Dad had been diagnosed with cancer the week before, and his doctors had moved aggressively. He’d had a large tumor removed from his stomach the day before, and his doctors were hopeful and gave him good odds of being cancer free. They’d gotten most of it, it hadn’t spread, and they had started him on a chemo regimen to get the rest. But we were all scared. Mom was emotional, and I’d ended up spending the night with the two of them, even though I should have been home, keeping things going, and looking after the horses. I wasn’t much help at the hospital, that was for sure. I’d slipped out earlier in the morning and gone back to the hotel room that Mom and I hadn’t really needed, considering we both spent the night dozing in chairs in Dad’s hospital room. But I’d needed a shower, a nap, and some room to breathe, and after I got all three, I was back, ready to spell my mother if I could convince her to step away and do the same.
Hospitals made me lightheaded and elevators did too, so I found a place at the back, called out my floor to a girl who was helpfully pushing buttons, and waited for the doors to close on the silent occupants. We were being entertained by an instrumental version of Garth Brook’s “Friends in Low Places,” which at one point in my life would have made me howl in outrage and loudly provide the lyrics to all the occupants of the elevator so that a truly great song would not be reduced to easy listening. But today it just made me sigh and wonder what the world was coming to.
The elevator doors began to slide toward each other and my eyes rose up to the lights that signaled the stops when a hand shot between the space and the elevator doors bounced back in affront. My boots made me tall—taller than my natural 5’9”—and I stood directly in the center of the car with my back pressed against the mirrored wall. People shifted immediately, making room for one more, but there was nothing blocking my view or my face when Moses Wright stepped onto the elevator. For a few seconds, maybe more, we stood five feet apart, face to face. The doors slid shut at his back, but he didn’t look away. He seemed stunned, floored even. And I wondered if my face registered the same shock. I wished he would turn and face the door, the way normal people did. But he wasn’t normal, never had been, and he remained motionless, staring at me, until I broke eye contact and fixed my eyes on the place where the ceiling and walls came together in the right-hand corner and focused on breathing so I wouldn’t start screaming.
The elevator bounced lightly to a stop, and the doors opened again, allowing people to shuffle and shift. I stepped to my left as the space cleared, moving as far from Moses as I could get, putting a heavy-set man in a ball-cap between us. Moses maneuvered himself into the corner opposite mine, though I refused to turn and see if he was ignoring me as intently as I was ignoring him.
Floor after floor, the shuffling and rearranging continued as people came and went, and I wondered who Moses was there to see while I prayed we wouldn’t get off on the same floor. When we reached the top floor and Moses still stood in the corner, with only two other occupants riding with us, I followed them out, my back so stiff I didn’t know if I could walk, certain that Moses would be right behind me. But he wasn’t.
When the elevator doors closed behind me, I sneaked a peek over my right shoulder, wondering if I had possibly missed his exit. But there was no one there but me as the down arrow chimed and the elevator whirred and began to descend. I wondered if he’d ridden to the top just to make me uncomfortable.
It had been almost seven years. A lifetime. Or two. Or three. His life, my life, our life. All three had been altered beyond recognition. But he hadn’t changed that much. He was still Moses. A little taller, maybe. More muscular, possibly. Older, definitely. But twenty-five was too young to be described that way. He still wore his hair shaved in a barely-there crop, clean and tight, revealing the shape of his well-formed head. Very little had changed about his appearance—his eyes, the wide mouth, the angles of his face and jaw. All of it was exactly as I remembered. Exactly as I remembered, though I’d rarely allowed him time in my memories. Eventually I’d had to cut him loose. I’d had to make him as faceless as the people in the picture he’d sent me, the picture of the woman and the child that had become so precious to me, yet mocked me every time I looked at it.
He’d dropped off the face of the earth. Just disappeared. They whisked him away that terrible Thanksgiving morning, and beyond that picture, I never saw or heard from him again. He was just gone. And because of that, because it had been so long, maybe it should have taken me a minute to recognize him, to react. But it hadn’t. I’d taken one look and my heart had sounded a deafening gong that was still reverberating loudly in my head and down my limbs, making me vibrate and shake and look around for a chair. But there was nothing but long hallways and rows of doors, and I slid down the wall until my butt hit the floor, pulling my long legs into my heaving chest so I had somewhere to rest my head. Moses Wright. I felt like I’d seen a ghost. And I didn’t believe in ghosts.
Moses
MY VISITOR WORE BATMAN pajamas and his feet were bare. He was small, but I didn’t spend enough time with kids to know exactly how small—he could be anywhere from three to five, though I would guess younger rather than older. His hair was a mass of dark curls and his brown eyes were solemn and a little too big for his small face. He just stood there, at the foot of my bed, and as I eyed him wearily, he tilted his head and looked at me as if I were the reason he was there. I was always the reason they were there. The heat on my neck blazed and I reflexively moved my fingers, wishing I had a pencil, some chalk, something to get this over with as soon as possible. It had been a while. I had almost started believing my walls were impenetrable, unless I purposely lifted them.