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  “Me?” She took a swig of beer. “I live the game.”

  “Good,” Carmen said with a satisfied smile. “Cheers.” She touched her glass to Sara’s.

  Chapter Seven

  A very tired Sara dragged her ass in to work the next morning. Basketball and bed aerobics with Carmen had not been enough to hold back the dreams. At least she’d been smart enough to go home after said aerobics. Only Tabitha had been witness to Sara’s screams, followed by a move to the living room and the distracting noise of the TV.

  As she clocked in, she gave a silent thanks for Friday. Eight hours, then she was going home and crashing. If there was an all-knowing deity, she’d be allowed to sleep through the entire weekend.

  “Rough night?” Jackson asked.

  Seeing the concern on his dark brown face, she found herself saying, “Well…yeah.” Embarrassment had her quickly following with, “I’m okay for work though.”

  “Didn’t say you weren’t.”

  Not sure how to reply, Sara stowed her belongings in her locker, then checked the assignment board. Good, she was on door duty during the morning rush, then garage patrol. No way would she fall asleep while on her feet. “Anything I should worry about? I mean work-related.”

  “Friday’s always light, and with King Holiday on Monday, it’ll be even lighter.”

  His matter-of-fact tone had her daring to turn around. He wasn’t going to press for information. “I’d forgotten we have Monday off.” Another day for which she’d have to find something to chase away the nightmares. “You have plans?”

  “Oh, yes indeed. I’ll be doing some work at one of my grandbabies’ school. Do something like that every year to pay my respects to the Man.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “A group of us will be sprucing up the grounds, painting, building some reading lofts. What about you?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably nothing.”

  “We can always use an extra hand if you’re interested. For a good cause.”

  Sara stuck her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. It would get her out of the apartment, take her mind off the nightmares. “Do I need to sign up or something?”

  “Nah, just show up and find me.” He dug around on his desk. “Here’s a flyer. I’ve recruited a couple of the other guards, so there’ll be someone there you know. Be sure to bring work gloves if you have them.”

  She nodded, folded up the flyer and stuck it in her pocket. “I’ll, uh, get to it then.”

  As Sara took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, she decided she must look pitiful. That’s the only reason she could come up with for Jackson’s invitation. But whatever the reason, she was going to show up and work her ass off. What she wasn’t going to do was think about another birthday without that Batman bike, another birthday without her mother or father.

  Her eyes stung. “Not here.” She blinked furiously, blew out a sharp breath, forced herself into the now.

  She was doing a good job of it by the time she pushed open the bathroom door on the fourteenth floor. The smell hit her nose and then her stomach. She swallowed hard and breathed through her mouth. Someone had obviously gotten past security. Someone who didn’t have access to a bath tub or know how to flush a toilet.

  “Security. Come on out,” she said, trying to sound authoritative. It was hard when she wanted to hurl. “I said, come on out.” Sara squared her shoulders and advanced on the stalls. There were five stalls, but most likely the culprit was in the handicapped one because of its larger size and location farthest away from the door.

  The smell got worse with each step. Using her foot, she pushed open the door and took in the bundled up older woman sitting between the toilet and the wall. The puddle on the floor accounted for some of the smell. “Ma’am, you need to get out of here.” The woman didn’t stir. Sara slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. Now she understood why they were recommended. She shook the woman’s shoulders, and her head lolled as if it wasn’t attached. With dawning horror, Sara realized the woman wasn’t just asleep. She ran into the next stall, where, to her shame, she lost her breakfast. Once she cleaned up, she let Jackson know, then stood guard outside, not wanting anyone else to go through what she had.

  Jackson arrived shortly, and Sara was glad to have him take over. Shock set in and she slid down, her back to the wall, and prayed for the day the poor woman’s face would be a dim memory. A dead body. She’d discovered a dead body. She rubbed her arms, taking deep breaths to get rid of the shakes.

  Why me? she wondered. Wasn’t it enough she had the dreams? It wasn’t fair she had to deal with the dead during waking hours as well.

