Finding Fiona

Finding Fiona

By Emily Ann Ward

Copyright 2011 by Emily Ward

Smashwords Edition, License
Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to an ebook
retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the
hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

Fire stock photo courtesy of:
http://www.facebook.com/tgphotographer

Also by Emily Ann Ward:

Passages (Seven Short
Stories)

For Chris. I couldn't have done it
without you.

Chapter One

Smoke choked her lungs and made her eyes
water. The heat burned against her skin. She ran down the steps,
tears streaming down her cheeks. Someone grabbed her from behind,
strong arms wrapping around her torso.

She woke up gasping and coughing. Her
surroundings came into focus. Salmon-colored walls. A hard bed. She
was in a hospital room, not in the fire. She had escaped. Her heart
pounding, she looked down at herself. She wore a hospital gown, and
her arms and stomach stung with pain, though covered with clean
bandages.

What had happened? Swallowing, she tried to
think over the day, but all she had were blurry images that didn’t
make sense. The fire was vivid in her mind, but she didn’t know how
she escaped. She remembered riding in a car and bleeding from her
stomach. She tried to recall how she’d started bleeding, but she
faced the same maddening wall of blankness. She swore and clenched
her teeth.

Her hands shook as she pushed aside the rail
on the side of the bed. She needed to get out of here. She wasn’t
sure why, but she had the feeling something bad was going to happen
if she stayed here. Her legs were weak when she put weight on them,
and she steadied herself against the bed.

She needed to find her parents. She tried to
picture them in her mind, tried to recall their names, but there
was a gap where they should have been. Instead, a crushing weight
pressed down on her chest. She pushed aside her panic. It didn’t
matter; she’d find them. It was just the shock.

An unfamiliar woman walked into the hospital
room. She had wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes
widened. “You’re awake!”

She swayed, her legs nearly giving out, and
the woman rushed forward to catch her arm. The woman eased her back
onto the bed. “Don’t worry, it’s all right.”

The girl put her head in her hands. “I need to
go.” But she didn’t remember why. Something important pressed the
back of her mind, but when she reached for it, it faded.

“
What’s your name?” the woman asked
softly.

The girl’s eyes stung with tears, and she took
a steady breath, trying to hold them back. “I don’t
know.”

* * *

Four months later…

The windows next to them took up nearly the
whole wall, showing the harbor. The seagulls were just black specks
in the blue sky. The water ebbed back and forth, splashing against
the rocks. Fiona could see the spot where Hannah had found her four
months ago. She only faintly remembered being there; she’d been
floating in and out of consciousness at that point.

They’d walked along the spot with the reporter
an hour ago. Fiona had hoped for some revelation, but nothing new
had surfaced in her mind. The only clear memory she had of that day
was driving in Hannah’s car on the way to the hospital, mumbling
the name James over and over again.

She turned to Hannah and Troy, who sat across
from her at the table. They sat in a restaurant with a maritime
theme: a model ship dominated one wall, and comics of Popeye the
Sailorman lay between the tables and the glass over
them.

“
This is one of my favorite places
in Mystic,” Hannah said. “You know the coffee shop area used to be
a dance club? It was the coolest place in town on the
weekends.”

Fiona grinned. “Did you come here with your
leg warmers and Ray Bans?”

Hannah laughed. “Oh, yeah. You’ve seen the
pictures. I was the next Madonna.”

Fiona exchanged amused glances with
Troy. “But then you became a real estate agent,” she said. She
tried to imagine Hannah singing
Like a
Virgin
. She couldn’t. Hannah was too
sensible, too normal.

“
The world wasn’t ready for me.”
Hannah flipped her hair off her shoulder.

“
Wait, I need to see those
pictures,” Troy said, bumping his shoulder against
Hannah’s.

“
No!” Hannah shook her head. “Too
much teasing material.”

“
You’ll show Fiona and not me?”
Troy put his hand over his heart. “That hurts, Hannah.”

“
Just goes to
show she likes me more,” Fiona said with a shrug. If only that were
true. She had asked Hannah not to bring Troy today, but she’d
insisted that he would be fun. Right. Hearing him complain the
whole trip about the follow-up article with the
Boston Herald
was really fun. She
couldn’t believe he’d actually tried to talk her out of it in front
of the reporter.

Troy looked like he might respond, but Hannah
cut him off, perhaps to avoid an argument. “Do you two know what
you want?” she asked.

Fiona picked up her menu. “You’re the expert.
What should I get?”

“
Their seafood pasta is amazing. I
really like their soups, too.”

The waitress came over with their drinks. She
was an older woman with corkscrew curls dyed red. “Are you ready to
order?”

“
Not yet,” Troy said, his gaze on
the menu.

“
Okay, I’ll be back in a couple
minutes.”

“
Thank you so much, Lisa,” Hannah
said, smiling.

“
You know her?” Troy
asked.

“
I saw her name on her name
tag.”

Troy smirked, shaking his head. “You’re too
funny.”

