Page 66 of Amnesty

“I don’t understand why they aren’t here. Maggie wouldn’t say.”

“Maggie didn’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“I want to know!” She pulled back, a freaked-out look clouding her eyes.

“Your parents aren’t coming,” I said gently. “They would if they could. They would have been the first ones through that door.”

“Why, Eddie?” Her voice broke. “Why?”

I swallowed, remembering how much her father hated me, how much he would hate I was here now.

“There, uh, was an accident,” I explained, trying to ease into it.

“What kind of accident?”

“A car accident,” I replied. “Your mom and dad, they, uh, they didn’t make it.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Her face screwed up as if she couldn’t understand what I was telling her. “A car accident,” she whispered. After a moment, her watery eyes connected with mine. “They died?”

I nodded, my own eyes stinging. “Yes, sweetheart. They did.”

A low wail filled the room, and she collapsed in my arms, crying into my chest. I held her because there was nothing else I could do. Nothing that could make any of this even slightly better.

She cried for a long time, occasionally whispering, “Mommy,” or, “Daddy.”

Eventually, she stopped crying, but her pain still filled the room. She clutched at my shirt, leaving her face buried against me. A short while later, she turned her head, pillowing her cheek on my chest. “When I was… gone, I thought about them every day. I wondered if they missed me. If they looked for me.”

“They missed you. And they never stopped looking,” I answered, hoping it gave her even a small amount of peace. “The entire town searched for you. Even the island. More than once.”

“I heard them.” She confided. “But I wasn’t able to call out. He wouldn’t let me. Eventually, they stopped searching.”

“Eventually,” I echoed. “But no one ever stopped hoping.”

She sat up. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were bloodshot. “Even you?”

“Especially me.” I tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “Your hair isn’t as blond as I remember. It’s more gold now.”

“He said it was my best feature.”

He was a filthy, sick pig that I would gut like a fish if I got the chance.

“How long ago did they die?” she asked.

“It’s been several years.”

“Before they… before the accident, they were okay?”

I decided not to tell her about her father’s drinking problem and the strain it put on her mother. I wanted her to remember them as the people they actually were, not the ones they became because of unfortunate circumstances.

“They missed you so much,” I told her, taking her hand. “But yeah, they were fine.”

“What about you?” she asked, staring up at me with wide brown eyes.

“I missed you, too.”

“You never got married?”

I was too busy waiting for you.

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