  “Police’ll be here soon. You just tell them what you saw. Nothing else.” Jackson knelt beside her. “Looks like she’s been gone less than three hours.”

  That made Sara feel worse, like if she’d gotten there a little bit sooner, the woman might still be alive. She exhaled and told herself to stop being stupid. Three or four minutes earlier wouldn’t have changed anything. That woman’s death was not on her.

  By the time the first police officer arrived, Sara was no longer afraid she’d break down and make a fool of herself. He was a big, burly guy with a kind demeanor. He took her report without asking many questions, then entered the bathroom. Sara wondered if cops became desensitized to dead bodies over the years. She didn’t think she ever would. She swallowed hard as a picture of the blood-spattered kitchen, along with her parents’ bodies, tried to form in her mind. It could have been worse, she told herself, rocking back and forth.

  “You okay?” Jackson asked, putting a hand on her arm. “You’re looking mighty pale.”

  She nodded automatically. “I thought she was sleeping, I swear I thought she was sleeping and I ordered her to leave.”

  He patted her arm awkwardly. “That’s okay. Why don’t you take a walk? Get some air. I’ll do the rest of the floors.”

  “I’ll wait until they come get her. That seems like the right thing to do.”

  “You sure?”

  She really wasn’t. “Yes.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Yeah. I…I can do that.”

  “If you want, you can clock out after that and go home.” He was obviously concerned.

  “No, no. I’m okay. I’m okay. Just shook. I’ll go outside…after. Walk around. I’ll be okay.”

  It seemed to take hours, but finally the body was taken away. Sara said a prayer, asking for someone to bless the poor soul even as flashes of her own nightmare tried to surface.

  When the cleaning crew arrived, she all but sprinted to the stairwell, a sudden need to be outside overwhelming her. She had to get away from the scene before it changed into the one from her nightmare. If she stayed near that bathroom one more second, she was afraid she’d be back in that kitchen, back to crying over the dead bodies of her parents.

  As she tore down the first few flights of stairs, her head began to clear and reason returned. The dead woman in the bathroom was real. Her nightmares about her parents were not. “Simple, you idiot.” Her laugh, which was close to being hysterical, made her realize she wasn’t in control, wasn’t close to being in control.

  She slowed her pace to something less than breakneck speed and wondered if she was ever going to be able to deal with what happened years ago. Wondered if everything that happened to her went back to that loss. Wondered if she had it in her to stop letting everything that happened to her be colored by her loss. Because that’s what she’d been doing for far too long. Her parents hadn’t wanted to die in that car crash, and they certainly wouldn’t have wanted her to die along with them. But that’s sort of what she’d been doing, more and more these last few years. Maybe not dying, but she’d certainly been shutting down, pulling away from living a full life. Sara dropped down on a stair and pressed her fingers to her burning eyes. She had to find a way to deal with her parents’ deaths, to finally put the senseless tragedy behind her.

  A door slammed agains
t the wall just below her, bringing her to her feet. She felt her eyes go wide as a woman entered the stairwell, put her hands over her mouth and emitted a muffled scream. Looked like her day was going about as well as Sara’s.

  This was intended to be a private moment, obviously. But where could she go? No matter which way she went, the woman would hear her. She settled for clearing her throat loudly. The woman dropped her hands and whirled around, her eyes wide. It was Mikaela.

  “Oh! Oh God, I thought I was alone.” Her eyes zeroed in on Sara’s. “Sara? What are you doing here? You okay?”

  “Not really. Found a dead person in the bathroom on the fourteenth floor.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry that was you. Homeless, I assume.”

  “Looks that way. She…She had a couple of bags with her.”

  “Probably only wanted a warm, safe place to spend the night. What a shame. For both of you, for humankind.”

  Sara nodded and walked down the remaining stairs that separated them. “So, what’s up with you? Don’t tell me you found a dead homeless woman too.”

  “In retrospect, my problem’s not that bad. Death does a great job of putting things in perspective. Again, I’m sorry you had to find her like that.”

