His name is Phoenix.
I have a son.
His name is Phoenix…
I wrench my eyes back down to meet the man’s.
“I’m going to get her,” I announce. Like I’m trying to reassure him. Like I’m trying to reassure myself, too.
“You should never have let her go in the first place.”
Well, I guess I deserve that.
“You sold her a bus ticket, didn’t you?” I ask.
“I did,” he says. “I can give you the name of the town. Better yet, I can tell you where she’ll be.”
I pump my fist in pure joy.
At last, a fucking break.
I have a son. His name is Phoenix.
I have a wife. Her name is Esme.
And I’m coming to save them both.
* * *
The shelter looks like a ravaged shell, a skeleton masquerading as a refuge. I don’t focus on any of the women who pass by me.
But I feel their eyes following me down the hall.
“She stayed here,” Maisie Blackwell tells me as she gestures to the large dorm room that holds at least a dozen chaotically organized bunk beds. “In that bed over there. Bottom bunk.”
There’s a woman lying on the bed now, with her back to us.
“How long did she stay?” I ask.
“Not long,” she answers. “A week.”
Fuck, I curse inwardly. So close yet again.
And yet here I am, grasping at air once more. Still chasing a ghost who doesn’t want to be found.
“You don’t know why she left?”
“She disappeared one morning before breakfast,” Maisie replies. “Maybe it was hard for her dealing with the other women. Not all of them took kindly to having a screaming infant around.”
It twitch instinctively at the mention of my son.
My son.
I have a son and nothing about that feels real. I know it won’t until I see him. Until I see her.
I think back to the moment I first found out.
Suffice it to say, it was nothing like I imagined it would be.