Page 55 of Hollow Child

“You find anything you like?” the bespectacled woman I had seen working here before asked, and I looked up from a battered copy ofShaneby Jack Schaefer. “That one’s a real classic from my own personal collection.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked.

“It’s one of my favorites,” she enthused. “Are you that friend of Lazlo’s?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Has he been around lately?”

“Not today, but he does come in from time to time,” she replied.

“I am so sorry to interrupt, Athena, but I am in a state that requires interruption,” Mayor Vaughn Douglas said, and he came walking over to us with his sight fixed on the bespectacled purveyor of the Athenaeum. His hand was resting on his tailored vest made of chocolate colored corduroy, and he gave me an apologetic smile. “I promise to take but a moment of the lady’s time.”

“Sure, no problem.” I stepped to the side to flip through the book and give them both space.

“Do you have anything to settle a stomach?” Vaughn asked her quietly. “I have been under the weather for days, and none of my usual remedies seem to be doing the trick.”

“I have some ginger tea I could make with a little honey,” she offered. “That usually settles my tummy.”

“I would be much obliged if you could whip me up one of your finest cups of ginger tea posthaste,” he beseeched her.

“Sure thing, Mayor,” Athena said, and before she went to do that, she turned back to me. “If you’re looking for Lazlo, she’ll know where he is.”

She pointed to someone who had just walked in, and I looked over to see a thin blonde young woman dressed in a meticulously styled distressed sweater and torn denim skirt. Her long, wavy hair was underneath a black hat with a wide brim. She wore heavy eyeliner and lipstick. The thick pink burn scar that ran from her chin on the right side down her neck to below her cheek was new.

“Harlow?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “Remy?”

I walked over to her. “Holy shit. You are so grownup!”

Lazlo had told me how she was doing, and I knew that she wasn’t the young girl I had last seen eight years ago. But it was still another thing to witness it for myself.

“And you’re…” Harlow looked over me with an expression I couldn’t read. “… you’re basically the same.”

I glanced down at myself and shrugged. “I suppose I don’t change much.” Then I motioned to a nearby table. “Do you want to sit down and have some tea or something?”

“Sure.”

We sat down together and ordered lavender tea, and Athena brought it out in two mismatched ceramic cups. The silence between us felt heavy and unexpected, and my thoughts went back to the last time we had spoken.

Harlow had only been thirteen then, and she’d overheard that I was planning on leaving her for good.

“How could you do that?” She looked at me, her eyes sad in the fading light. “You were gonna leave without saying goodbye.”

“I didn’t know how to. I thought it’d be easier on you,” I said.

“You thought disappearing would be easier?” Harlow looked at me skeptically. “After all the people I’ve lost who I never got to say goodbye to?”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I don’t want you to go,” she said quietly.

“I know. But this is a nice place here, for you.” I lowered my voice a little bit, knowing that Lazlo was probably eavesdropping. “And Lazlo needs you. He needs someone to take care of him.”

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked.

“Honestly, I really don’t know.”

Without warning, she threw her arms around me, and I hugged her for as long as she would let me. After she calmed down, we went back inside, and I didn’t see her again.

---