  “I’m sorry she had to die alone and on a public bathroom floor. Shouldn’t happen.”

  “Sometimes this world sucks. The family I do have may be on the minus scale of normal, but I know I can depend on every one of them to be there if need be.”

  Lucky you, Sara thought. After graduation, Sara had been quickly introduced to self-sufficiency. The one cousin she sort of kept in touch with could not be termed supporting. “Listen, I need to get back, uh, to it. See you later.” She ran down the next flight of stairs before Mikaela could make another comment. She wasn’t looking to talk about family or the lack thereof. Not now when she was still off balance, when the past and the present seemed too closely intertwined.

  It would be different one day, she vowed. Maybe even next year. By then she will have seen the police report of the accident. She will have visited the site where her parents died and finally made her peace. Next year she would actually celebrate her birthday, do something big. At least that’s what she told herself over and over again while circling the block to clear her head.

  * * *

  Sara glanced at the stairs. She wanted to go to her parents’ room, crawl into their bed and pull the covers over her head. That’s what she did when she got scared during the middle of the night. But it wasn’t the middle of the night, and even if it was, that wouldn’t work now. She couldn’t be safe if her mom and dad wouldn’t wake up. Couldn’t be safe if her mom and dad had gone to heaven like their dog, Zippy. So she would sit on the sofa and wait for the police like the lady on the phone said to do.

  Her heart galloped when the doorbell rang. What if it wasn’t the police? What if it was the bad guys coming back to get her? She wanted to return to her hiding place real bad. Maybe if she did that things would be different. Maybe if she went back up there and then came back down, her parents would be in the kitchen kissing or dancing.

  The door opening had her diving behind the couch. She covered her mouth to hold back a scream.

  “Sara? Sara Gordon, it’s the police. You can come out now, we’re here to help.”

  She peered around the sofa and saw two officers standing by the front door. They looked official to her. “I’m Sara,” she said quietly and stood so they could see her.

  “Hi, Sara. I’m Officer Rick,” the one with the blond hair said. “And this is my partner, Officer Meeks. Can you come to the car with me? We can talk about what happened.”

  “My mom and dad won’t wake up. The kitchen’s all messy and they won’t move.” Tears welled up in her eyes and her bottom lip trembled. “My mom doesn’t like a messy kitchen.”

  “My partner will look after your mom and your dad while you and I talk.” He smiled and held out a hand. “I have a girl about your age. Her name is Wendy.”

  “Like in Peter Pan?” she asked and slipped her hand in his. It was big like her dad’s.

  “She keeps waiting for him to come fly her away to Neverland.”

  Sara thought that was silly. People couldn’t fly. Even her dad said people couldn’t fly. But her dad couldn’t say that anymore. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I don’t wanna be all by myself.”

  Officer Rick picked her up and patted her back. “You should let me worry about that for now.”

  Sara blinked back tears and rested her cheek against his shoulder. It was hard, just like her dad’s. Only she didn’t have a dad anymore. Or a mom. “The baby stopped moving. I put my head against Mom’s stomach, but he didn’t kick me like he does sometimes. Is he dead too? I don’t want them to be dead.”

  * * *

  “No!” Sara forced her eyes open, forced herself to look around the darkened room and realized where she was. “Thank God.” She sat up, happy to be in the apartment, in her bed. “Okay. I’m okay. Only a dream.” Drawing her legs up against her chest, she wrapped her arms around her knees. The dream had seemed so real. She would swear she could still feel the hardness of the policeman’s shoulder under her cheek, the feel of his big hand as he patted her back, the smell of his cologne, so different from her dad’s. She could swear she remembered staring at the blue light flashing on top of the black and white car as it sat haphazardly parked, partly on the driveway and partly on the grass her dad was so proud of.

  When she rubbed her arms, she could feel the goose bumps brought on by the sight of the black body bags being loaded into the long car, could remember how hard she had cried, sitting on Officer Rick’s lap in the back of the cruiser.

