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“You’re talking about the wedding…” I said.
Her eyes lowered. “He asked me and I wasn’t sure how to respond. I mean, we’ve been together for so long and it’s the next logical step, right? I thought maybe it was time. I’m not getting any younger. And I didn’t want to throw away all the years we’ve spent together.”
I read between the lines. “But you’re not sure about spending the rest of your life with him.”
“It sounds terrible when you say it like that.”
“Are you getting cold feet?” I said.
Was I selfish for feeling glad she was having second thoughts? It meant we could still hang out together like the old days.
She shook her head. “No. I’m being silly. I doubt there’s a woman alive who’s tied the knot and not thought twice.”
I didn’t know. I wasn’t married and I’d never asked a married woman if she ever regretted getting married. It was a line of questioning that could cost you a promotion.
“Ignore me,” Hazel said. “I’m being stupid.”
Hazel was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.
“If you’re not certain, maybe you should push the wedding back a few months,” I said. “Give you time to think it over more.”
“Are you kidding?” Hazel said. “You know how long it took for me to get the church I wanted! No. I’ll think about it more later. It’s just a few last-minute doubts, that’s all.”
Now it was plural. Doubts.
I put a pin in it for the drive home. While the others were asleep in the back, I’d speak with her about it.
“Oh God,” Hazel said, turning green. “More’s coming up!”
She bent over and threw up, adding to the growing pile at her feet.
Slam!
The explosion of noise made me hop.
Ahead, emerging from a backdoor to the bar we’d been drinking in, a man stumbled, looking first our way, and then the other. He had a terrible haircut and a mustache that looked like it’d been glued on.
Please don’t come this way. Please don’t come this way.
The man slowly turned and shuffled off into the darkness. There was a lost look in his eye, confused. Maybe he had too much to drink, I thought. That didn’t sound right even though I couldn’t explain why…
Hazel heaved again and muttered barely intelligible words under her breath. “Never again. I swear to God. Never again…”
A breeze flapped a sheet of paper attached to the wall. It was a poster with a photograph in the middle and a number with a dollar sign at the bottom. At first, I thought it was a local girl looking for street work—fat chance, I thought, with the lack of men in this place. I hadn’t seen more than a handful since we arrived.
The photo wasn’t well chosen for that purpose. It was plain and face-on with no hint of her hot curves—assuming she had any—underneath. I scanned the word at the top of the page: MISSING, and that’s when it suddenly made sense.
This girl wasn’t looking for work. She was lost and her family was looking for her.
The image was faded, the face hard to recognize. Rain had washed out the colors and turned the paper crisp like a newly discovered treasure map.
Only, this treasure was unlikely to ever be found.
Maybe I was wrong. After all, how many people tore off the missing posters they’d put up after their loved one had been found? Not many, I bet.
A stiff breeze flapped my skirt around my legs and tore the poster off the wall. The woman stared up at me from that frozen image. And something struck me. With her shoulder-length hair and big eyes, she could have easily passed as me.
The thought gave me a shiver—that I might be witnessing my own future in that failed and forgotten rectangle of crumpled paper.
