Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
And because of him, she hadn’t stopped searching. She hadn’t ceased going down avenues that might eventually bring her some kind of clarity.
Her tenacity finally paid off when she was seventeen and managed to locate Genie, who had been working at a hospital in another town outside New York City. She’d seemed surprised and delighted to hear from Autumn and had invited her to her apartment. Bill had taken the day off and driven her there, and she’d tearfully reunited with the nurse who had been a constant in her life for so many years. But though she’d probed, Genie had appeared confused by Autumn’s questions about the dreams and repeated what she’d been told so many times before: it was the medication and only that. The bruises, the scratches, all explained by the disease. She’d seemed sincere, and on one hand, Autumn wanted to believe that Genie believed what she said. Because though Autumn was desperate for answers, to know that women she’d thought of as mothers had intentionally and knowingly allowed her to be put in harm’s way would have been devastating.
Genie had been able to clear up one mystery, however, and it was a crushing one. The reason Mercy Hospital had closed so abruptly was simple really: the clientele had drastically reduced. That meant, of course, that so many of Autumn’s friends had died, and there had simply been no reason to keep such a large establishment open.
She’d feared as much.
Still, she powered on.
And now she was there to tell Bill what more her digging had accomplished.
“I might have found my mother,” she said softly. “Or at least…her name.”
Bill’s head turned. “Your mother?” He paused, digesting that information. “After all this time?” He let out a soft chuckle. “My tireless girl! How? Where?”
She gave him a slight smile. My tireless girl. So why, inside, when it came to her unending personal investigation, did she feel so beaten down? “New York City. It might not be her, but I’m going to pay the woman a visit and find out.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
Autumn thought about that for a moment. “No. I think I’d like to do this alone.” Bill was her safe place. Her living proof that good things could—and did—come to those who waited. She wanted to keep her two worlds—the one she’d come from and the one where she belonged—separate, at least temporarily. She wasn’t even sure exactly why. It just felt right to her.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Just promise you’ll be careful. And, Autumn, whatever happens…” He reached over, taking her hand and squeezing it, seeming unable to have the right words to finish that sentence. She saw it in his eyes though.
“I know, Bill,” she said. “I know.”
***
Autumn breezed through the door to the jail, greeting Patty the receptionist, who had the phone to her ear, with a wave and heading toward the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Monroe wasn’t in his office, but she found him standing in the kitchen, perusing a box of doughnuts on the table in front of him. She pushed it to the side and set down the Ziploc baggie of muffins she’d brought with her.
“What’s that?” he asked, raising a suspicious brow.
“What it’s not,” she said, “is an overload of sugar and simple carbs. No seed oils either.”
“Oh God, it’s fiber, isn’t it?”
“It’s good for you.”
He grumbled before taking a muffin from the baggie and biting into it. Autumn waited as he chewed and swallowed. “Not Krispy Kreme,” he said. “But not half-bad.” He took another bite.
Autumn grinned. “Remember, your body is a temple. Treat it like one.”
“Yes, Nurse Ratched.”
Autumn laughed. “Cell one?”
“Yup.”
She walked through the small building to the cell areas near the back where she found the man slumped on the bench. She pulled the unlocked cell door open. “Hi, Seymour.”
He looked up, eyes bleary and rimmed in red. “You again?”
She sat down next to him. “You again? We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, Seymour. It isn’t at all proper.”
“Proper? I don’t know nothin’ about proper.”
“Sure you do. You’ve just forgotten temporarily. I’m here to remind you.”
In answer, he tipped his head back, letting it hit the wall behind him.
“Also, you smell terrible,” she told him. “And you look like death warmed over.”
“Where’s my pep talk?”
“That was a pep talk.”
He mustered a small humor-filled snort but then closed his eyes and sighed. “Give me the seal of approval so I can get out of here, wouldja?”
She put her hands on her knees, staring at him for a moment. He was thirty-six years old, and he looked like he was fifty-six. She kept hoping this would be the last time she’d see him sitting in a cell detoxing on Monday morning, and he kept disappointing her. “You’ve gotta stop drinking, Seymour. Didn’t I tell you Franklin Brown said he’d accompany you to meetings at the church on Springhaven? They meet every Friday night. They’d welcome you with open arms.”