Page 20 of Unnatural
She moved her hand along the curved, butter-smooth wood of the back. “It’s beautiful. It’s the best gift I’ve ever received,” she said, meeting his eyes.You’re the best gift I ever received.She reached up and hugged his neck. “Thank you, Bill.”
“You’re welcome, darlin’.”
She gave the chair one last admiring look. “Do you have a few minutes to visit?”
“There will never be a time when I don’t have at least a few minutes for my favorite girl.”
Love and warmth enveloped her. She smiled, and together they walked toward the front porch, taking their usual seats in those old rocking chairs. The ones where they’d first established the rules of their newfound, unexpected father-daughter relationship, the ones they’d sat in as Autumn had later complained about teachers, shed a few tears about bad dates and breakups, talked about plans and dreams. She’d confided that she wanted to be a nurse as they’d sat in these chairs, and she’d later opened the letter that had told her she’d been accepted into the nursing program at a nearby college. He’d brought out a bottle of champagne that shehadn’t seen next to his rocker because he believed in her so wholeheartedly and popped the cork, and she’d laughed and cried and hugged him hard. “What would you have done if I hadn’t gotten in?” They clinked glasses, hers very small. And he’d grinned and said he would have very covertly used his foot to slide the bottle under his chair. She’d laughed and then cried again. And now here she was, an RN who loved her job every bit as much as she’d dreamed.
It was in this very spot where she’d told him about the first fourteen years of her life and then later haltingly confided in him about waking in the woods, about the dream that was no dream, and about the boy made of moonlight. She’d expected Bill’s disbelief. But he had believed her. He’d asked questions, tried to puzzle it out with her, and though she hadn’t cried in that instance, she almost had. It was the first time she’d put her experience to words. And talking about it had brought it back to life. She’d needed time to adjust to her new life, her new home, her newfound health, and in that time, she’d almost begun to believe that the experiencehadbeen a dream…or…something misty and inexplicable, brought on by the medication. But telling Bill had brought back thefeelingof what had happened while she’d supposedly slept in her bed and ofhim, the specifics of his eyes, the silken shine of his hair, and the particular scent of his skin. He wasreal. And though easier, though far away and removed from her current life, she would not forget him.
There hadn’t even been time for an inquiry. The Mercy Hospital for Children had mysteriously closed a year after she’d arrived on Bill’s doorstep, two months before she’d worked up the nerve to spill all her secrets to him. She’d been crushed when she’d found out, not only because shehad no idea how to find her friends or potentially the boy from the woods but because there was now no way to prove what she’d experienced had been very real.
She’d seen doctors every few weeks at first, and they’d done extensive testing that showed she was generally healthy if underweight, anemic, and deficient in several vitamins and minerals. They’d given her instructions on how to wean off the pharmaceuticals she was on, which was easy considering she’d already gone off those medications. Her health hadn’t only remained stable, it’d improved vastly, so she’d been cleared for checkups every month, then every six months, and finally once a year like any other ordinary person.Ordinary.One of the most beautiful words in the English language to Autumn. She was ordinary. Not only of body but of mind. She’d told her doctor about the dreams she’d once had, though not all the particulars—not about the dirt under her fingernail or the singular pale hair hidden under her tongue—and he’d nodded and said, yes, that was very typical for those prescribed the medications she’d taken.
She’d had a life to live, classes to attend, goals to achieve. Still, she hadn’t given up. She’d spent her spare hours attempting to track down the kids she’d once lived with and the nurses too, particularly Salma. But she’d run into one dead end after another. And she’d been an hour and a half out of the city, only able to do her investigative work by phone.
Bill had done what he could, but he too had been brushed off by social workers, blatantly told to cease encouraging Autumn that her dreams were reality or that the hallucinations she’d experienced had been real. Side effects. Merely side effects, and common ones at that. It wasn’t helpful to humor her, they said. He owed it to his new charge tomake it possible for her to settle into her new life, and she could see in his eyes that though he believed Autumn, he also didn’t disagree with that part of their advice. There was really no tangible proof of what she’d told him, only the claims of a once highly medicated girl. There might be other explanations, right? There was plentiful information on the internet about not only the dreams that came along with the medication Autumn had been on all her life but the fact that in some children, it also caused the hallucinations the doctors had spoken of. What if she’d sleepwalked? What if her experience was somethingotherthan what it seemed? Not nefarious but…explainable? Was it likely, or even possible, that the hospital where she’d once lived had been purposely putting their patients in danger…offering them up as…what? Prey to be hunted by…human monsters? The more Autumn tried to make sense of it and the further away in years she moved, the more itfeltlike a hallucination…a fever dream…distant and separate from reality. She didn’t even have her journal anymore, the chronicle of her time at Mercy Hospital and the whisperings of her soul as she’d trudged through a valley of shadows toward what she assumed was an almost certain death.
Yet despite the somewhat bleary nature of the first part of her life, and even though her new existence was filled with stability, with friends, with ordinary problems and mundane days, she couldn’t escape the vision ofhimthat still filled her mind when she closed her eyes. Her moonlight boy.
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 ata 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 thatGeniebelieved 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, didshe 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—anddid—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.”
