I read between the lines. “But you’re not sure about spending the rest of your life with him.”
“It sounds terrible when you say it like that.”
“Are you getting cold feet?” I said.
Was I selfish for feeling glad she was having second thoughts? It meant we could still hang out together like the old days.
She shook her head. “No. I’m being silly. I doubt there’s a woman alive who’s tied the knot and not thought twice.”
I didn’t know. I wasn’t married and I’d never asked a married woman if she ever regretted getting married. It was a line of questioning that could cost you a promotion.
“Ignore me,” Hazel said. “I’m being stupid.”
Hazel was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.
“If you’re not certain, maybe you should push the wedding back a few months,” I said. “Give you time to think it over more.”
“Are you kidding?” Hazel said. “You know how long it took for me to get the church I wanted! No. I’ll think about it more later. It’s just a few last-minute doubts, that’s all.”
Now it was plural. Doubts.
I put a pin in it for the drive home. While the others were asleep in the back, I’d speak with her about it.
“Oh God,” Hazel said, turning green. “More’s coming up!”
She bent over and threw up, adding to the growing pile at her feet.
Slam!
The explosion of noise made me hop.
Ahead, emerging from a backdoor to the bar we’d been drinking in, a man stumbled, looking first our way, and then the other. He had a terrible haircut and a mustache that looked like it’d been glued on.
Please don’t come this way. Please don’t come this way.
The man slowly turned and shuffled off into the darkness. There was a lost look in his eye, confused. Maybe he had too much to drink, I thought. That didn’t sound right even though I couldn’t explain why…
Hazel heaved again and muttered barely intelligible words under her breath. “Never again. I swear to God. Never again…”
A breeze flapped a sheet of paper attached to the wall. It was a poster with a photograph in the middle and a number with a dollar sign at the bottom. At first, I thought it was a local girl looking for street work—fat chance, I thought, with the lack of men in this place. I hadn’t seen more than a handful since we arrived.
The photo wasn’t well chosen for that purpose. It was plain and face-on with no hint of her hot curves—assuming she had any—underneath. I scanned the word at the top of the page: MISSING, and that’s when it suddenly made sense.
This girl wasn’t looking for work. She was lost and her family was looking for her.
The image was faded, the face hard to recognize. Rain had washed out the colors and turned the paper crisp like a newly discovered treasure map.
Only, this treasure was unlikely to ever be found.
Maybe I was wrong. After all, how many people tore off the missing posters they’d put up after their loved one had been found? Not many, I bet.
A stiff breeze flapped my skirt around my legs and tore the poster off the wall. The woman stared up at me from that frozen image. And something struck me. With her shoulder-length hair and big eyes, she could have easily passed as me.
The thought gave me a shiver—that I might be witnessing my own future in that failed and forgotten rectangle of crumpled paper.
As it floated to the ground, it joined half a dozen others like it. They slid across the dirty backstreet with a gruff tearing sound. Each of the faces was different. One was black with big eyes, another an Asian with a cute button nose, and a Latina with a small heart-shaped face.
None of the girls had anything in common… except for the fact they’d all gone missing in this town.
But what did I expect? It was what happened in modern towns. People went missing from time to time. That was nothing unusual.
And then I looked up. My blood turned cold.
Dozens of curled posters flapped on the wall. Maybe hundreds. Each one, a missing woman.
Their friends and families would be out there somewhere, searching for them, worried about them.
The wind ruffled the pages once more and a pair of concealed eyes winked at me.
With my heart in my throat, I reached for the poster on top, revealing another one underneath it. And beneath that, another sheet of paper…
And another…
And another…
Every square inch of the wall was half a dozen layers deep with posters of missing women, each with a reward underneath for any information on their whereabouts. They went back in time, the paper growing darker, crisper, and the images faded and forgotten like distant memories. None had dates on them, but it wasn’t hard to imagine just how far back these missing women went.
Hazel groaned as she stood up.
“That’s it,” she said. “I think I’m empty. Man, I’m really never going to drink another drop of alcohol for the rest of my life.”
“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Are you coming back inside?”
It was the guy Hazel had been kissing earlier, no doubt hoping for Round Two.
“How dare you!” Hazel said sternly, wiggling her beringed finger in his face. “I am engaged to be married! I can’t be seen cavorting with ne’er-do-wells!”
The guy nodded, a little disappointed, and headed back inside.
I shared a look with Hazel. We burst into laughter.
“He looked terrified!” Hazel said.
“He’s probably keeping an eye out for Tom,” I said. “Ten points for the use of the word ‘cavorting,’ by the way.”
“It was one of my better moments, I thought,” Hazel said triumphantly.
She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For being a great friend.”
She smiled at me and I smiled back. Then I wrinkled my nose and pulled back.
“What?” she said.
“Go inside and get cleaned