Fiona studied him for a moment, trying to
determine if the comment was meant to be condescending or
flattering. She generally couldn’t tell with Troy.

She looked down at her menu, but didn’t want
to consider all the options. Seafood pasta it was. She trusted
Hannah’s judgment in food. She trusted Hannah more than anyone,
really. That wasn’t saying much, considering she didn’t know many
people, but even if Fiona knew hundreds, she was sure Hannah would
be one of the nicest people she met. She’d taken care of Fiona, let
her live with her in Boston for the last three months, supported
her search for her past, and had even given her something like a
normal life.

The waitress retuned a few minutes later. Troy
ordered first, then Hannah. “And for your daughter?” she said,
turning to Fiona.

Fiona smiled tightly. “We’re not
related.”

“
Oh, I’m sorry,” ‘Lisa’ said. “You
really look like you could be!”

“
It happens all the time,” Troy
said, waving a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Fiona, you wanted the
seafood pasta, right?”

“
Right.” Fiona pursed her lips. She
didn’t mind being mistaken for Hannah’s daughter, since Hannah was
the closest thing she had to a mother. Thinking of Troy as her dad
made her cringe, though. He couldn’t even let her order her own
food.

Once the waitress left, Hannah leaned forward
and squeezed Fiona’s hand. “I’m glad we came today. Maybe someone
will see that article.”

“
Hopefully the right people,” Troy
muttered. “You know, we could still call her and ask her not to run
it.”

“
It’s running,” Fiona said firmly.
“Maybe a family member or a friend will see it.”

“
Yeah, or someone else,” Troy
said.

“
This conversation sounds really
familiar.”

Hannah changed the subject, and Fiona tuned
them out, gazing out at the harbor. She understood where Troy’s
reservations came from. She had been stabbed, and she faintly
remembered being pulled into a van, so she could have even been
kidnapped. She had weighed the benefits with the risks, though. If
her family saw the article, it might be worth the chance of someone
else seeing it. Besides, an article had run four months ago, and no
one had come looking for her then.

She tried not to dwell on the fact that no one
might come looking for her this time, either. She had to hold onto
some kind of hope.

They ate their lunch, chatting aimlessly.
Hannah redirected the conversation every time Fiona or Troy
mentioned the reporter, probably to avoid an argument. Fiona was
fine with that. Troy didn’t seem to understand it was her choice,
not his.

Hannah had a real estate meeting at one
o’clock, and Troy wanted to visit a few shops in town. Fiona told
them she’d walk to the library around the block.

“
Shouldn’t you stick with us?” Troy
asked.

Fiona made a face. Since Hannah had a meeting,
that left Fiona with Troy. “I’m okay. I’ll just hang out at the
library.”

“
I don’t know,” Troy said, shaking
his head.

“
You don’t know what? Just go do
your thing.”

He looked at Hannah. “You couldn’t take her to
your meeting?”

Fiona huffed. “Troy, I’m old enough to go to
the library by myself for a couple hours.”

“
She’ll be fine, honey,” Hannah
said.

Troy’s jaw tightened. “Fine. But you have your
phone, right?”

“
Yeah, of course,” Fiona
said.

Hannah stood, looking at her watch. “My
meeting should be over in an hour and a half. You want a ride,
Troy?”

“
Sure.” Troy got to his feet,
leaving some money on the table. “Keep your phone close by,
Fiona.”

Fiona gave him a thumbs up and waved as they
parted ways in the parking lot. She sighed with relief when they
were gone. She walked to the library and went to the computer lab.
She’d planned on doing some research, but the technician told her
the lab didn’t open until one. Fiona didn’t understand why they
didn’t open the computers with the rest of the library.

While she waited, she perused the periodicals.
She dug through the old newspapers and found they didn’t keep
newspapers for longer than two weeks. At Hannah’s house in Boston,
she had the local newspaper from Mystic that had the article about
her: the injured girl with only fuzzy memories of her childhood,
waiting for someone to claim her.

Fiona walked through the aisles of the
periodicals, running her fingers over the magazines and academic
journals. She loved the smell of a library: the old, dusty books,
the ink and paper.

Her gaze stopped on a journal
called
American Physics.
The title sounded familiar. A social worker had
suggested
she take the SATs a couple months
ago to see where she was academically. The science section of the
test had been, without a doubt, the easiest section for her. She
even had faint memories of learning those things, of working in a
lab, of running experiments. She could explain certain concepts to
Hannah.

She picked up the journal and flipped through
it. She grabbed the last four issues before finding a seat. Some of
the articles went straight over her head; some fascinated her. Her
thriller novel hadn’t been able to keep her attention, but this
could. Her mind made no sense sometimes.

On the last page was a short article. The
black and white photos caught Fiona’s eyes first, and she gasped. A
man and a woman, smiling in individual pictures. She knew them.
She’d seen them in faint memories: the man’s deep set eyes and dark
hair; the woman’s warm smile and bright eyes. Fiona had tried to
describe their faces when she had access to facial composition
software, but the faces never came out right. Yet here they were.
Her parents. Real.