Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) (3 page)

Owen might be my own personal savior, but inside, he’s just as hurt as I am. He needs me. I wish I could make his fears go away forever and give him the loving family he’s never had, but I can’t.

All that I can give him is me.

Owen

T
he phone rings again behind me and I grind my teeth together as I spin around and silence the ringer. I should’ve just shut the damn thing off at the start of class. I’m teaching right now and whoever the hell is calling will just have to wait. It’s coming from my area code back out on Long Island, but I definitely don’t recognize the number. It’s not my parents—as if they’d ever call
me
again after that fight with my father—but whoever it is has been calling me all class long, over and over and over. The asshole hasn’t left a single message.

“Sorry about that,” I apologize to my students for what feels like the tenth time. “Now, where was I?”

“You were multiplying out the matrices,” points out student in the front row.

“
I know where I was, buddy. It’s just an expression.
”

“Right, so... you’ve got different dimensions for the matrices, so you can’t use the regular method of...”

Just as I pop the cap off my dry erase marker and get back to work, my phone starts vibrating loudly on the table behind me. I’m going to kill this person. Whoever it is, I’m going to kill him.

I spin around again, glaring down at my phone as if it’s going to feel ashamed of interrupting my class or something, and watch as it vibrates happily along the metal surface of the desk and falls straight off the edge. It clatters loudly as it hits the black tile floor, and a frizzy-haired girl to my left—Janine is her name, I think—giggles and then covers her mouth in embarrassment.

“
Go ahead, dear,”
I think. “
Make fun of me and my stupid phone. I should’ve shut it off in the first place.
”

I sigh as I walk around the desk and try to hold back the angry feelings bubbling up inside me. As if in response to the hateful thoughts zipping around inside my head, the phone goes silent as the caller hangs up. I catch one brief glimpse of the status bar—fifty-seven missed calls—before the phone starts to vibrate again.

Professionalism be damned; I’m dealing with this idiot right now.

“Sorry, folks. I’ll be right back,” I growl, snatching the phone off the floor. “Give me just a second to kill whoever this is and then we can get back to work.”

I stomp out into the hallway, slam the door behind me and answer the phone as it starts to vibrate again. Fifty-seven calls? Seriously? It’s all I can do not to shout into the phone as I answer it.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hiss angrily into the receiver. “Why are you calling me so many...”

“Owen Maxwell? That you?” asks the man on the other end, and my words catch in my throat as I recognize his voice. I’d recognize that odd mixture of country drawl and nasal Long-Islandese anywhere.

“...yes sir, this is Owen,” I answer quietly, all the fight suddenly drained from me.

“This is Bill Marino with the Montauk Police Department,” he introduces himself. “Do you have a second to talk?”

I know who he is. It’s been over seven years but I still remember his voice. I remember him coming to the house after Samantha died. Oddly enough, I remember his oversized brown hat, too. It’s strange what memories you’ll retain and what you’ll forget.

I remember the look on the sheriff’s face when I lied to him, when I told him everything was okay because I was too scared to beg him to help me. My father was right there behind him, staring at me through the whole interview. I remember that, too... the cold hatred in his eyes demanding that I say the right words or face terrible consequences.

Sheriff Marino knew the truth. He knew exactly what had happened to my sister and still did nothing.

The EMT looks over his shoulder at us and my heart shatters into pieces as he shakes his head. I already knew it deep down inside, but hearing his verdict feels like a knife in my chest. I duck under the yellow tape cordoning the staircase landing, shove past a protesting police officer and kneel on the carpet next to the EMT.

He reaches out and closes my sister’s eyelids. With her eyes closed, she almost looks peaceful. She’s finally free from the hell we’ve been trapped in, but the thought isn’t comforting me right now. My vision keeps blurring as my eyes fill with tears, and it’s all I can do not to start crying. Crying is a big no-no on my father’s list of manly sins and he’d only hurt me even worse for it once everyone else leaves.

She’s gone. My little sister is gone, and now I’m trapped here alone.

“Hello? Owen, are you there?”

