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  Amanda’s eye twitched, and her shoulder shrugged. The steward’s mouth fell open but quickly regrouped, and he lowered himself in the empty chair next to her until he was sure she wasn’t going to pass out on his shift. After a few minutes, he left to resume his duties and prepare for the landing.

  At four minutes past four, ten minutes ahead of schedule, the pilot taxied to the terminal, thanking the passengers for flying.

  “Do you need assistance? Would you like a wheelchair? Is someone meeting you?” came the barrage of questions as Amanda gathered her belongings, ready to leave the plane.

  “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

  On her way out, she noticed the pilot and two staff watching as she exited the plane. They didn’t want a lawsuit on their hands, she surmised.

  Legs finally steady, insides on the brink of collapse, she made her way through the terminal, aiming for the baggage area sign where a company driver was waiting just past the sliding doors. Stalling, she found the women’s bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The outside looked intact. I can pull the meeting off, she decided. There would be time later to deal with the turmoil churning on the inside.

  For all these years, Amanda managed to ignore her demons and pretend they belonged to someone else. What have I done?

  Chapter 3

  May 4, 2018

  Light seeped in from behind the curtains. Amanda was still awake. There would be no more sleep for her, so she believed.

  The previous night, after the meeting, when she had finally made it to her hotel room on the tenth floor, she had seriously considered her options. She had opened the window, imagining rescue workers scraping what was left of her from the sidewalk. The hotel must have anticipated desperation; the pane only opened four inches.

  What if I broke the glass? No one to stop me from ending this nightmare. Amanda had banged on the windowpane with her fists, then had used the sweating metal pitcher. Nothing. Besides, she was too chicken to jump.

  Still in her hotel room at ten-thirty the next morning, Amanda paced the floor while her cell phone rang and pinged, again and again. She had already missed her eight o’clock meeting but didn’t care. It no longer mattered.

  The hotel room phone rang. Biting her lip, she reached for it. If I don’t answer, the staff will come in to check on me. Picking up the receiver, she waited for the caller to speak first.

  “Ms. Verchall, this is Fred at the front desk—”

  Before he could finish his spiel, Amanda said, “Yes?” She wanted him to end the call and leave her alone.

  “We have several messages left for you. Do you wish to have them sent up?”

  “No. I’ll get them later.”

  “We have a message marked urgent, Ms.—”

  “What is it?” she asked, sure it was the company president.

  “Mr. Baker—”

  Amanda dropped the phone. Searing hot, burning her hand.

  “Ms. Verchall. Amanda. Ms. Verchall…” came the faint voice from the handset as it clattered to the floor.

  Silence.

  It had begun — the past meeting the present, one incident at a time. Frantic, Amanda gathered her belongings and stuffed them in the rolling bag, but she couldn’t locate her laptop. Exasperated, she dropped to her knees, searching under the bed, then crawled across the room, hoisting herself when she reached the dresser. Nothing.

  Amanda tore the room, looking for it, but she couldn’t find it anywhere. Retracing her steps in her mind, she recalled using it at the meeting, then what? Did I leave it in the conference room?

  Her phone pinged again. An incoming text message. Hoping it was someone from the corporate office telling her they have her laptop, Amanda clicked on the text icon, which showed the number “7.” Seven missed messages. Quickly, she scrolled through them. One was from Brad. She didn’t read or answer it. They had an agreement when either was busy that the other would wait to receive a response. Amanda was busy. She still hadn’t even thought of what to do about him. Her priority was to find her laptop. She scrolled through the rest of the messages, but none were from Becky, the secretary.

  Just then, there was a knock on the door.

  “Damn, damn, damn.” Amanda glared at the blinking receiver and guessed it was hotel staff.

  She yanked the door open, and her jaw fell open. Mr. Passenger stood on the other side of the threshold, her computer case in his hand.

  “Ha… How did you get this?” Amanda stammered while she yanked the laptop from his grip.

  He let go, raising his hands in a surrender gesture.

