We Loved

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TIME IS a monster. It holds you and eats you up from inside out. Biting and stinging, like a thousand bees on your body, their buzz replaced with a set of questions, nagging and screaming in your head.

It started after I ended the call with a group of bikers.

A woman like the one on the TV, they said.

‟Her name is Amelia. Amelia Wilfred.” That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. My mouth wouldn’t form any words and my head went blank. I had got many calls claiming they had found her many times before, from people who were mistaken, to people who were looking for the prize. However, I almost know these ones have her. The location they’ve given us isn’t too far from the one we tracked from her call.

It really can be her.

I may be on my way to see her right now. After all this time, all this worry, it can finally end.

‟Can’t you go faster?”

‟My God, Noah, if you ask me one more time I will kick you out of the car so you can feel how fast I really am going,” David mumbles.

‟Maybe if you’d just let me drive I’d-”

‟We’re here,” David interrupts and my heart drops. Swallowing my words, I look through the window at the two bikers with their hands folded. They look heavy with sand all over their faces and clothes. Where is she? I scramble off the car and stride to them.

‟Where is she?”

‟The prize?” one of them says, but the other pushes him out of my way, revealing a woman who stops drinking water the moment she notices me.

For a second I do not recognize her. Her face is covered with bruises and dried blood, clothes torn and muddied, but it is her. Leah is alive and only a step away from me. I take her into my arms, willing her to be reality and not just my mind again. And she is. Real. Tears welding up, I stroke her hair, pulling her further into my body, because she will disappear if I ever let go.

‟Let go of me!” She cries pushing me away, her hands weak and shaky. She is not looking at me, holding herself and stepping back.

‟What’s wrong?” I remove the hair off her face getting closer again, trying to hide her from the bikers, trying to provide a sense of a safety that has been long gone for her.

‟Don’t touch me!”

Dumbfounded I step back, as if I burnt my hands, feeling the stinging fire of it. My heart is beating out of my chest, screaming her name, mind fogged with a thousand questions.

‟Don’t touch me.” She shrinks back, now crying.

‟What? Leah, it’s me,” I say. Something might be in her eye, or in the haste she did not get to notice my face, too paranoid to distinguish my voice. Right?

She looks up at me frowning. ‟I don’t know who you are,” she growls. ‟Back off.”

Everything around me fades. The woman in front of me is not Leah. She is not my Amelia. She has her face, her hair, her eyes, but those very eyes are sending daggers my way, in a manner Leah has never done to me before. Amelia, for some reason, does not know me. I will not believe it, it must not be true.

‟Ma’am, I’m Detective Andrews. I’m in charge of your case,” David steps forward raising his badge.

I almost reach out for him, but my body won't move. Why is he talking to her like a stranger? He can not be believing this.