Chapter 4
The general appointments section of the hospital Cleo worked at was small but quiet. They didn’t have many patients who needed to come in for routine tests that couldn’t get them to their regular doctor. The benefit of this, though, was that Abigail got the whole waiting room to herself as she waited for Doctor Lavender to call her and advise her on the next steps. They had already spoken about the details, and now all she needed was for him to get back to her. She tapped her foot against the shiny floor. It wouldn’t hurt if he could be a bit quicker about it.
The longer she waited, the more she regretted letting Cleo drop her off. It would be at least a few more hours until Cleo could pick her up, and she was in the mood to go home. She swiped at her phone to open her eBook app but quickly closed it again. Her phone was nearly dead, and she needed to maintain the battery for as long as possible.
Abigail sighed and rose from her seat.
The older woman behind the counter glanced up at her as she did.
“Sorry,” Abigail said, “just waiting for my specialist to send through the thing still.”
The woman nodded. It was the same explanation as the last three times they’d had this interaction.
“Actually, do you have a charger I could borrow for my phone?”
The nurse was in her mid to late sixties, and it looked like she probably hadn’t changed her look since graduating college. A heavily penciled eyebrow rose, and Abigail plowed on—maybe killing her with kindness would help.
“I’m usually really good with the waiting game. I’ve spent thousands of hours in hospitals,” she said, her face falling as the nurse”s other eyebrow rose to join its friend. “Not as many as you, you know... Working here. I was in here for six weeks, one time.”
That seemed to get her attention, “Really?”
“Yes!” Abigail said, latching on to the only thing the woman had reacted to, “about twenty years ago. I was in a crash and then an induced coma. If you were here then... I was the amnesiac teenager.”
At that, the woman’s face split into a smile.
“I do remember you. I thought the name rang a bell. Terrible thing to happen to a young girl, terrible. Everyone said how lucky you were to not get more badly hurt, a face like yours? It would be a waste to lose to a near drowning.”
“Ah,” Abigail said awkwardly, “Yeah, that’s me—lucky.”
“And what Bill and Sandra went through after with that boy,” the nurse tutted loudly, “he put his parents through hell. Yours went through hell, but at least you were there!”
Abigail did her best not to physically recoil.
“Are you talking about Jacob?” she asked, “you knew them?”
The nurse smiled, “Yes, dear. They were very good friends of mine.”
“Oh... You know, I was actually thinking about them the other day. Do you... Still have contact with them? Keep in touch, you know, Christmas cards...”
She tutted again, “No, no, nothing like that. I think they died...”
She said it so casually that Abigail was left wondering if she’d heard the woman correctly, “I’m sorry... What?”
“Died, dead,” she repeated with a smirk. “Car crash, actually, in Italy or something.”
“Oh... When?” Abigail asked, flinching at the woman’s tone.
“A little while, long after they left town. Yes, they left town after the two of you…” she broke off to look Abigail up and down, “…were... found. They left town a few weeks later. The next time I heard anything, they were dead in some foreign place.”
“A few weeks? That soon?”
She winced as the nurse glared at her, clearly not a fan of being interrupted.
“Maybe three months? I can’t remember exactly,” she said haughtily, “but I remember saying to Sandra, I said, ‘Sandra, you need to stay here for your boy if he comes back’, but she didn’t listen. She was devastated. He broke her heart by running off. No one knew why he did it. It wasn’t like he killed you! But no, she just kept saying they couldn’t bear to be in the same town where he went missing—and they left! Can you imagine...”
Abigail couldn’t, actually. If one of her girls had gone missing, there wasn’t a single chance on planet Earth she would be leaving town for anything other than a solid lead on where her child was...
Abruptly, her phone bleeped into life. It was not a call but a text from Doctor Lavender apologizing for the delay and then laying out his course of advice. She sighed. It was exactly the battery of tests she had guessed he would recommend—as well as physically writing in a paper diary about her dreams and symptoms as well as her phone notes. Apparently, it was to help her process it, but it just felt like doubling up to her.
She let the nurse know that the test orders were being sent through now and showed her the text from Dr. Lavender. After much nodding and poking, the machine beeped loudly and spat out the requests.
“Here you go, dear,” the nurse said, “all this for what happened back then?”
With a sigh, she nodded gravely, “Yeah, I got out of it without any physical scars—but my brain wasn’t too happy about whatever happened. Do you... Do you remember seeing Jacob after I was found? I think I remember him coming in to visit me, but I can’t really recall...”
The look the nurse gave her was withering, “Oh yes, he sneaked in more times than I could count. I thought he was just playing silly buggers with his parents but then he went missing properly and never came back.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw him? Like... The date?”
“Now you sound like one of the useless cops that were here at the time,” she said, snorting. “I couldn’t remember then, I certainly can’t remember now. Now, you need to go down the hall for the first blood draw.”