  She shook her head, needing to distance herself from a dream so vivid it felt like a memory. Her parents had died in a car wreck. That’s what she’d been told, what she’d grown up knowing. Her Aunt Liddy had no reason to lie about that.

  Sara slid from the bed, hanging onto her sanity by a thread, and turned on the light. Even as bright light flooded the room, the memories kept coming. Memories of talking to Officer Rick about the hiding space, about hearing the loud noises and about going downstairs to the kitchen. Later, after she’d talked and talked, a short round woman came and took her away. Left alone in the strange bed with the scratchy pink sheets, Sara had cried herself to sleep, then awakened later, screaming for her parents.

  “Oh God, not a nightmare.” It was a memory.

  She pressed her fingers against her eyes, surprised when they came away wet, surprised when she broke down and cried, much like her younger self had in that room where nothing was familiar.

  There was a dull throbbing behind her eyes when the tears finally dried up. She held her head and tried to make sense of what was happening, of what had happened. Maybe the events had been too traumatic for her to think about? So she’d just crawled inside her mind and blocked everything out? She couldn’t remember waking up the next morning. Couldn’t remember meeting Aunt Liddy or traveling to Oklahoma City. But she had lived through that and more.

  “Either that or I’m crazy.” The idea of being crazy wasn’t as scary as she’d thought it would be. And perhaps being crazy was more palatable than her parents being shot to death.

  With a sigh, she worked a pillow under her head and remembered the police report. It was now more important than ever. Jackson would have to let her take a couple of hours on Tuesday. She’d go to the Records Department and get the report in person. Then she’d know for sure. Then she could…What? Be sane?

  “You trying to help?” Sara looked down at Tab, who was butting her arm. “I guess you think if I’m awake I should pet you.” She hefted the tabby onto her lap, stroked her soft, shiny fur and was rewarded with a deep purr. “If only my problems were so easily solved. Problem,” she corrected. There was only one problem, and come Tuesday, she’d have a handle on it. Other than that, her life was fine. She was happy being the carefree single, able to pick up and move when the m
ood hit. Hadn’t she been proving that since she was eighteen?

  “Damn straight,” she told Tab around a yawn. “I do fine by myself.” But as she drifted back to sleep, thoughts of the homeless woman crowded her mind. Would that be her—dying alone with nobody to care she was gone? Sleep was a long time coming.

  * * *

  Mikaela got up with the daylight Sunday morning. She’d made the horrible mistake of getting on her sadistic roommate’s new scale the day before. After the shock of seeing how much she weighed had faded, she’d resolved to start exercising regularly. Of course she’d made that resolution before, but this time she meant it.

  She put on her workout clothes and grabbed her cell. Next stop, Grant Park. It should take her less than thirty minutes to circle the park, longer if she did it twice. During the week, she would get up early and jump on Casey’s fancy treadmill with all the bells and whistles. Maybe eventually get to a slow jog. The running she did all too regularly to catch the bus in the morning would not count, even if it did get her heart pumping.

  Once outside and inspired by a throbbing beat coming from her ear buds, she set a fast pace up the car-lined street. At Boulevard she hooked a left, deciding the steep hill on Atlanta Avenue was best tackled going downhill today. The temperature, which had seemed cold when she started out, turned invigorating as she warmed up. There were a few others out running or walking their dogs, but mostly she had the sidewalk to herself as she huffed and puffed her way to weight loss. The experience was unexpectedly pleasant.

  After twenty minutes, she was ready to upgrade the experience from pleasant to enjoyable. Her heartbeat was strong, sweat was beading on her forehead and she felt like she was accomplishing something. This exercising was almost fun. Almost something that could become a habit as long as that damn scale didn’t continue to taunt her.

  She looked at her watch as she rounded the corner onto Park Street, realized she was making good time and decided to prolong her walk by doing a lap inside the park. The path that ran through the park meandered and the scenery was better. She smiled as two adorable black puppies wrestled each other under the watchful eye of their owner. One day she’d have her own place and a dog. One day.