by Jenn Faulk
And like I said . . . I feel sorry for Crystal.
So when she called to thank me for the lamb, I told her she was more than welcome, and then I asked her if she wanted to go have lunch so I could tell her everything that had happened . . . everything that I knew so far.
I wasn’t terribly surprised when she accepted.
“Brandon never wants to come here,” Crystal tells me now as she reaches for a hush puppy, “but sometimes you just need some good old artery-clogging fried food, you know?” I nod. She has already apologized several times for choosing this restaurant, promising me that the calamari and sweet-tea more than make up for the sticky plastic table cloths and paper plates.
“Thank you for the lamb,” she says. She’s already thanked me, but I nod again and tell her that she’s very welcome. “I love Canon in D,” she continues. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“Me, too,” I reply. “That’s actually why I bought it. My mom got my brother Andrew a teddy bear that played that when she was pregnant with him. I used to wind it up and hold it against her stomach so he could hear it before he was born.”
Crystal gives me a small smile.
“He threw it out the car window when he was three,” I go on. “We were going down the highway at about seventy miles an hour and Dad rolled down his window to let a fly out and Andrew chucked it right past his head and onto the highway. A semi ran over it.”
Crystal’s eyes widen, and then she laughs. I laugh too, but she can obviously tell that I’m not into it. She’s quiet for a moment, then, “Yesterday was really hard on you.” She looks at me sympathetically.
I nod.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she reminds me.
I nod again.
She pauses, still looking at me.
“And you’re worried about my baby,” she ventures.
I nod for a third time. “I don’t think I’m going to find Brandon on time,” I admit. “I don’t have any other leads to follow. I don’t know what else to do.”
She doesn’t reply.
“But I honestly don’t think he walked out on you because he found out you were pregnant,” I go on. “Look at where I found Emma. I think it’s highly probable that something really, really bad has happened to him.”
“I know,” Crystal agrees quietly.
“And I don’t think I’m going to have any answers by tomorrow.”
“I know,” she says again.
I look at her expectantly.
“I’ll wait,” she finally says.
“Really?” I ask, unable to hide my surprise.
“Really.”
I can’t help but let out a sigh of relief. Crystal smiles.
“You’re a very sweet young man,” she says as my phone vibrates.
I smile back before seeing that it’s Maggie. I say to Crystal, “Do you mind if I take this real quick?”
She indicates that she’s absolutely fine with me going ahead, so I do.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hey,” she says, a little laugh in her voice. “How are you?”
“Oh, uh, good,” I stammer. “I mean, well.” I hesitate. “Fine.”
She says nothing for a long pause, and I wonder just how big of an idiot she thinks I am because I can’t even tell her how I’m doing without being torn between being grammatically correct and speaking the way normal people do.
“I don’t want to bother you or keep you or anything,” she says, stammering just like me. “I just wanted to tell you some good news.”
“Uh, okay . . .”
I can hear her take a deep breath. “The police found Emma,” she says. “I went and picked her up at the hospital yesterday, and she was perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
I think about the picture on Brandon’s computer screen, and I smile myself.
“I’m glad,” I say. “I’m really glad you got her back.”
Again, she’s silent for a while.
“I mean,” she finally says, “I don’t even know how they found her or where she was or any of that. And you probably don’t even care because I called you and told you I was going to hire someone else, and . . .” I hear her take another breath. “I don’t know why I called. I just . . .”
I can’t believe that she doesn’t know anything. If I tell her what happened it’s going to sound like I’m bragging, but I don’t want to lie and I certainly don’t want her to think that I don’t care . . .
“I, uh, I care,” I say. “And actually, I can probably fill you in on some of the details if you want to know, but, uh . . .”
“You can fill me in?” she asks, genuine surprise in her voice. “Peter, do you know what happened?”
I’m not sure I want to get into this over the phone with Maggie any more than I did with Crystal. Plus, Crystal’s staring at me with a really strange look on her face
“Well, uh, yeah,” I say. “I know a lot, but, uh . . .”
“Is it bad?” she asks. “How do you know what happened? Were you the one who found her?”
“This really isn’t a good time right now,” I tell Maggie, but that’s not what I mean to say at all so I try again. “I mean, it’s not that I can’t talk right now, I can, but what I mean is . . .”
Crystal still has the same look on her face, but her eyes have widened as if she can’t believe what she’s witnessing.
“In person,” I finally manage to blurt out. “Maybe we could talk later. Like, if you want to. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but I—”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to bother you. You’re busy. Of course, you’re busy. And I’ve just been rambling on and on like an idiot, like you’ve got no life apart from this, and—”
“No, uh, I’m not busy, but . . .” I say. My voice trails off as I look at Crystal again and realize how rude that must sound to her. I cover my eyes with one hand and sigh. “I mean, I’m busy, but that’s not why I don’t want to tell you about it right now. I just thought that it might be better if we talked in person. I mean, uh, if you don’t want to, I understand and everything, but I just thought that—”
“Okay,” she says simply.