  Amanda didn’t have the presence of mind to question how he found her.

  “You could say, ‘Thank you.’”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  She had a death grip on the laptop and its case, clutching it like a shield against her chest.

  “Can I come in?”

  She looked around the room. “This isn’t a good time.”

  He peered around her. It wasn’t difficult to notice the room she turned upside down in her frantic effort to find the computer. Pointing to the mess, he said, “Oh, that. Don’t worry about it.”

  Her brain twirled and circled, trying to figure out who he was and why he had her laptop. Amanda shook her head. She had to figure out what to do about the past now lurking in every corner, stalking her. Still, at the threshold, Mr. Passenger extended his hand. “I’m Philip Downes.”

  Once again, she shook her head, except this time in frustration, because she realized Mr. Passenger was the new marketing director for Batwell International, the corporation she worked for.

  Amanda shook his hand, still clutching the laptop to her chest with the left one. “I’m… I’m… sorry… damn!”

  He lifted one eyebrow, an exclamation that didn’t need to be verbalized.

  “Damn,” she repeated. Then, just as quickly, “Sorry.”

  “How about I meet you at the restaurant, let’s say in thirty minutes?” He pointed somewhere behind him, index finger down, indicating the restaurant in the lobby.

  “Thanks. No thanks. I can’t.”

  He turned around, his back to her, and walked toward the elevators as his voice traveled the corridor. “Thirty minutes.”

  Slamming the door, she let out a frustrated, “DAMN.”

  Amanda didn’t have to meet him. Didn’t want to meet him. At that moment, she didn’t care if her next promotion hinged on how she handled this Mr. Passenger – Mr. Downes. What she needed was time to figure out what to do.

  What if Andrew Baker came for her? What if he…

  Frustration and fear coursed through her veins, pumping toward her temples. A pounding headache followed. Merciless. Amanda fell backward on the bed and closed her eyes. A faint hum filtered through the silence, propelling her upward.

  Pressing her palms against the sides of her head, she looked toward the sound. The receiver lay on the floor. Letting go of her throbbing head, she bent to retrieve it, pressed the off button, and slammed the phone in its cradle by the digital clock. It winked 11:42 AM. What time did Mr. Downes leave?

  It didn’t take Amanda long to pack her bag. Once she made her exit, she would be lost in the sea of people, but when she looked in the bathroom mirror, it became clear that her messy hair and sunken cheeks would be anything but discreet. She didn’t care. It was time. No more putting off what she must do. Escape sounded good. She would vanish, never to be found again. Her other option was what? Tell Brad? So, he’d probably leave her? But that wasn’t her worst worry. He wouldn’t be the first or the last to walk out on her.

  Amanda’s life had been a revolving door as far back as she could remember. She didn’t feel wanted, and growing up, she was handed over from Auntie to Dad, to Grandma, to foster care. But somehow, she managed to succeed by pretending her past belonged to someone else. At thirty-six, Amanda was a successful program specialist in charge of multi-million-dollar projects because of her intelligence and perseverance to get through grad school by age twenty-three.

  She had to admit there was one person who cared, a counselor she encountered in high school.

  As she got dressed, her mind wandered to when she entered ninth grade. Her social worker had moved her to a new foster home because of an incident that took place at the previous one. An event that made her stomach turn and her knees wobble. She leaned on the doorframe to steady herself as she relived her past.

  The new home was across town, and she no longer attended school with the same kids of her eighth grade, which was good. Ms. Coops, her counselor, was the first person Amanda met upon enrollment. She would become her academic advisor until graduation. Why Ms. Coops took a liking to Amanda, she would never know, but Ms. Coops did. Perhaps, she pitied her.

  Ms. Coops knew Amanda was a foster kid; all information in the school district system was accessible to her. The counselor didn’t know why, though. She never asked, and Amanda didn’t tell. Not that Ms. Coops didn’t try to find out in a roundabout way. “I grew up in foster care. I never knew who my mother or dad was,” she said to Amanda one day.

