Page 24 of Bred By the Minotaur
What did she mean?
Phoebe
“I can’t believe it,” Sandra says, hiccuping. “Everything was in there.”
We cried together for a while on the couch when I told her about the house. Before I came over with the news, she was feeling stronger than usual, able to walk around and arrange the lawn gnomes. But now she’s down and out for the count again.
I realized too late that Sandra’s documents were in the house too, in a filing cabinet along with mine. Now we both have to pick up the pieces of our lives.
“At least those letters are gone,” she says, shaking her head. It’s always been a point of contention that I kept them.
After Sandra and I had been taken by the state as kids, we tried to write home to our parents, but all our letters were returned.
Not undelivered. Returned.
I’ve kept them to remind myself what kind of people our parents were, and how I would never become like them.
“Well, you can sleep on the couch,” Sandra says, right as the sun starts coming up. “Let me get the pillows.”
“It’s fine. Go to bed. I’ll handle it.” I know where everything is, anyway. It’s all labeled.
Sandra nods and heads to her bedroom while I make myself comfortable on the sofa. If I had my phone, I could find that photo of Hank. That’s what I wish I had right now—the warm arms he put around me in the car. Maybe then I could sleep.
I wake up a few hours later to bright midday light coming in the windows, and I blink bleary eyes. Once Sandra’s up, too, I’m able to log into my work email from her computer and tell my boss what’s happened.
All my equipment, gone. Horror dawns on me as I realize every piece of art I’ve ever created, every design I’ve ever done, has now vanished along with my machine. All my backup drives were in the same place as my computer—inside the house.
I’m beginning to melt down when Sandra finds me. She’s also exhausted from a lack of sleep.
“You had a cloud backup, right?” she asks tentatively.
“Just essentials. Work stuff was all backed up to the company shared drive, but nothing p-p-personal...” Tears leak from my eyes again, and I wonder if I’ll cry for the rest of my life. “Nothing personal survived. It’s all gone.”
I think of the koi painting, only half finished but one of my best pieces yet, and burst into sobs.
Sandra makes me some cereal for breakfast because that’s the most she can do on her feet, while I use her phone to call the bank and order new credit cards. It’s all so tedious, so terribly trite, each call I have to make just to pay for food. I still won’t have a way to pay in the meantime, and I can’t withdraw cash without a driver’s license, so I’ll just have to make do with what Sandra’s got.
“You know everything that’s mine is yours,” my sister says, putting her arms around me. “We’ll get through this, Feebs.”
I try to feel her confidence, but it’s so far out of my reach.
My work gives me a week off to get my life straightened out again, but I don’t think that will be nearly enough time. At least my car was safe from the fire, since my garage is full of crap and I park it on the street.
I fall asleep in the early evening to the sound of Jeopardy, a half-eaten box of Chinese food sitting on the coffee table. My dreams are all filled with fire, swirling upward into the air, taking everything in the world that means anything to me along with it.
Ten
Hank
Knowing Phoebe is right down the street makes me rock hard.
The mother of both of my calves, the woman I’ve been hungering for going on six years now, is only a few houses away.
I explain to my mother the next day how I happened to be sent to a fire—and it was my surrogate’s house.
“And after all that, she still hasn’t messaged you?” Mom says, tut-tutting.
“She doesn’t even have a phone anymore.” And probably no way of buying a new one. “Hey, where’s that old phone we were talking about giving to Milo when he’s older?”