“Oh... um, yes. I have a second,” I stammer, yanking myself away from my sister’s side at the bottom of the stairs and back to the phone call.

“I need to talk to you for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

“Can it wait until after I’m done teaching my class?”

“I promise it won’t take too long. It’s for my investigation,” he answers awkwardly. “Also... well, you need to know.”

“I need to know
what
, exactly?” I ask, dreading the answer. I’m starting to feel cold, and my heart feels strange and heavy. It’s that indescribable feeling when you know that someone is about to hurt you, but it’s going to be in a way you can’t possibly prepare for.

“Owen... your father is dead.”

I’m free. My mother is free. This should be the best day of my life. So why does it feel like someone just stabbed me?

And there it is—the pain I couldn’t possibly have prepared for, that I never would have guessed I’d even feel. Why does it hurt that he’s gone? I hate him... no, I
hated
him. He’s dead now and that should be it, but somehow it isn’t.

A cold numbness sets in as Bill’s words circle around and around inside my head. I’m free. Am I? I wanted Dad dead. I wished it so many times growing up, even as recently as last semester, but now I’m suddenly second-guessing myself. Maybe I didn’t really want to lose my family and instead just wanted to be free from them?

A sudden feeling of guilt washes over me. No! This isn't my fault. I didn’t do anything.

“
Pull yourself together, Owen!
”

“What happened to him?” I ask.

“Well, the official report isn’t in yet from the coroner but it was pretty obvious when I got to your house,” answers the sheriff. “He shot himself on Sunday.”

My house... it sounds so strange to hear him call it that. I haven’t lived there in five years. I abandoned that horrible place the second the dorms opened for my freshmen year. I wish I could say that I never looked back, but the fear was always right there in my rear-view mirror.

I take a deep breath and swallow hard before speaking again.

“You said you had questions,” I say, my voice suddenly much quieter and weaker than I anticipated. “I’ll answer them. What do you need?”

“I need to sit down with you in person and interview you,” he says. “I know Todd was up there to see you a few weeks ago, and I need to know what happened when he visited. I also need to get you on the record about... well, about what happened back when you still lived at home.”

My knees feel weak. I don’t want to talk about that—not with him. He
knows
what happened back when I lived there. He’s known about it for seven years, ever since Samantha died.

“I can’t come down there,” I tell him, almost hoping it’ll make him go away. “I’m in the middle of my last semester and I’m teaching a course on top of that.”

It’s true—I can’t come down there in the middle of the semester. Cornell has a leave policy for students, but it only covers the day of a funeral and some illnesses. It also inexplicably makes an exception for nuclear disasters. That particularly infamous clause fuels all sorts of hilarious rumors about the particle accelerator underneath the football stadium. It says nothing about traipsing off to Long Island for police investigations, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to my father’s funeral.

“That’s okay,” says Bill. “If you can find some time for me, I’ll drive up to you. How does Friday work for you?”

I want to tell him that Friday won’t work at all, that no day will work for talking about my father. I don’t ever want to talk about him again. I want to forget that he ever existed and move on. I can’t do that, though. I can’t just pretend that none of my childhood ever happened because it’d mean that I’d have to pretend that he never killed my sister.

I’d have to pretend that I never failed her and that she didn’t die because I was a coward. I can’t do that to her.

“Owen? You still there?”

“Okay... I can find some time on Friday afternoon,” I finally answer. “Did my mother give you my address?”

“Um... she sure did, but how about you just give it to me again, just to be sure,” he mumbles awkwardly. I frown as I listen to him fumble through his desk in search of a pen. Something about his voice and his reaction to me talking about my mother feels off. Something else is wrong.

He said that my father died on Sunday. Why am I only just now hearing about this on Tuesday afternoon?

“Um... Bill? Why did nobody tell me about this until now? Mom never called me.”

The silence on the line is almost deafening.

“Nobody... nobody told you, did they?” says Bill, finally answering me. There it is again, the feeling that he’s about to hurt me and that there’s nothing I can do about it.

Please don’t let this be what I think it is.

