Restless

Emily Gray realized she had been staring at the wall calendar for way too long.  She turned away and closed her eyes.  November 8 – eyes open or closed, asleep, awake, alive or dead, it didn’t matter.  She couldn’t have been more perpetually aware of the date if it were tattooed on her brain.  Swiping at a tear, she picked up her phone and dialed her ex-husband, Carl.

“Hey Em.  How are you doing this morning?”

“Okay, I guess.  It’s been –“

“Two years today,” they said at the same time.

“Yeah.  I was going to check in on you on my way to work.  You okay?”

“No.  Will this ever get any easier?”

“I really don’t know.  If you ever figure it out, let me know.”  After a long pause he asked, “You taking your medicine?”

“Most days.  I hate it.  It levels me out, but it makes me feel half-there.  And it doesn’t change a damn thing.”

“Yeah.  I’m sorry, Em.   You start the new job yet?”

“The 17^th is my first day.  They’re starting me on weather and traffic.  It may lead into some real reporting from there.  We’ll see.”

“Okay, well good luck.  I know you’ll be great.  Hang in there, okay?”

“You too. Bye.”

Their daughter Chloe’s initial leukemia diagnosis at six was the start of four years of agonizing and seemingly endless chemo treatments and trips to specialty hospitals. Ultimately, Chloe had lost the battle.  Emily and her ex-husband Carl had each processed their daughter’s death in their own ways, but they couldn’t get themselves through it individually, much less manage to take care of each other and their marriage.  The stress and trauma proved to be more than they could bear, and it ended in a mutually amicable divorce.  Emily decided to pull up stakes and move to New Hampshire for a clean start.

A minute after the call with Carl, all clicking toenails and jingling tags, Maggie came bounding down the stairs and trotted into the kitchen.  “Hey there, sweet girl.  Here you go,” Emily said, putting a pouch of food in the beagle’s bowl and freshening up her water.

Maggie finished her breakfast and after Emily checked her email and paid a couple of bills, she put on a jacket and her wellies, leashed Maggie, and headed out the back door of her colonial salt box home.  It was probably more house than she needed, but the price had been tempting, and it came with eleven acres of partially forested farmland.   

The November morning was overcast with a growling grey scale sky, a whisper of a breeze and a chill in the air.  Morning fog hung low over the neighbor’s freshly cleared corn fields.  A murder of crows sauntered and squawked on the stubby wasteland, salvaging what scraps remained ahead of the snows to come. The oak trees stubbornly clung to some of their ochre-colored leaves, but the maples and ashes were nearly bare. Their leaves lay damp and cold on the dark ground.  The musky scent of their decay hung heavy in the air.

Maggie meandered around the back yard for a while, her hunting senses overwhelmed with the scents, sights, and sounds of the autumn morning.  After she had settled on the perfect spot and completed her business near the hedgerow at the far edge of the yard, they headed back toward the house.  

Suddenly Maggie stopped in her tracks and whimpered, looking intently toward the tool shed.  She was standing stock still, her body rigid from her nose to the tip of her tail.  The hair along her spine stood up.  A low growl rolled in the back of her throat.  

Emily was shaken by the sight of a young girl standing near one corner of the tool shed.  Lanky shoulder length brown hair partially concealed her face.  The child appeared to be about twelve years old.  She wore a denim skirt, a light-colored blouse and an oversized sweater.   She seemed aware of Emily and the dog but made no attempt to greet them or move from her spot.

“Hello?  May I help you?” Emily called out anxiously.  She breathed shallowly as she peered at the odd girl. 

Emily took several steps toward her.  Maggie barked and lunged, straining at her leash.  As soon as they moved in her direction, the girl quickly and silently slipped out of sight around the corner of the shed.

Emily and the dog hurried across the yard until they reached the spot where she had stood, then they continued around behind.  Nothing.  Completing a full circuit of the shed revealed nothing still.  It was as if she had evaporated into thin air.  

“Please don’t be afraid,” Maggie called out self-consciously into the damp silence.  “If you need help, I’m here.”  She waited and listened intensely for a moment as the sound and energy of her voice dissolved into the foggy air.  She shrugged.  “Come on, Maggie.”  

That afternoon, Emily was in a spare room going through the last of the boxes from her move.  After a few hours’ work, all that remained were the boxes labelled “Chloe” or “Chloe’s room”.   She had been avoiding them, knowing what difficult memories and emotions the contents would trigger.  After staring at the first box for a long time, she gathered her courage and opened it.

She was gaining momentum, finding she was able to handle most of the contents without coming to tears.  She could not, however, apply the same “keep-donate-recycle” principle to Chloe’s things as she had to the more mundane household items in the other boxes.  She couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye to any of it.  Not yet anyway.

