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“Bad things happen when I am,” I said.
Bryant studied me intently. “Hmm, like when your friend Maggie left you back in the cave.”
I startled. How could he know me so well?
“Yes, that,” I sighed. “Cowardly, I know.”
“Not anything unusual, especially for a woman.”
I pursed my lips at him. “It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m a woman, you chauvinist.”
“Shov-a..? Tell me what it is then. Please.”
Another fierce, indignant glare, then I ease and decided to share the origins of my humiliating character flaw.
“It goes back to the time when I was seven-years-old, I suppose,” I said.
At Bryant’s gentle prodding, I shared the incident when I had been left behind at a local museum.
Our class was on a field trip, and the chaperones all assumed I was with another. Somehow, I was separated from the group, and there was miscounting before everyone returned to school. I had wandered the maze of corridors and rooms, searching for anyone familiar, every terrifying step growing tearfully worse.
“Some man asked me if I was lost,” I continued. “I didn’t want to take his outstretched hand, I don’t know why. He looked genial enough, but there was just something about him...”
I visibly shuddered at the creepy recollection.
“An elderly woman noticed us, then rushed up and took my hand after confirming that I didn’t know the man from Jack Squat. Maybe the whole thing was innocent, and the man was honestly trying to help. Either way, I went more willingly with the woman as she escorted me to the security office.
“The museum contacted my mother who was frantic when she picked me up. I remember her squeezing the stuffings out of me, then giving me a tongue-lashing for not paying more attention and wandering away from my class and how many times has she warned me never to walk off with any stranger at any time.”
“Callista, you must be more careful and observant,”my mother furiously stated, her hand gripping mine tightly as we headed in double-time for the exit. “You can’t be so careless. There are people, evil people, out in the world who would take you at their first chance.”
A common kneejerk reaction from a frantic parent, of course.
Still, I often thought it hadn’t been quite unfair of her. I was only seven after all.
We moved to Billings, Montana two days later.
Mom had been offered another job. We changed our last names again, this time to Hartford.
It was a perfect time for a fresh start, she said.
“It must have been a very difficult experience for a frightened young girl,” Bryant said, bringing me back to the present.
“It wasn’t all bad,” I added. “The security guard gave me some strawberry newton cookies. You know, to this day every time I taste strawberries, I still get this warm sense of wellbeing.”
“It ended well then.”
“I suppose so. Speaking of museums,” I added to gratefully change the subject. “Did anyone ever tell you that you exactly like the famous Michael Bryant who lived here a hundred years ago?”
“Not that anyone’s mentioned.”
“Well, you do. The spitting image of the man, in fact. There’s a picture of him in my friend’s museum.”
“Is that a fact?” he remarked. “Imagine that, poor devil. And the man with my own name, too. Not that Bryant isn’t common enough.”
“Maybe you and he are related,” I remarked.
Bryant helped me over a fallen tree limb, but my bare calf got scratched in the process.