I hear the sheriff take a deep breath over the phone.

“Your mother is in the hospital right now.”

“
What
?” I shout into the receiver. My voice echoes loudly in the empty hallway and I hear my students gossiping nervously back inside the classroom.

“She’s down in Southampton Hospital, and just between you and me, don’t get your hopes up,” explains Bill. “She’s on life support right now but the doctors think it’ll take a minor miracle for her to make it.”

“What happened to her? Did my father do this? Why didn’t the hospital call me? ” I ask frantically, throwing question after question at him.

“Hold up a minute, buddy,” answers Bill, interrupting my string of questions. “I’ll be up on Friday and we can talk more then. I can give you all the information, the contacts, and all that sort of stuff when I’m up there.”

“Can’t you at least tell me...”

“No,” he interrupts, firmly cutting me off. “Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you anything at all, at least not until the court says I’m allowed to. I’m afraid you’ve got a lot of paperwork to do, kid.”

Paperwork... story of my life. Why can’t he tell me anything? I’m her son. I’m supposed to be taking care of her if she’s incapacitated now that Dad’s dead. It’s a twelve-hour bus ride, but I’ll go down tonight if I need to.

“Why can’t you tell me anything?” I ask. “Seriously, I’ll get on a bus and come down right now. Screw the leave policy—this is my mother we’re talking about.
”

“Owen, you can’t see her yet. They won’t let you anywhere near her.”

“Why not?” I yell into the receiver.

“Because Todd disowned you, Owen!” he shouts right back at me. “You’re not in the will, and he even took blocked you from visiting in their advance health care directives. You’re removed from everything.”

I fall silent, stunned and at a loss for words.

“Even if you came down today, they won’t let you see her. The DA’s treating her as a material witness and told them to enforce Todd’s changes to the directives. You have no right of visitation. Legally speaking, you might as well not even part of their family anymore,” says Bill sadly. “We’ll talk on Friday. I promise.”

“Alright,” I answer, suddenly feeling weak and defeated. My head is spinning already at the news and I’m not sure how much more of this I can handle today.

It’s going to kill me having to think about this until Friday, though. I desperately need to know what happened. My mother was horrible, but she was horrible in a different way from my father. It wasn’t really her fault, either. He broke her. She snapped just like, eventually, I would have too.

“One last thing before I go, by the way,” says Bill quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s no love lost on my end,” I answer bitterly, but I wonder whether I’m trying to convince him or myself. “I hated him, you know.”

“I didn’t mean for Sunday. I meant for seven years ago,” he says and then he quickly disconnects the call.

I stand in silence as the clock on the wall overhead ticks deafeningly. All it took for everything to fall apart again was one phone call. I have no idea what to do now. My mind is swimming and my thoughts are flying in so many directions that I can’t make sense of them. Am I happy he’s dead? Am I sad? I just don’t know anymore.

Just yesterday, I was scared I’d have to go home. Now I don’t have a home.

My students are waiting for me.

I turn and quietly walk back into the classroom, gently closing the door with a click behind me. Without a word, I return to the dry erase board, grab my marker and finish off the rest of the question. I box the final answer and turn to face my class.

“Class is dismissed for the day,” I tell my students, not looking them in the eyes. If I do, I’m going to snap. I just know it. My voice cracks and I know that it’s only a matter of minutes before I break down. I need to get back to my apartment and away from all the people staring at me from their desks. Dark, scary thoughts bubble up inside me, and I need to find a place where I feel safe before they consume me again. I need to find a place where I don’t have to watch as my life falls apart.

I don’t want to be like this anymore. I thought I was done with the nightmares and flashbacks, but they’re back again. I thought I was getting better, or at least that I was past being a mental wreck all the time. So much for that.

“See you all on Thursday.”

I grab my notes from the desk and rush out the door.

Maria

T
he kitchen timer rings and Tina calls out to me from across the kitchen.

“Hey Maria – grab the pot, will you? I’m elbow-deep in cookie dough over here.”