Her sorting came to an abrupt stop when she discovered a stuffed rabbit Chloe used to call “Hunny Bunny”.  They had brought the toy home and put it in her crib when she was only a few weeks old.  Chloe had rarely let it out of her sight; it had been in her hand the day she passed away.  Honey Bunny was severely worn, having been torn and patched up, washed and dried, dozens of times.  Emily held it tenderly, noticing a particularly worn spot between its ears.  Chloe had always rubbed it there as she was falling asleep.  Emily closed her eyes and pressed the little rabbit against her lips.  It still smelled fresh and clean, like the sheets and blankets in Chloe’s bed.  

The scent memory of the toy and the image of her daughter breathing her last brought Emily to tears.  She held Honey Bunny tightly to her chest and rocked back and forth, letting the emotions and memories take their course.  As she grieved, Emily was transported by her memory back to the room where Chloe had fought for her life.  

“I’m scared, Mommy.”

“I know, baby.  But don’t be.  Mommy will save you.  I promise.”

She knew as she said it that it wasn’t a promise she could possibly keep, but the thought of her ten-year-old lying awake at night sleeplessly, hopelessly facing the grim terror of death was heart-wrenching.  She would have said anything and would do it again in the same situation.  But the memory of that failed promise would haunt her every day for the rest of her life.  

The emotional intensity of the memory sapped Emily’s strength.  She cried herself to sleep on the floor of the spare room among the open boxes and wrapping materials.  Still holding her daughter’s toy, she dreamed of Chloe.  

It was a simple dream.  They were sitting cross-legged in a sunny green field facing each other.  A gentle breeze ruffled the grass and flowers around them.  As they looked into each other’s eyes, Emily sensed a restlessness in her.   Chloe spoke softly, but with firm resolve, “Help her, Mama. She is lost. Help her.”  And Emily whispered, “I will. I promise.”  Then just as quickly as the dream began, it ended.

A very different sort of feeling jerked Emily abruptly up and out of her dream.  She awoke feeling cold and oddly frightened.  When she opened her eyes, there in the open doorway of the spare room was the strange girl from the back yard gazing back at her.  Emily gasped.  She stood quickly and stepped backwards awkwardly, sending empty boxes tumbling.

“Who are you?  Why are you here?”  Her imagination reeled as she gazed at the mysterious child.  

Emily took a step toward her.  The girl immediately turned and disappeared down the hall as silently as she had appeared.  Emily hesitated for a moment, then quickly moved to the doorway and looked down the hallway, but she was already gone.

Emily went to the kitchen, hurriedly pulled on her coat and boots, and leashed Maggie.  She didn’t know what to expect, but whatever it was – she wanted some company.  Outside, squinting against snowflakes in a stiff afternoon breeze, she saw the girl standing again near the shed.  Maggie spotted her and whined.

The girl remained in place this time.  She allowed them to approach within a few yards, then she pointed at the base of the shed. 

“What do you want?” Emily called against the wind.

The girl shook her head and gestured pointedly toward the shed again, then disappeared before her eyes.  Everything in Emily’s sense of reason and reality was severely shaken.  She wondered if she was imagining what had happened.  “Am I losing my mind?” she whispered.  

Maggie was standing at the door of the shed.  She raised a paw and scratched.  Emily opened the door and Maggie barged in, immediately sniffing and scratching at the concrete floor. Emily kneeled close to her wondering what had captured the dog’s interest.  

As she knelt with her arm around Maggie’s shoulder, she felt an emotional presence.  But now there was a faint verbal element to the feeling - quieter than a whisper.  When she closed her eyes and focused intensely, she heard Chloe’s voice saying, “Amanda”.   

Emily opened her eyes.  The experience was terrifying and thrilling at the same time.  She stood up, gripped Maggie’s leash firmly, and said “Let’s go, girl.”  

As they hurried back to the house, she thought about that shed.  It was the only thing about the property that seemed out of sync.  It clearly wasn’t original construction.  It looked like one of those pre-built utility sheds that people buy and plunk down on a pre-poured concrete floor.  It couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen years old.

Emily decided she had to tell Carl what had happened.  She called him and breathlessly told him about the girl in the yard and her dream of Chloe.  When she had finished, he took a long moment before responding.  

“Em, I don’t know what to say about this.  You’re sure about what you think you saw and felt?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I want to.  I do.  But you’ve – I mean, we’ve been through a lot.  Obviously, losing Chloe has affected us in ways we can’t understand.  You’ve had some confusion before, Em.  Maybe this is just another part of that?”