“So, like maybe, uh, the coffee shop tomorrow, or uh—”
“I have to work tomorrow,” she says.
“Oh, uh, well then maybe we could uh,” Have dinner together sounds too much like a date, doesn’t it? But I asked Crystal if she wanted to have lunch with me and this isn’t a date . . . “Maybe we could meet tonight?”
“Like . . . dinner?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “That . . . that’ll work . . .”
“I’ll have to bring Emma with me,” she says. Then, with almost a smile in her voice, “You’ll get to meet her.”
“I can’t wait,” I say. “To meet her, I mean. Where, uh, where do you want to meet?”
“This is going to sound weird,” she says, “but can we go to the Waffle House?”
“Uh, sure,” I answer. “What time?”
“I can meet you there at six,” she says.
“Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll, uh, I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
“Uh, so I guess I’ll see you tonight.” Brilliant.
“Yes, I’ll see you soon. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
And then she’s gone.
I hang up to find Crystal still staring at me, wide-eyed.
“What?” I ask.
“Who in the world was that?”
“Maggie,” I say, reaching for my water. “Why?”
“Because you turned into a blathering idiot the second you started talking to her,” she exclaims. “It was like watching Jekyll and Hyde.”
I take a sip of my water and don’t say anything, hoping she’ll let it go.
She doesn’t.
“What’s going on between you two?” she asks.
“Nothing’s going on,” I insist, setting down my water.
Crystal studies me for a mome
nt, then—with a little smile playing across her lips—says, “You like her.”
“She just makes me nervous.”
“Because you like her.”
“A lot of people make me nervous,” I assure her.
“I don’t seem to make you nervous,” she ventures.
“Maybe I don’t like you . . .”
She laughs, and I smile.
“So you admit that you like her?” Crystal asks with an edge of seriousness in her voice.
I look at her for a long moment before saying, “If Maggie was somehow interested in me . . .” I hesitate before finally admitting, “I would be interested in her.”
Crystal gives me a victorious grin.
“I can help you,” she says, excitement flashing in her eyes.
“Fairy godmother kind of thing?” I guess dryly. “Cinderfella? Extreme makeover?”
“I don’t think you need an extreme makeover,” she says, tilting her head at me and obviously putting some real thought into it. “Maybe just a light makeover. A different shirt to wear, do something a little less, uh, severe with your hair. Maybe a little role playing so you’re not so nervous . . .”
“My brother and I actually do that,” I say. “He helps me practice.”
“The one who threw his stuffed animal out the window?” I nod, and the next words out of her mouth are, “How old is he?”
I look at her for a few seconds before answering reluctantly, “Seventeen . . .”
“You’ve got a seventeen year old helping you with your love life?” she asks skeptically.
“He’s really smart,” I say quickly.
“You’re really smart, too,” she ventures.
“Yeah, but Andrew’s smart in every way. He’s not a social misfit.”
“You’re not a social misfit,” Crystal says. “You just get nervous when you talk to a woman that you like.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if that’s all there was to it?
“You seemed fine when the two of you came over to my house the other day,” she points out.
“That’s because my mind was too busy to worry about saying the right thing. It’s . . . it’s only when I think about whether or not I should say something that I start second-guessing myself, and the more I start second-guessing myself the more I can’t stop second-guessing myself and . . .”
“And then you turn into a blathering idiot?”
“Pretty much.”
This barely scratches the surface of what goes on inside my head, but Crystal gives me a sympathetic look and I’m pretty sure she understands.
I’m also pretty sure that she feels as sorry for me as I do for her.
~Maggie~
I’m watching Peter with more than a little admiration in my eyes, but I can’t pinpoint exactly what caused this change in the way I’m seeing him.
It could be all the details he’s given me since we said an awkward hello (like always) and sat down to eat, with him glancing over at Emma and her smiling at him. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t try to hide her face from him as soon as we got here, like she’s been doing with almost everyone since I got her home. No, she studied him with interest, going so far as to hold her arms out to him as if she wanted him to hold her.
I spared him from making a decision either way on that, sensing that this is just a little more than he knows what to do with—a toddler about to eat syrupy waffles and all — and sat her down in a high chair on my side of the table.
She’s been watching him, and every few minutes, he’ll give her a smile, which she returns.
I admire him for that, most definitely, but it’s the details that have me stunned into silence.
He found her. He went to Brandon’s office and found something on his computer that no one else had been able to find. He took a tiny detail from something on Brandon’s computer and found an address in Bonita Springs. He went there, not knowing much more, and he found Emma.
He found her.