“Hey, skipping the mixer and doing it by hand was
your
idea, not mine,” I call back, grinning as I head for the stove. I shut off the timer and carefully make my way back to the sink to drain the pasta. A thick, steamy fog coats the inside of the kitchen window as I dump the spaghetti into a colander.

“Damned right I skipped the mixer,” says Tina proudly. “They’ll be the best cookies you’ve ever had, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” I tease her. “I’ve had some really good cookies in my day.”

“Oh ye of little faith. You’ll see. Mine don’t just kick ass—they kick
all
the asses,” she proclaims with a grin and then sticks out her tongue at me.

Our roommate Lacey squeezes into the already packed kitchen and reaches around Craig to grab her purse off the counter as he chops cucumbers into the salad.

“I’m almost ready now. Can you preheat the oven for me, Maria?” calls out Tina as she preps a pan for her so-called best cookies ever. “Hey Lacey, are you hanging around for dinner?”

“No thanks. I’m going out with Mike tonight,” she answers as she rummages through her purse.

Of course she is; she
always
goes out with her boyfriend. I’ve barely seen her all semester long. She pulls out her little makeup kit and starts putting on lipstick right in the middle of the kitchen. It’s as if she’s completely oblivious to how badly she’s crowding us and how Tina is glaring at her while holding a rolling pin.

I pull out my phone and send another text to Owen.

M: You coming to dinner or no? Ten min.

He never responded to my first message and it’s not like him to miss dinner.

“Did you get the oven yet, Maria?” asks Tina as she finishes off the pan.

“One second,” I reply, finishing off my message. I don’t know why, but it really bugs me that Owen is late tonight.

M: Call me please. Also, cookies. Yum. <3

Tina sighs and shoots me a dirty look as she pushes past me and turns on the oven herself. The cookies go in ten minutes later, on goes the timer and then it’s time to get the plates loaded up. Craig fills salad bowls while Tina and I pile the plates high with steaming pasta and wonderfully delicious meatballs.

I carry the plates to the table and then pull out my phone once more to check for a response. Tina glares at me again.

“Will you just relax already?” she groans. “He’s probably just busy.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he gets hungry,” Craig agrees with her. “I didn’t do a grocery run this week and he’s still broke from the medical bills for his hand, so the fridge is totally empty.”

“I know that. Why do you think I’m so worried about him not being here?” I fire back, shaking my head. He rolls his eyes at me.

“Oh, both of you just cool it. Save it until after dinner,” snaps Tina in a tone that makes Craig and me immediately shut up.

When I ate at Owen’s place yesterday, he promised me that he could afford it. He told me his medical bills were all under control and that’s the only reason I let him make me dinner in the first place. He could have just told me he was broke and I’d have been just fine.

I shake my head as I sit down for dinner. I just don’t get people sometimes.

“So are you planning to tell me about your vet school interview or do I have to wait until you break up with me and run off with a second-year vettie to find out?” Craig asks Tina.

I stiffen and cover my mouth in shock at his question, but Tina laughs and kisses him on the cheek instead of slapping him like I expected her to. I
really
don’t get people sometimes.

“I think it went great,” she answers between mouthfuls of pasta. “I won’t know for sure until I get the acceptance letter, though. Fingers crossed. How about you? Found a job to support my extravagant shopping sprees yet?”

I can’t help but giggle at that one. Tina loves to shop but does so almost exclusively at secondhand stores. I think it’s like searching for buried pirate treasure to her.

“
Tina the Fashion Pirate,”
I think. It has a certain ring to it. She’d need a pink parrot, though.

“Your truffles and bonbons will have to wait just a bit longer, babe,” Craig answers. “I know I have an offer coming from a little engineering startup in downtown Ithaca—I’m just waiting for the paperwork to come in. Not sure if I’m going to apply for anything else at this point.”

“Of
course
you’re going to,” Tina tells him, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, you think so? What makes you think I
want
something else?” he challenges her.

“Most jobs in Ithaca pay like shit, Craig,” she says. “Are you sure you want to leave yourself with only one option?”

