I twist my hands until they look the way my insides feel: like cat's cradle gone horribly wrong. My heart is a claustrophobic woodpecker trapped in my ribcage, and my legs are anxious to err on the side of flight versus fight. Flight versus remain sitting and wait to fulfill the decision my brain had been trying to coax me out of since I got on a train nearly forty-eight hours ago and posted myself under this bus shelter in this rainy little country town. despite what my brain was telling me, there was no going back. I would sit and wait, and when he stepped off of that bus, I would face him for the first time since that fateful summer so long ago, and every molecule of my being is reacting terribly to that decision.
A little figure plunks down on the bench beside me. A tiny girl, maybe nine, with dandelions weaved into the two knotty braids her hair was grappled into. She swings her little legs, humming to herself. There is a SpongeBob band-aid on her chin and a big glass jar of roly-polies sits on her lap. She beams up at me brightly, the epitome of unmarred childhood innocence. Innocence I wish I'd held on to, but unfortunately, innocence becomes more illusive as one ages.
"I've never seen you before." the girl says inquisitively.
"I'm not from here," I admit, deciding to humor her curiosity.
"Whatcha doing here then?"
"Meeting someone." my shoe taps the pavement. "Where are your parents?" It's a small town but my city brain can't help but find it odd that such a young kid would be left to roam it all by herself.
She gestures down the road. "My daddy's on that bus." The bus that, as she speaks, passes over the hill and crawls to a stop in front of us. A rush of compressed air releases from the machine like a long-held breath and the doors unhinge. I stand, smooth the blouse, rumpled from having slept in it on the train. A man steps off of the bus and the girl runs into his waiting arms with a jovial cry of "Daddy!"
I stare at the doors, hold my breath. My heart freezes over when the doors fold closed again and the bus rolls away and disappears down a turn in the road.
My face goes stiff. I turn to leave and see the girl and her father watching me.
"What happened, miss?" The girl asks me. "You're friend didn't come?"
I smile sadly. "He must have missed the bus." I start to walk away, I'd passed a motel on the way from the train station, but then pull up short. The girl's father looked familiar...
His face had aged significantly since the time of the picture I'd secretly kept when my mother destroyed the rest, but he has the same eyes--olive with dark flecks of brown--and there was no mistaking it.
"Mr. Coffer?"
"Yes?" he says. I can see it in his face; he recognizes me too, maybe isn't sure.
"I'm Margaret," I say. "Your daughter."