As Abigail made her way down the hallway, she desperately typed everything the nurse had just told her into a note in her phone; just as she got to ‘playing silly buggers,’ the screen went black, and the logo shone brightly for a few seconds, before powering down.
She hadn’t gotten a charger, but she had gotten information, which was far more important.
***
Because she’d known that she would likely be needing a fasted blood test, Abigail had purposefully refrained from eating anything since arriving at the hospital that morning. It had worked out well in that she could walk right into her blood test, but it also meant that she was now absolutely ravenous. Cleo would be swinging by soon to pick her up and take her home; they were going to have dinner on her friend”s last night off before starting the next round of shifts. Abigail’s stomach rumbled at the thought of dinner and she turned towards the exit doors.
She pondered what she had learned from that nasty woman; it didn’t sound like she knew much more than Abigail did on the whole, but if Jacob’s parents really did up and leave just a few months after... That was weird, right? And to be traveling around Europe less than a year after their son had disappeared—and apparently died—just didn’t sit right with Abigail.
She hadn’t gotten on with Jacob’s parents but that was typical teenage stuff... They’d never seemed to love him any less than you’d expect parents to love their kids. Families of missing people often refuse to move house; Abigail knew from a brief media obsession with true crime a few years back. She’d also learned that many won’t even change their front gardens in case their kids come home decades later. They had told Nurse Nasty that they couldn’t stay in town where he had gone missing—why would his parents think he was ‘missing’ when there was a death certificate?
Surely, they’d have been notified... And really, would they really have left town if they didn’t think he was dead?
Her stomach growled as she smelled something grilling. There was garlic, and lime, and the smell of cooking onions—the taco van! Abigail’s mouth started to water as she made her wait towards the source of the delicious smells. She already had her purse out to order and pay when the person at the front of the line stepped aside and she saw Bee standing there.
“Oh,” she said, kicking herself mentally for forgetting, “I, uh, didn’t know you were... A chef.”
Bee raised her eyebrows, “I’m a woman of many talents. Can I help you?”
Abigail placed her order from memory; whatever they had eaten the previous night was what she wanted now. She paid and moved aside, still thinking about what she’d learned from Nurse Nasty. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Jacob’s parents must have known about the death certificate. There was no way two parents would up and leave town when their missing teenage son might still be alive—so why didn’t they tell anyone?
“Earth to high horse,” Bee’s voice cut through her musing.
“What?”
Bee’s perfectly made-up face stared at her blankly, and she pursed her lips, which shone with gloss over black lipstick.
“Your food, your highness,” Bee said, “this isn’t table service, you know.”
Abigail blinked and looked around her. She had sat herself down on the stone wall nearby. It was away from the van but not far enough that she should have missed her name being called.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I was... Lost in thought, I guess.”
“Yeah, sure,” Bee said, “It must be distracting, being so hypocritical.”
“Excuse me?” Abigail said, startled by the venom in Bee’s voice.
The woman rolled her eyes. “You take a shot at me for talking about your boyfriend’s disappearance, all the while looking into it yourself.”
Abigail swallowed hard: ah, yes that.
“I... Actually, I would like to apologize. I was rude, I was upset and angry, but I shouldn’t have been so...” she thought back to the exchange she’d had inside, “nasty to you. I never really thought I’d be looking into Jacob’s disappearance... Being here is hard enough on its own.”
“Oh...” Bee looked perplexed, “Right, well, sorry, I guess I was... What did Cleo call it, vulgar? Yeah, that.”
The two women looked at each other. Bee looked at Abigail’s dark blue jeans and striped white sweater outfit up and down while Abigail took in Bee’s all-black look, which was occasionally studded with silver accents, all the way up to the silver ring in her nose.
Bee turned around to leave but Abigail found that she called out to her to wait.
“I actually... Have a question,” she said, “you do... True crime stuff?”
Bee nodded.
“Okay, well, I actually kind of think I’m on to something—can I... Talk it over with you?”
Despite looking like a cartoon character, Bee’s face was remarkably serious as she considered Abigail and her question. The calculating gaze made Abigail want to straighten her hem or twirl her hair.
“On to something like found something new, or on to something like you’re about to start digging?”
Abigail shrugged. “A little of both?”
A few long seconds passed and Abigail began to wonder if the other woman was intentionally being quiet.
“Sure,” Bee said, “are we doing houses or did you want to talk about this in a carpark sometime?”
“Uh, house sounds... Better,” Abigail stuttered. “My place? When are you free?”
Bee snorted derisively but reached into her apron pocket, scribbled something down, and dropped it inside Abigail’s order. She watched the strange woman walk away as she fished the note out and read it; it seemed to be her phone number.