“Okay.  I get it.  You think I’m just imagining it.  Well, I’m not.  I know what I saw.  I should have known you wouldn’t be any more supportive about this than you’ve ever been about anything else I’ve gone through since she died.  I’ve gotta go, Carl.”

Emily ended the call, grabbed her laptop and sat down at the kitchen table.  A Google search of “missing female girl Amanda in Carroll County, NH” turned up nothing helpful.  Then she added the names of several neighboring counties – Merrimack, Grafton, Belknap, Coos – and tried again.  

When her laptop screen refreshed, Emily’s breath literally caught in her throat.  The top entry included a photo of a now familiar looking 10-year-old girl, Amanda Crowley from Grafton County.  She had gone missing eleven years earlier.  Authorities had recently discontinued active efforts to find her. 

Emily sat back heavily in her chair.  She felt like a stone had dropped into her stomach.  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  She spent another hour or so doing more detailed searches of the case.  Amanda’s family had started a community project in her hometown as a focal point for missing children called Charlotte’s Garden.  There was a “go fund me” link with pictures and stories of her family.  

Emily was overwhelmed with emotion.  She knew all too well the pain of losing a child, but at least she had been there to hold Chloe’s hand as her body shut down.  She had always thought she couldn’t imagine anything worse.  But maybe this was it.  As she sat there thinking about Amanda and the pain her family had endured, she remembered Chloe’s plea from the dream, “Help her, Mama.”

At that moment, Emily’s heart began to pound, and she suddenly realized she was no longer tired.  In fact, she was feeling a rising, swelling flood of energy welling up from some unknown place within her.  She began to move on the fuel of pure adrenalin, without any conscious thought or plan of action.  

She stood up from the table, pulled on her boots, grabbed a solar lantern, and burst out the back door coatless and wild-eyed, leaving Maggie in the kitchen.  She returned to the shed, threw the door open, grabbed a pickax from a hook on the wall and began feverishly attacking the concrete floor.  She swung the pick over and over again, without any thought of whether she was strong enough or had enough stamina to breach the concrete.  

If she had been thinking rationally, she would have stopped almost immediately.  Her first few dozen strokes had almost no effect on the hardened concrete, but she didn’t even notice.  But she wasn’t thinking rationally.  Her motivating force was a zeal born of frustration, grief, penance, and a determination to help ease a stranger’s pain.  And she had made another promise to Chloe, which she would either fulfill or die trying to. 

Emily continued hammering away until the surface of the floor began to crumble.  She didn’t notice the blisters rising on both of her hands or the strain on her aching muscles.  Her intensity only increased when she saw the cracking concrete begin turning to chunks and rubble.  

At last, whether it was her waning energy or the growing realization that she may need to move a bit more slowly and carefully, she paused.  She leaned on the handle of the pickax and caught her breath for a moment, then set the pick aside and grabbed a garden hoe.  

Using the garden hoe, she began working more deliberately, moving chunks and smaller debris out of the way.  A few minutes later, about a foot below floor level, she noticed something blue.  She dropped the hoe and grabbed her solar light and a hand brush from the wall, then knelt down, tenderly moving the last layer of dust and debris out of the way by hand.  To her abject horror, she found the blue color she had exposed was a rolled up tarp secured with duct tape.   

Staring at her discovery, Emily allowed herself to slowly sit back with her knees up and her elbows on her knees.  A mixture of exhaustion and deep-seated grief consumed her.  She lowered her head between her knees and silently sobbed.  It was a wide-mouthed, gasping cry that rose up out of the depths of her soul.  The emotions came from a simmering stew of loss, empathy, sorrow, shame, regret, relief, love, anger, frustration, guilt and relief.

Emily allowed herself a good cry.  Then she struggled to her feet, returned to the house and immediately called the sheriff’s office.   She didn’t share the full details of her experience, but only that the dog had been acting odd in the shed and she noticed a weak spot in the concrete. She said that she had been evaluating the floor when she found the tarp.  The phone receptionist took her information and asked her to hold.  A few minutes later the receptionist returned and told her that a detective would reach out to her in the morning to plan a recovery. 

Around nine o’clock the following day a detective arrived, followed by a work truck and an excavating crew towing a backhoe.  They moved the shed and carefully cleared the floor as Emily looked on from her patio.  The officers removed the remains, packed them into an evidence bag and were on their way a few hours later.

Emily watched them go, then returned to the back of the house.  When she looked toward where the shed used to be, her eye was drawn to movement in the back part of the lawn.  She thought she saw, or she may have imagined that she saw, Chloe and Amanda walking together toward the field beyond the back yard.  The girls stopped and waved at her.  Chloe blew her a kiss.  She waved back, and together the girls turned and faded into the blue November afternoon.