re Liam?” Phil asked. “You’re the asshole who took her home with you when she’d never met you
before? What particular brand of fucked up must you be to think doing something like that was all right? Who does things like that?”

  When he put it that way, it sounded crazy. I hadn’t thought about like that, though. I still couldn’t. “And you’re Phil?” I asked with just as much venom as he’d used. These supposed friends hadn’t done much for her over the last few months, as far as I could tell. “And Cindy? I don’t want to hurt her,” I added, trying to force some calmness back into my voice.

  “Well, you have,” Cindy said. “She’d never tell you so because she’s the sort who always tries to take everyone else’s hurts onto herself and never wants anyone to see when she’s hurt, but you’ve hurt her.”

  “Badly,” Phil grumbled.

  I knew that. I’d seen it all over her face in the days leading up to her leaving. I’d known it as early as the day we spent at the park, when she’d wanted to leave because I had tried to buy her a car. I just didn’t know what to do about it. Frustrated beyond belief, I spun around and bounced my fist against the glass windows.

  The puppy jumped up against my legs, trying to get my attention and affection. I let one hand drop down to rub its head. These people were her friends, though. If they couldn’t help me, who could? “I just don’t know how to give her what she needs. She doesn’t want the things I can give her. She keeps telling me I’m shutting her out, that I have a wall up, but I don’t know how to change that.”

  “Do you even know what it is she really needs?” Cindy asked me. I turned, and she’d gone to sit behind a desk. Her eyes were on her computer, her hands on the keyboard, but the way her head was angled made it clear she was still focused on me.

  The dog yipped and jumped. I guess I’d neglected to scratch its ears for a little too long. Babs pulled the dog closer to him, and in no time the two of them were wrestling on the floor and seemingly oblivious to the rest of us, even though I didn’t doubt for a second that he was taking in every word that was said.

  “If I knew that, I doubt I’d be hurting her.”

  She stopped typing and leveled me with a stare. “Noelle needs for her life to have meaning.”

  What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Everyone’s life had meaning. I shook my head, not understanding. “She has confidence. She doesn’t feel like she’s worthless.”

  “That’s not what we mean,” Phil said. “She’s got to have a greater purpose, something bigger than just herself, something that she can work toward and believe in. Something that will make the world a better place. Otherwise she feels unfulfilled. Noelle is a giver. She’ll give everything she is and all that she has—for the right cause. Being with you, she wasn’t able to do any of that.”

  “I would never have stopped her from doing anything she wanted to do.” Would I have? I mean, I wanted to be with her, to spend time with her, but I would never have dreamed of telling her she couldn’t volunteer here at the dog shelter. She could do what she wanted.

  “That may be,” Cindy said, “but Noelle felt like she was being stifled by you. She can’t live like that.”

  I wouldn’t want her to live like that, either. I dragged a hand down my face, and nearly a week’s worth of stubble scratched the inside of my palm. “Is she here?” I croaked.

  “No, she’s not,” he said.

  “Do you expect her back?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Cindy responded, and I had to chuckle. She wasn’t being coy with me or beating around the bush. She was just being baldly honest. How would anyone know if they could expect Noelle to come back? She was one of those people who just flitted through life, moving from one thing to the next with little thought of other people worrying about her.

  “All right.” I stared down at Babs and the dog while I debated what to do from here. Nothing really mattered, nothing would change, unless I could see her. I needed to talk to her, face-to-face, so we could get on the same page. “Will you give her a message for me if you see her?” I asked after a minute.

  “Depends on what you intend to do if you find her,” the man replied.

  “I just want to talk to her. And if she doesn’t want to talk to me, then that’s her prerogative.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Cindy said, eyeing Phil with a meaningful look.

  “Thank you.” A bit of the pressure around my chest released. Not much, but enough that I could breathe again. “Tell her I left a phone and a credit card for her at the shelter. And tell her one more thing. Tell her jag älskar dig.”

  Cindy repeated it a few times, making sure she could pronounce it properly, which made me believe she actually intended to relay my message. When we were both satisfied with her ability to get the message across to Noelle, I looked down to Babs. “You ready to move on to the next stop?”

