Chapter Three #2
We stopped outside a building I was familiar with, one that had been a landmark in the area for as long as I could remember.
It was a hideous chrome thing with big windows beside each booth and little music boxes that no longer worked.
It was situated a few doors down from Chaz’s bar and had the distinction of being the only twenty-four-hour eatery in the area.
So when the bar let out, the place would fill up, and the people too drunk to drive had a place to sober up before they drove home.
I had eaten there at least two dozen times over the years.
But it wasn’t the diner I knew and loved anymore.
“What?” I asked, shaking my head at the sign that declared it was some kind of breakfast and brunch place.
Sawyer turned back, looking at the sign I was staring at as if it were suddenly written in Sanskrit.
“Owner died. The place went into the hands of the family. The family had a chain of these places and decided to turn it over,” he explained.
“That’s just… that’s sacrilege,” I insisted, shaking my head. “This was a landmark.”
“Yeah, well, people suck,” he said, opening the door for me, and I reluctantly walked inside. “But we still need to eat, and this place is the closest, so we have to get our French toast on.”
We were led over to a booth that overlooked the street, full of small businesses.
Three of them were unfamiliar to me. But that wasn’t strange.
This part of town was always known for a high turnover rate of the storefronts.
There were only ever a couple of staples that never changed over the years: a second-hand store, an antique shop, a music shop, a new age store, and a couple of eateries that had been there since I knew the place.
That didn’t bother me.
But the changing of the diner, yeah, that made the whole ‘losing a year’ thing even harder to deny.
“This feels so wrong,” I said as I picked up my menu and looked over the items. No more grilled cheese sandwiches with a side of fries and perfect diner coleslaw with a pickle. That was what I always got. It was always perfect.
But the longer I sat, the more my stomach twisted and grumbled, so I pushed aside my feelings of disorientation, picked out a breakfast combo that had French toast, eggs, hash browns, and bacon, ordered a coffee and water, and handed my menu to the waitress.
“So, while we’re here,” Sawyer said as soon as she moved away, “why don’t I get a little more background on you?”
“Um, okay,” I said, nodding a little tightly.
“Tell me about your life before it went to hell.”
He really didn’t have a delicate or benevolent bone in his body. I guess when it came to private investigators, you generally wanted more of a pit bull than a golden retriever, so maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t treating me with kid gloves.
“There’s not much to tell. I lived in an apartment on Maple. My parents died six years ago. Or, ah, seven, I guess.”
“How?”
I winced at that, inwardly cringing at the rudeness of the question. “My father died from a massive coronary. My mother, I don’t know. I guess it was just genuine heartbreak. They were really in love, even after all their time together.”
“Alright. Parents in love, both dead. What else? Boyfriend?”
“No. No boyfriend.”
“Work?”
“I worked in the fertility clinic,” I said. “I told you that already.”
“Did you like your job?”
“Ah,” I said, smiling at the waitress who dropped off my water and coffee.
“That’s a no,” he said, bringing his coffee up to drink black while I reached for a creamer and one sugar.
“It’s not a no. It’s complicated.”
“How is liking your job or not complicated?”
“I work at a fertility clinic. I see people’s dreams of parenthood come true or die every day.
But I am also a child who was in the system and adopted to a loving family who couldn’t have children of their own.
They said that not being able to have them naturally was a sign to them from the universe that they were meant to adopt.
And because of that mindset, I got to get out of the system and learn what a family really was. ”
“So it bothers you that people do IVF?”
“No,” I rushed to say, shaking my head. “No. I understand it. And it is great to see people realize they are going to have a baby. But there are times, when I watch people come in for the fifth try, that it is hard on me. I mean, there are so many good kids in foster care and in group homes, so many kids who will age out of the system and never have family. They will have nowhere to go on Christmas, no one to lean on when life gets tough. If my parents had kept trying instead of adopting, that would have been me. So, I’m just kind of torn about the whole thing, I guess. ”
“But you still worked there.”
I shrugged. “Most people don’t have the luxury of absolutely loving every aspect of their jobs.”
“Alright. I’ll give you that. What else? Friends? Hobbies? Habits?”
“This is relevant?”
“A year of your life is missing. That doesn’t just fucking happen to people all the time. I think every small detail would be relevant.”
