Read Online I Hope You Find Me by Trish Marie Dawson - Free Book Online

with me in bed.
    “After what happened last night it got me
thinking.” He paused to chew on his lower lip. “Well, sometimes I
hear things too, but I’ve never seen anyone, at least not
completely.” He sat down on the arm of the sofa, blowing the steam
off the top layer of his coffee.
    “What does that mean? Not completely …?” I didn’t understand what he was trying to say.
I moved in front of him, waiting for him to make eye contact.
    When he looked up at me, his face was tired
and serious looking, the laugh lines around his eyes seemed to have
deepened since the day before. He asked one simple and yet
complicated question.
    “Do you believe in ghosts, Riley?”
     
    ***
     
    It was as if all the air was sucked from the
room by some giant vacuum. Part of me wanted to laugh in Connor’s
face at the incredulity of what he was suggesting but the other
part of me, a much bigger part of me accepted it,
completely. I had been seeing and hearing things and even feeling
things that couldn’t or at least shouldn’t be real. I sat down
heavily on the sofa, and Connor pivoted on the arm rest to face
me.
    “So it’s not just me?” I asked.
    He blinked at me. “No, I don’t think so.”
    “Good.” I paused to close my eyes just long
enough for my mind to transport me to my house…and I opened my eyes
warily, not wanting to suffer through those memories again.
    “Good?” Connor seemed surprised.
    “Well, yes. This means I’m not going crazy.
Thank God.”
    Connor nodded, then shuffled over to the
counter, and sat down beside me, his shoulder slumped as if holding
the weight of the world on them. He smelled lovely in the
morning…his faint musky sweat mingled with a light fresh linen
smell. For a moment, the scent of him overwhelmed me, and I found
myself leaning toward him slightly as he began talking.
    “I flew into town from L.A. for business
three weeks ago with two others.” He paused to clear his throat
before continuing. “It’s funny because looking back now, I remember
seeing a handful of sick people in the airport. This guy and his
kid on the flight were sick actually. Anyway, we were here for
three days before the quarantine notices went up, and the
transportation systems were shut down.”
    I interrupted, “Shut down?”
    “Yeah, closed off. We left the hotel and
tried for two days to get a flight out. People just mobbed the
airport. They ran through the security systems, toppled over gates.
And half of them were sick. My friends were showing symptoms that
second day so we decided to come back here. The military had
started separating people, just grabbing them and taking them away.
They announced the airport was shut down – nothing in or out.” He
took a sip of coffee and then leaned forward and sat the mug on the
coffee table. I sat, riveted, unable to look away from his face
while he shared his story with me.
    “So, we headed back to the hotel but took a
different route, and there was this mobile clinic, and a big truck
parked in this lot and people were lined around it, trying to get
in. It was total chaos. But there were military nurses and doctors
inside, we could see them. I left my friends there.” Connor looked
down at his hands. I reached out and slowly touched the side of his
hand, just slightly, to let him know I was there.
    “They were sick; I didn’t know what else to
do. My friend Grant, he was so ill he couldn’t walk anymore. He
kept shaking, and started bleeding from his nose, his mouth and I
just panicked.” He brought his hands up and dragged them down his
face. His eyes were red and watery when he looked over at me.
“Jesus, I just left them there to die. With all the other sick
people. I just left them.”
    He balled up his hands into tight fists and
pushed them up against his eyes and stayed like that for a long
time. When he finally lowered his arms and looked at me, I said
quietly, “There was nothing you could have done to save them.”
    “Right.” He