He’s not saying a lot about what it was like when he got there. He isn’t elaborating on what happened or what he suspects. But he tells me just enough that I know I’m going to be indebted to him for a long, long time.
He found her. He’s the whole reason she’s sitting here with me, her hands absolutely covered in syrup as she eats a waffle piece by piece and smiles at him.
I’m probably smiling at him a lot, too. Probably too much, as I can tell even now, as we finish up, that he isn’t sure what to do now.
I should offer to pay him, of course. I have no idea how I’m going to afford it or what it will even cost, but the man deserves to be paid. He picked up the check here despite my protests, so I can’t even count a pitiful Waffle House meal as a credit toward my account.
“Peter,” I say, “what do I owe you?”
“Owe me?”
“Yes, for your services.” And because that seems wholly inadequate, given what he’s done, I add, “For finding Emma.”
He says nothing for a long while, and I cringe inwardly, thinking that he must be totaling it all up. It’s going to be brutal . . .
“Nothing,” he says.
That can’t be.
“I must owe you something,” I say. “For your time, at least. For what you did, obviously. I need to give you something—”
“No,” he says. “It’s . . . you don’t owe me anything.”
I blink back tears at this as he looks back at Emma, who is giving him another syrupy grin. She actually reaches her sticky hand across the table at him, likely so curious as to who he is and why she likes him already. Peter’s eyes widen, either because she’s a baby who he doesn’t know how to handle or because she’ll ruin his shirt with that syrup, so I gently catch her little wrist in my hand before she can reach him.
I know he can see the bruises there, left over from whatever he witnessed. I can see the sadness in his eyes.
I need to do something for him.
“Can I at least cook you dinner?” I ask. “At my apartment? Just to thank you.”
He thinks for a moment, then says, “Uh, yeah.” He nods. “Okay.”
~Peter~
Andrew—who’s normally a pretty happy guy most of the time anyway—is positively giddy now.
“So exactly what did she say?” he wants to know.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “She said she wanted to thank me.”
“I can think of a much better way for her to thank you,” he says, raising an eyebrow and grinning.
I roll my eyes at him and don’t even bother to answer.
“What?” he asks innocently. “It’s not like her mind’s on getting her daughter back anymore. There’s no reason she can’t move along to other things.”
“I’m sure she’s going to move along to other things,” I agree. “I just don’t think one of those things is going to be me.”
“A woman doesn’t invite a man over for dinner unless she’s interested in other things,” he insists.
“She does if he just found her daughter,” I argue. “I wouldn’t take any money, and she just wants to repay me somehow. That’s all.”
This seems to give him pause.
“You wouldn’t take any money?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“Well that was genius . . .”
“What was genius?”
“Not letting her pay you,” he says. “I mean, obviously she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, okay. Thanks. See you later.’ She’s totally indebted to you. She’s going to have to make you dinner . . .” He raises an eyebrow and grins again. “Or something.”
This time I don’t roll my eyes. I just stare at him.
He stops grinning.
“No,” he says. When I keep staring he shakes his head. “Stop it, Peter. Do not overthink this. Don’t.”
But it’s way too late for that.
“What if she really thinks that’s why I didn’t take any money?” I ask.
“That’s not what she’s thinking,”
Andrew assures me.
“That’s what you thought!” I argue. “Oh, this is bad. She’s probably got guys hitting on her all the time and if she’s not interested, she just blows them off. But she can’t blow me off because she feels indebted to me . . .”
“Oh brother,” Andrew groans, covering his eyes with one hand and shaking his head.
“And she probably thinks that I planned the whole thing,” I say, ignoring him. “She thinks I didn’t take money so she’d have to pay me back some other way. She thinks I’m a cad.”
“No one under the age of seventy uses that word,” Andrew says through gritted teeth, lowering his hand and narrowing his eyes. “You have got to stop.”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to stop using the word “cad” or if I’m supposed to stop obsessing over whether or not Maggie thinks I planned on getting myself invited over for dinner. It doesn’t really matter.
“I can’t,” I say.
Andrew sighs.
“I don’t want her to think I did it on purpose,” I cry. “It’s bad enough that she thinks she owes me somehow. I don’t even want her to think that.”
He takes another deep breath and says, “Well then, I guess you’ll just have to explain it to her, won’t you? You’ll just have to tell her that. And no,” he finishes. “I won’t help you practice.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re being stupid. You’re making up a whole bunch of crap in your head that you don’t need to worry about.”
I look at him unhappily.
“Of course, that is what you do best . . .” he admits with another sigh.
I almost smile, and he rolls his eyes.
“You really aren’t going to be able to stop thinking about this?”
Not a chance. I shake my head.
“Alright,” he says, sighing one more time. “I’ve got an idea.”
I smile as he continues. “Here’s what I think you should do.”
~Maggie~
I’m waiting on Peter . . . and I’m nervous.