I couldn’t fault that logic. “I had a couple people I would go to dinner or have drinks with, but no really tight friendships. I worked out at the gym on Willow…”
“Shane Mallick’s gym.”
“If you say so,” I said, shrugging. “I like going to movies. I occasionally went to a concert or a comedy show. That’s really it. I didn’t take any weekly classes or anything.”
Wow, it was interesting to see my life laid out like that. Actually, it made it seem a little flat, empty, borderline sad.
“Did you have any pets?”
I shook my head. “They weren’t allowed,” I said, a hint of annoyance in my voice. It always frustrated me that because there were a couple of jackass, inconsiderate pet owners in the world, they screwed it up for the rest of us.
Our food arrived, and I was in the process of chewing on a piece of bacon when Sawyer said, out of the blue, “I am going to need a list of all the guys you’ve fucked.”
I choked hard enough for the older men sitting at the bar to our side to ask if I was alright. “That was tactless,” I shot at him, shaking my head.
“Sorry. Didn’t realize you were a delicate, withering flower. Would you prefer I ask for the list of men you have made slow, sweet love to?” he asked, giving me a wry smile as he brought a forkful of pancakes up to his mouth.
“You’re kind of an asshole,” I said, unable to stop myself.
“I’ve been called worse,” he said, clearly not offended.
“Riya, look, people don’t just show up behind dumpsters; they’re put there.
The most likely suspect for something happening to a woman is her current or ex-lover.
That’s just how the world works. So I need to know who you’ve been with so I can vet them. ”
“There,” I said, shaking my head, “was that so hard?”
“Hard? No. But more long-winded,” he said, smirking, as he grabbed his paper menu and ripped a piece of it off.
“Excuse me, babe,” he said to the passing waitress, giving her a megawatt smile to make the annoyed, impatient look fall from her face.
“Can I borrow a pen?” he asked, and she reached into her apron and handed him one.
“Sure, honey.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as he turned back to me and handed me the paper and pen. I took them with a sigh and jotted down the names before pushing them back at him.
He looked down, brows lowered for a second, before he looked back up, brow raised. “Five? Come on, now,” he said, shaking his head.
“Come on now… what?” I asked, not understanding.
“No way you’re twenty-fucking-nine years old and only fucked five guys.”
“Right. Because that’s such an unreasonable number.”
“Looking how you look, yeah, babe, it’s unreasonable.”
“So all pretty girls must, by design, sleep around?”
“Not a sexist thing. Pretty people of both genders tend to get around more.”
“That’s insulting.”
“That’s how things are.”
I rolled my eyes, reminding myself that being jaded and cynical was likely a side effect of a job that showed him a lot of the ugly parts of life.
I had never given that kind of thing thought before; it had never been a part of my life.
But cops and investigators tended to see the ugly parts of human nature—the murder, stalking, beating, mugging, spousal abuse, cheating, lying.
People with sunny, upbeat personalities would burn out fast in jobs like that.
I guess it was good for me that Sawyer Anderson was a prick.
“So, who is the president right now?” he asked, making me roll my eyes.
“I don’t have amnesia.”
“It can be selective. You go through something traumatic; you can block it out.”
“Yeah, but everything else would remain.”
“Got a point there,” he said, leaning across the table to take a forkful of my hashbrowns.
“Hey,” I said, wide-eyeing him.
“I got the breakfast potatoes with mine. Granted, they’re fucking banging, but I want a bite of these.”
“You could ask.”
“I could,” he agreed, giving me a close-mouthed smile as he chewed my food.
I shook my head, focusing on eating for a minute while Sawyer shot off a series of rapid texts. “So what now?” I asked when he set his phone away and resumed eating.
“We wait for your test results.”
“But I mean…”
I meant, what? That I needed an immediate solution? I needed answers within the next hour because I didn’t know what to do with myself? Even if he was the best private investigator in the country, there was no way he could solve my case in a matter of hours.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a little softer as he reached across the table and touched the tips of my fingers for a second before pulling away. When my eyes met his, his head ducked slightly. “What is it? Can’t help if I don’t know.”
“I have nowhere to go,” I admitted. “I mean, well, that’s not true. I need to go to my old apartment and see what the landlord did with my stuff. And I need to find a place to stay and get my life back…”