Tina and Craig continue to argue back and forth about job applications as I stare down at my plate, slowly twirling a long strand of spaghetti on my fork. Where is Owen? It’s well past eight o’clock. He should be here by now.

“
Don’t be ridiculous,
” I tell myself. I’ve only known him a few months even if it feels like much longer. Who am I to complain that he’s late for dinner? It’s not like I’m his mother. There’s nothing for me to worry about.

If there’s nothing to worry about, then why can’t I shake this horrible feeling in my stomach?

I poke halfheartedly at my spaghetti and force myself to eat a few bites before pulling out my phone and texting him again. When I look up, Tina is staring at me.

“Um... obsessive much?” Tina chastises me, and then she reaches across the table and snatches the phone out of my hands before I can react.

“Hey! Give that...”

“Nope,” she answers, shaking her head with finality. “Quit nagging him and give him a little room.”

I can’t get a single word out before she zips my mouth shut.
Damn it!
How is she so good that?

“Seriously, Maria... you’re going overboard,” Tina quietly tells me. “I know you love him, but he needs his space too.”

I look silently down at my plate. She’s wrong; I’m not being obsessive. I know Owen in a way that she never will and somehow I’m
certain
that something is wrong tonight. It’s stealing my appetite and I know that there’s no way I’m going to eat my dinner while I’m worrying like this.

“Craig, can I borrow your keys?” I ask, getting up from the table and holding out my hand to him.

“Maria!” gasps Tina, staring at me as if I’m insane. “Will you just sit down and...”

“No. I’ll get my head looked at if I’m wrong but for now, just shut up,” I snap at her. “Craig, give me your keys, please. I’m going to go check on him.”

He thinks about it for a second and then shrugs off Tina’s angry glare and hands me the key to his front door. I’m just going to go check on Owen and come right back. I really do hope that I’m being overbearing and obsessive, because that’d mean he’s doing just fine and there’s something wrong with
me.
I have a laundry list of things wrong with me already, so what’s one more thing if it means he’s okay?

“Thanks. I’ll be right back.”

Tina continues to chew me out from the table while I put on my ratty old sneakers, but I’m not listening to her anymore. I’ll deal with the fallout when I find him perfectly okay at his apartment. Maybe he’s watching a football game. Is it even football season? I have no idea. I just want him to be okay.

I race out the door, slamming it shut behind me, and by the time I make it to the long staircase up to Owen’s apartment, I’m regretting not bringing a coat. It’s dark and cold out here and the howling spring wind chills me to the bone as I climb the stairs. One flight up... two flights up... my fingers ache as I clutch at the freezing cold railing. Now, a left turn. His apartment is at the far end and all the lights are out. Not even the front stoop light is on.

I bang on the door and wait, shivering, for him to come let me in. No answer.

He didn’t answer the last time I did this either. He hid from me until it was clear that I wasn’t going away and
then
he finally let me in. He needed my help that time, too; he broke his hand and I forced him to go see a doctor.

I fumble with the key but stop myself just as I’m about to unlock the front door.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s not even home. He could just be studying up at the library. He
does
like to hide in the Uris Library stacks, after all. He says he can concentrate better there. Maybe I came over here for nothing because he’s just up on campus like a normal student, and all my nervousness is really just the paranoia of a psychotic girl clinging desperately to her boyfriend.

I don’t believe it for a second. I’m going inside.

The lights are off in the apartment except for the dim stovetop lamp in the kitchen, but I can still see Owen in the low light. He lies motionlessly on the couch with his face pressed into the back cushions. A huge pile of papers covers every inch of the living room table—homework assignments to grade from his graduate advisor, I assume—and splintered fragments of a broken pencil litter the table and floor alongside a bottle.

My breath catches in my chest as I pick up the bottle. It’s a bottle of cough syrup and it’s entirely empty. I turn to the sofa as panic rises inside me. How much did he drink? Why would he do something like this? It’s not going to kill him or anything, not unless he was an idiot and combined it with...

...that’s when I notice the beer bottle on the floor next to the sofa.