  Amanda shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “You know, you can always talk to me. What we talk about is confidential except, of course, if you plan to hurt someone or yourself. I have to report—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re a mandated reporter, blah, blah, blah,” Amanda interrupted.

  She knew Ms. Coops meant well and cared, but by then, there was no way Amanda was going to let anyone close to her. For one thing, she didn’t trust anyone to stay. The second reason, she didn’t want anyone to find out what happened, although no one had implicated her in the accident.

  Hard as Amanda tried, she didn’t get Ms. Coops to forget about her. If anything, the counselor became more
insistent. She had over three-hundred students on her caseload, but somehow, managed to find time to call Amanda in at least once every few weeks. This continued throughout her four years in high school.

  In her senior year, Ms. Coops insisted Amanda apply for financial aid and to several universities in the area. “You are very smart. I’m not going to stand by and watch you throw away a future that’s at your fingertips,” she told Amanda one day.

  “Okay,” Amanda said, but she had no intention of applying. True, she had no clue what she was going to do or where she was heading, but she didn’t care.

  Ms. Coops didn’t let up. She called Amanda in one day, booted up a computer in the counseling office, and watched Amanda complete applications.

  To Amanda’s shock, she was accepted to all the universities she applied to. Not only that, the financial aid package covered all expenses. Sheepishly, she said, “Thank you, Ms. Coops, for everything.”

  Ms. Coops beamed as if Amanda handed her the winning lottery ticket.

  Graduation from high school and heading to college was the beginning of closing the door to her past. Amanda wanted out, out of the school, and out of the foster care system. She never bonded with the families she lived with, though she was told to be grateful a family wanted her. Yeah, whatever.

  On graduation day, as the seniors filed toward the field where the school conducted the ceremony, and the band played “Pomp and Circumstance.” That had the crowd cheering, whooping, and hollering. Amanda stared straight ahead and didn’t look at the stadium. She had no one. Her foster family didn’t bother, her mom was still in an institution somewhere, her grandmother too far, and her dad… Amanda bit her lip at that memory.

  At the gate to the field, Amanda was startled when she heard her name. Ms. Coops stopped her with a hug and placed an envelope in her hand. She had tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m proud of you, Amanda. Keep moving forward and upward. You can do it.”

  It wasn’t until later that night, when Amanda was alone in her room, that she opened the envelope to find a gift card for fifty dollars and the sweetest words ever written. She knew she didn’t deserve them.

  Amanda tucked the gift card in her wallet and ripped the greeting card into tiny pieces. The shredded words made their way to the trash bin in the corner of the room. She closed the lid to the trash and her past, a past she wouldn’t tell anyone about, not even Ms. Coops.

  The vibration of the phone on the bed jarred Amanda back to her current reality. What was her current reality?

  The battery on the cell showed “20%.” Amanda fumbled for the charger and found it buried beneath the rubble of her belongings, having hastily crammed it into the case earlier. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor after she emptied the bag in search of the charger.

  Gingerly, Amanda stepped over the pile and plugged the cord into the USB port on the lamp base. Once again, she flicked the phone on to read messages while it was charging. Unable to relax, she perched on the edge of the bed, one foot tapping against the side while her fingers hovered over the message icon.

  Her eye twitched, and her shoulder shrugged. Stress-exacerbated tics. Amanda ignored both and focused on the messages. She read through Becky’s easy enough. Amanda pretty much had predicted their contents anyway. Of course, the company wanted to know where she was, and if she was okay, and to “please call right away.” Project update and so on. She didn’t even bother to read the details.

  There were two text messages from Brad. One said to call him when she could. She couldn’t. Not yet. Amanda had to re-read the second one: Hey. Call when you can. I gave Andy your number.

  Brad had sent it on the day before at 2:34 pm. Amanda hadn’t told Brad about Andy or any part of her past. Telling him would’ve opened the door to questions she never wanted to answer.