  “Almost.” He got up from the floor, and the puppy followed him when he took a few steps over to the desk with the woman. “What’ll it take for me to be able to adopt this little guy?” he asked.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, considering he’d been playing with that dog since pretty much the moment we walked through the door, acting like a kid instead of the man he was growing to be, but it did.

  “I didn’t know you wanted a dog,” I said when he started filling out the paperwork she passed over to him.

  “I didn’t, either.” Babs grinned at me, and his dimples popped to the surface. “But it’s not for me. It’s for Ellie.”

  I still had no clue what he was planning, but I decided to just go with it. Babs may be young, but he was pretty smart when it came down to it. And he and Noelle had always gotten on well.

  It wouldn’t hurt, and I was running out of ideas.

  Of course, tonight would be the night that the Max train I was on decided to malfunction. I dug out the watch Liam had put in my tote bag. It was already 7:49, and we were still waiting on a technician to arrive.

  If I got off here and walked to the nearest bus stop, I could get back to the shelter. It just wouldn’t happen before eight. There was no telling how long it would be before they had this train running again, though, so that was probably my best option. And there was always the chance that a bed would still be open for me when I got there. Maybe it wasn’t likely, but it was a possibility.

  I pushed away the thought that there hadn’t been a single night I’d been there when it hadn’t been filled to capacity. Thinking about that wouldn’t help. Not at all.

  Slinging the straps of my tote bag over my shoulder, I got up and started my trek to the bus stop, glancing up at the sky to see the gathered clouds. By the time I got back to the shelter, it was 8:23. Bonnie looked up at me with sad eyes when I came through the door.

  “No more beds tonight?” I asked, even though I could read the answer in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Noelle.” She took her hair down from the clip, since it was falling out anyway, and then twisted it up and clipped it again.

  “Don’t be sorry.” There wasn’t anything Bonnie or anyone else could have done about it. The only way I would have been back on time to keep my bed was if I hadn’t taken this job—and I was so glad I had. Working at the golf tournament had been a wonderful experience, and I’d done well enough that my new boss had offered me another similar event next weekend. I moved over to the pile of my things waiting right where I’d left them. “I’ll come by tomorrow night to see if there’s a bed.”

  She came over to help me gather my stuff. I slipped my tote bag inside the waterproof duffel, along with everything that was already in it, since rain seemed imminent.

  “There’s just— There’s something else before you go,” Bonnie said, and the nerves tightening her voice gave me pause.

  I looked up at the way she was worrying her lower lip, at the pinched lines at the corners of her eyes. “Tell me.” Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worth getting this upset over. Had I reached my limit of nights I could stay at the shelter? Had I broken a rule without realizing it?

  She shrugged and went behind her desk, reach
ing into the top drawer for something. She brought out the cell phone Liam had bought me, and my heart stuttered.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “Two men came looking for you. One of them—your boyfriend, they said—asked me to make sure you got all of this if I saw you.” Bonnie dumped everything from her hand onto the desk. It wasn’t just the phone; Liam had brought the charger and the case for it, and a credit card, as well.

  I swallowed hard. “He’s not my boyfriend.” I don’t know why I said that, of all things. It was what he wanted. I knew that much. Maybe he wanted to be more than just my boyfriend. He loved me, and he wanted to take care of all of my physical needs, and he wanted to be with me.

  And he’d found me.

  That had me panicked even more than the thought that I might have already spent so many nights here that I couldn’t come back for more. I’d been doing my best since I’d left to convince myself to stop thinking about Liam. It hadn’t been too difficult while he’d been on his road trip and while I hadn’t had the phone, other than at night, but if he was going to be looking for me…if he’d bothered to track me down and bring me the phone… I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  “All right,” Bonnie said. “He’s not your boyfriend. He wants you to have this stuff, though. I never told him you’d been here or anything like that, but I’m pretty sure he knew, anyway.” She shoved the phone and other items closer to me. “If he comes back, I can give it back to him and say I never saw you, but I think he’ll know I’m lying, and he won’t be happy. Just take it. I don’t care what you do with it, but take it.”

  I nodded and put it all in my tote, finding a pocket where it would all be well hidden and where maybe I could forget they were there. “I should go. You’ve got work to do tonight.”

  Bonnie came around her desk and pulled me into her arms for a hug. “Be sure you come back tomorrow. We might have a bed for you, and even if we don’t I want to see you so I don’t worry too much.”