Worth Fighting For| B. Barnes

~Have you seen me?~

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Location:
Bucharest, Romania
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Wednesday
May 31, 2017
2:15 pm
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"Excuse me Madam...May I just have a Moment of your time?"

"Nu inteleg engleza. (I don't understand English.)" The short elderly woman replies.

"Ai văzut-o pe fetița asta? (Have you seen this little girl?)" Eduardo asked, offering one of his flyers he had made to the woman.

Just because the man no longer associated with Ivy didn't mean his search for his long lost grand daughter had to be put on hold.

The elderly woman took a flyer between her wrinkly, narrow fingers and slowly pushed her glasses up before giving the photo a good, long look.

"Fetița care a dispărut în mod misterios... (The little girl who mysteriously vanished...)" Eduardo says, hoping the story would ring a bell to the elderly woman.

"Nu imi pare rau. (No, I'm sorry.)" The woman says before handing the flyer back.

"E în regulă, mulțumesc. (That's okay, Thank you.)" Eduardo sighed, continuing up the road on foot.

At this point Ivory's disappearance was starting to sound like an old ghost story...it was as if the girl never made headlines before, almost like she was the forgotten child.

Accept given the climate of these people, it's like these people wanted to forget Ivory ever existed.

"I just don't understand, someone around here has to have seen that little girl..." Eduardo says staring at the picture of his granddaughter. He dug his stolen photo of Enrieta-Maria from out of his back pocket and held it next to the 'Missing' poster of Ivory.

"My gosh...the two of them are literally twins...I still can't even begin to wrap my head around a second Enrieta..." Eduardo chuckled. "Maybe if I would have stayed out of Prison Enrieta would have come to me with Ivory...then none of this would be happening right now and I'd know my grand baby."

Even years after his daughter's death, Eduardo couldn't help but think that there was more to the story than what both the media and even Ivy herself let on.

Eduardo may not have gotten the opportunity to know Enrieta in her older years, but as a young girl, she was a happy child, she always has been from the minute she entered the world. Enrieta-Maria was a sweet, Peace loving, little girl who loved to laugh, play, and explore the world around her...he never in his life thought she would even dream of taking her own life, nor would he ever want her to.

It really made him think...was it possibly Ivy? Or was it his absence in her life that sent her over the edge?

At this point in time he knew he would clearly never get an explanation as to what caused her to end her own life, but if he was the cause, he already hated himself for it. Eduardo had grown to hate himself for a lot of his past choices when Enrieta-Maria was a child, and his time in prison was a constant reminder of what he's done.

It still amazes Eduardo to this day that Enrieta used to look up to a broken man such as himself.

Given Enrieta was way too young to even begin to understand what was going on, he could tell the girl would notice a difference in his behaviors while he was under the influence. Even through his intoxication she still looked up to the man, and somehow thought the world of him as her father.