  Worried, she listened to the voicemails. Most were similar to the text messages from work. She deleted them all. There were no voicemail messages from Brad, but that didn’t surprise her.

  Scattered among the work messages were ones from restricted numbers. No voicemail. They used to come occasionally, and Amanda thought it was telemarketers or someone dialing by mistake. In the past year, she had gotten them with more frequency. Could these calls have been from Andy all this time?

  At that moment, his words rang in her ears. He had warned her not to ignore him. Deep within, Amanda knew he meant it. Deep within, she knew he was the only one who had witnessed what she did.

  Chapter 4

  June 3, 1987

  Her fifth birthday was special. Amanda’s mother, Irene, ordered a clown performer to match the cake she had planned to make. Before the sun came up, Amanda woke to sounds drifting in from the kitchen. She guessed her mother was baking the cake she promised.

  Excited, she slipped her feet into her Ernie and Bert slippers and hurriedly descended the stairs, clutching her doll. But, as Amanda approached the midpoint landing, something didn’t sound like pots and pans and baking. Tiptoeing down the remaining seven steps, she soundlessly made it to the kitchen door and peered around the corner.

  Cabinets stood open, pots, and pans covering every counter. Flour and sugar painted the hardwood floor, leaving clouds in the still air. Her mother sat on the floor cross-legged, wiping away tears, streaking her cheeks with the powdery stuff. Amanda backed away, not sure who that woman was. She looked like her mother, but that wasn’t her.

  As she pulled back, Irene crawled forward, arms outstretched. Clutching her doll tighter to her chest, Amanda ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the safety of her room. Fear tingled her feet, making it hard to move, but she didn’t listen. She crawled into the closet and hid behind the boxes and clothes, trembling.

  Heavy footfalls approached the bedroom. Amanda imagined her mother dragging the flour and sugar meant for the clown cake, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was her mother back. She wanted this woman, Irene’s evil twin, gone. This was the third time she’d witnessed her mother’s transformation into a stranger.

  Making herself even smaller, she covered her head with a jacket that fell, still on the hanger, listening to toys, boxes, and clothes her mother moved.

  “Mandy? Amanda! I know you’re in here,” came her mother’s crazed, sing-song voice.

  Amanda shrunk further, holding her breath so her mother couldn’t hear her. Then, there was silence. Amanda didn’t have a watch because she couldn’t read one. She didn’t know how long she was in the closet, and she needed to pee, but was afraid to leave.

  When the doorbell chimed for the third time, Amanda crawled from her hiding spot and peered into the room. No one was there. Still clutching her doll, she ran to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, closing the door behind her. Afraid to make a sound, but unable to hold it in, she finally let out a stream into the toilet. She didn’t flush or wash her hands -- she had heard the pipes gurgling whenever her mother used the bathroom.

  Opening the bathroom door enough to slip out, she laid on her stomach and crawled to the railing. Auntie Emma was in the hallway. Amanda didn’t know who let her in. Sometimes, she just appeared. Maybe she had a key?

  The next few minutes or hours were a blur. Amanda didn’t remember much except for Auntie Emma, who saw her looking through the railing, ran up the stairs, folded Amanda in a hug, and rocked her. “Are you all right, pumpkin?”

  Her tears flowed. Amanda couldn’t speak.

  “Shh,” she cooed. “Everything will be all right.”

  Amanda wanted to ask about the cake and the clown, but she didn’t. Even her five-year-old brain knew not to ask. There wouldn’t be a party.

  Auntie Emma wasn’t a real auntie. She was a neighbor and friend of Irene’s since Amanda was a baby. Years later, Amanda found out when her mother was taken away, she gave Auntie Emma a note allowing her to be Amanda’s guardian. It was never made official through the courts.

  The five years with Auntie, Emma passed without anything memorable happening. Amanda went to school, and Emma took good care of her.

  She was smart; that’s what her teachers told Auntie Emma during parent-teacher conferences.