Don't Tell Ellie | Complete | Open Novella Contest

Chapter Seven: Unmistakable

It's 2 p.m by the time I've got a real person on the phone, a clerk named, Beth from the Dutchess County Courthouse tells me that I need to appear in person in order to obtain my records. Because I was a juvenile when I was abducted my records are sealed.

I fill Lagertha's food and water and eye the bouquet of paper flowers in my trash can with disgust.

"I'll be back later, kitten," I pat Lagertha on the head before leaving.

The courthouse is two hours away in the town I grew up in, Millerton. They close at five, so if I leave now I might just make it in time.

Luckily, I don't work at the bar until 10 p.m tonight, and I hope I won't have to call out because the money is decent. I make about eight hundred dollars a week if I'm nice to the customers—which surprisingly for me, is not a rarity. That eight hundred pays for my studio apartment, not including utilities.

I head to the garage where I pay two hundred dollars a month to house one of the only things I've inherited from my parents—my father's 1992 Buick Roadmaster. Living in New York City I barely have use for a vehicle, the fastest form of transportation is the subway. But, I've never had the heart to get rid of dear old dads car.

Sitting in the driver's seat no longer makes me sad even though after twenty years the car still smells like him. Sandalwood and alcohol—not the drinking kind. Michael Brennan was a no-nonsense heart surgeon, and everything around him seemed to be too clean and perfectly sterile like the hospital he worked in for thirty years.

I punch the courthouse address into the GPS on my phone and slide it into the cell phone holder attached to my dashboard. I haven't been back to Millerton in nine years, the minute I was no longer a ward of the state, I high tailed it out of there, off to the big apple, where the only person who gave a shit about me lived, Vivienne.

The worst part about this drive is that it isn't a straight shot, I've got to get on to the Cross Bronx Expressway—which during rush hour traffic becomes a parking lot. Then I've got to get on to I-95, then I-87, and even after all that there are still a series of merges and turns and I'm instantly reminded how much I hate driving.

Six cigarettes and two Red Bull's later I roll into the tiny parking lot of the Dutchess County Courthouse. I've been here several times throughout my life, but after appearing in court for various violations in Manhattan this courthouse is comical in comparison.

It's 4:30 p.m. and I've got to pee something fierce, but I don't have time. I slam the car on my dad's Buick and wince at the thought of him shouting, "Don't slam my doors!"

The courthouse looks like a two story family home with a wrap around porch, the only thing it's missing is a rocking chair cradling an old man and his shotgun. I press the buzzer attached to a small black speaker and wait.

"Can I help you?" A voice crackles through.

"Hi, yes, I called and spoke to Beth, my name is—" my words are cut off by a battery drained buzz, rude. I grab the doorknob and pull.

"Eleanore Brennan?" I hear my name as soon as I enter the building, I follow it to the right and there are two older women sitting behind what reminds me of a teller window at a bank.

"Yes, um, Beth?" I choose to address the woman on the left who is wearing glasses on the tip of her nose and vigorously stamping a pile of papers with an old rubber stamp, pressing it down into a red ink pad and slamming it onto her papers with machine-like precision.

Thankfully, I chose correctly, "Please fill out this form," She drones handing me a paper attached to a clipboard, "and return it to me with the documents we discussed."