“Owen?” I ask, gently shaking his shoulder. “Answer me, please. Are you okay?”

He doesn’t respond. He’s breathing but I can’t get him to wake up.

“Owen, you need to wake up,” I call out, shaking him harder this time. “Can you hear me?”

He groggily wakes up and mumbles incoherently before falling back asleep.

“Sweetie, please!” I beg him. My voice is shaking almost as much as my hands are now. “
Please
wake up.”

Owen finally wakes up and I let out a sigh of grateful relief and lean into him, hugging him tightly.

“Oh thank God,” I whisper, and he stares back at me in confusion. He’s disoriented from the drugs, and I’m not sure if he knows what’s happening or even where he is. His eyes are puffy and red and I can tell that he’s been crying.

“Maria? What... what’re you doing here?” he finally asks me. His voice is quiet and languid, but it doesn’t sound like he’s drunk anymore, more like his brain is still asleep.

“I borrowed Craig’s keys,” I tell him. “Owen, how much of that bottle did you drink? Did you drink the whole thing?”

He stares at the bottle for a long time as if he doesn’t remember how it got there.

“Oh... that,” he mumbles, pulling himself away from my embrace and lying back down on the couch. “No, just a double dose. I... I need to sleep.”

“Really? Only two?”

He nods silently and presses his face into the cushions again.

I sit quietly beside him and run my fingers through his hair as I try to calm myself down. Most of his scars are invisible, cloaked by the low light, but I can still pick out the long white line on his jaw even in the dark. You can always find someone’s scars if you know how to look for them. A tiny overdose of cough syrup isn’t going to hurt him, alcohol or not, but it's still a terrible idea and more than enough cause for me to worry. What happened to him? He didn’t wash down a double dose of cough syrup with a beer just to catch up on lost sleep. I know him better than that.

“What’s wrong?”

The clock ticks loudly in the kitchen, marking second after agonizing second until he finally answers me.

“Tomorrow,” he whispers.

“You’ll tell me tomorrow?” I ask, and he nods almost imperceptibly in response.

I open my mouth to argue, but my words catch in my throat. I’ve had bad days—days when I can’t bear the idea of talking to anyone, days when even going outside is a struggle—so who am I to say that he can’t have his own bad days? I love him, though, and I can’t just leave him like this.

“
Give him a little room
,” nags Tina’s voice inside my head.

I can do that. I can give him until tomorrow.

“Okay honey,” I whisper, leaning down and kissing him softly on the cheek. “Need anything before I go?”

He turns and looks up at me over his shoulder before answering. His eyes are glistening with tears and it almost breaks my heart to see him so sad.

“Please don’t go,” he pleads. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll stay all night if you want me to.”

I smile softly, lean down and kiss him gently on the cheek, and then I curl up next to him on the couch. His skin is burning hot and I start sweating within minutes, but I’m not letting go of him. His breathing is quick and shallow and I can feel his pulse racing as I press against him.

“I’m here for you,” I whisper in his ear as I hold him close. “I always will be.”

My cell phone’s alarm will wake me in the morning if I fall asleep. I can’t leave him alone like this. Craig can take care of him in the morning when I head out to my job interview. Hour after hour passes in silence until Owen’s pulse finally slackens and his breathing slows.

What happened to him? Did his father find some new and horrible way to torment him? I wish I could take him away from his terrible family forever so that nobody could ever hurt him again.

“I won’t let him hurt you, sweetie,” I whisper to him in his sleep. “Never again.”

I lay by his side late into the night, worrying about him until sleep finally claims me as well.

––––––––

M
y knees shake and my heart pounds in my chest as I stagger into the kitchen, my arms loaded down with heavy grocery bags. I close the front door as quietly as I can and hope that Mom doesn’t hear me. If she is in the living room, I’m in trouble. There’s no way she wouldn’t have heard me come in.

Good, she’s upstairs. I have time to get my bag out before she sees it. She sent me out to pick up groceries and I secretly stopped by the pharmacy on my way back. She can’t find out about my side-trip. If she does, I’ll have to tell her what Darren did to me.