Miss, you really need to exit the aircraft.”
Fifteen minutes had passed since I eased the sketchbook back onto Elias’s lap, since Elias woke and grabbed his bag and pushed his way off the plane.
My gaze roamed the face of the stewardess, but it was the pictures from the sketchbook that remained, impressed in my memory.
Page one: A factory. Not maybe a factory, positively a factory, drawn from the inside, from the floor, where huge looms pumped and pumped the cloth. Workers bent, weary looks on their faces. They worked too hard, too long. Just like Mum.
Page four: A prison. Drawn from inside the cell. Through the eyes of a prisoner. To the right, a cell wall, scratched and worn by a million hopeless moments. And at the bottom, hands — guilty hands — upturned. As a younger man, these palms gloried in strength and promise. Now, weathered and wrinkled, they’d taken too much. A murderer’s hands? A rapist’s hands? A fighter’s?
Dad’s?
Page seven: Me. Not resembling me, or me from a distance. Me, up close and peeking around a corner. Hesitant. Running from something. Elias reflected my gaze, my vacant mirror gaze. He captured my longing.
These were no abstract drawings. Elias drew with firm, perfect strokes. More telling than a photo. More, just more.
“Miss, are you all right?” The stewardess laid her hand on my shoulder. I stared at her fingers.
“No.”
I rose, squeezed into the aisle, and reached for my bag. It felt heavy slung over my shoulder. For the first time in months I felt weak and crumpled against a seat.
“How did that bloke know my life? In his sketchbook, how could he know it?” I asked, and glanced at the stewardess. “Did you tell him? Wait, how would you know?”
“Do I need to call someone for you?” She stepped out of the aisle to let me pass. “I was supposed to keep a watchful eye on Elias throughout the flight, but maybe you need —”
“A bit of sleep and I’ll — I’ll be fine.”
I wandered off the plane and into a vacant airport.
He’s gone. My chest loosened. A random meeting with a paranoid mentalist. Disturbing, but random nonetheless.
“All right, Clara. Gather yourself.”
Money. It would be good to check on where I stood with that. I threw my bag onto a blue plastic seat, tugged on the zip, and took a deep breath.
My bag was not my bag.
“Stop!” I screamed, and raced back down the tunnel. I burst back into the plane and grabbed my stewardess mate. “My dad’s journal!” Every caution and tip and all his contacts! Not to mention my own diary. Eight months of everything. Every thought. And photos, of Teeter and Marna and Mum. “This isn’t happening!” Together, we executed a frantic search.
“I’m so sorry.” She glanced at her watch. “You can fill out a report, and if your backpack turns up . . .”
I would not fill out a report. Not when every moment spent with pen and paper was another moment farther from my bag. No, there would be no report. No paper trail. I would find the idiot who lifted my bag and make the criminal pay.
I hurried back into the terminal and spread the contents of not-my-bag out on the floor.
Men’s clothing, bundled and balled on top. This, I expected. I was the only female thief I’d encountered thus far. Beneath the clothing, some personal effects and two medications.
Risperidone and Melatonin. Thieves are always blasted.
I set the drugs aside, and peered into the bottom of the bag.
Paper. Reams of it. Paper laying loose; paper gathered into tablets.
Paper in sketchbooks.
“Oh no,” I groaned.
And crumpled among the pages of drawings I dared not examine was a small slip, worn and creased.
Contents of this backpack belong to Elias Phinn.
If found, please contact Guinevere Phinn at:
Phinn’s Bed and Breakfast
1 Loring Parkway
Minneapolis, Minnesota
(612) 555 – 0177
Guinevere. So be it. I will not deal with Window Boy. I will sort this out with Guinevere and retrieve my diary and forget this flight.
My stewardess shut down the gate area and joined me.
“Find what you need?”
I held up the address. “Loring Parkway. Is that near?”
She nodded. “Twenty minutes. None too far. It’s in the heart of downtown.” She started to walk away, and then turned. “Nice thing you’re doing, returning it yourself. It might even be fate you wound up with that bag. My dad, he took the wrong bus somewhere in England after the war, and my mom was on it. That’s how they met. It turned out that there was a reason for hopping on that wrong bus.”
“Thanks, but every bus in England is the wrong bus.” I slowly reached for Elias’s shirt, flattened it and folded it. Then another, and another. My heartbeat slowed. Left sock, right sock. I lined up the seams of denims, set the folded clothes aside, and gently stacked the papers. Finally, I lifted the items back into the bag.
My mind clear, I hoisted the bag over my shoulder. I would locate Loring Parkway, but now, with my blasted laptop in Elias’s possession, I had a greater need . . .
Help Support Children of Incarcerated Parents
500 Days of Wandering, 500 Days of Hope
I hated blogging from my phone, and I hated being rushed. But tucked inside my diary, £3,000 in bills found its way into Window Boy’s hands, and his bag didn’t return the favor.
Bottom line: I needed money, and for that, my site needed attention.
Compose. Click.
Day 240
I realise, now that I am well into this adventure, just how I long for home, for my precious England. But the need is great, and so is my resolve. (Here, I paused to cough, and continued.) Presently, I find myself in . . .
I stepped onto the people mover, glanced about, and shrugged. I’d only posted a handful of fictional entries, but I needed money, and I’d learned elegance was key.
New Zealand, a beautiful country; in Christchurch, a lovely city. Surrounded by mountains and waterfalls, stretches of plains, and deep-cut valley. These are the views that children of incarcerated parents will never glimpse. This is the air that the incarcerated long to breathe. These hardened ones at least remember freedom. But their unfortunate children languish like downed kites. They are abandoned, unless you, dear reader, act.
Will you lift the wings of a poor child today?
Will you donate to the Children of Incarcerated Parents Fund?
Friends, together we have reached thirty percent of our £500,000 goal.
One hundred percent of your gift goes toward the support of one of these children, a child who has just lost everything.
“At least that line’s the truth,” I said, and finished my entry:
Give generously. Give now.
I posted the blog and waited. They would give. Incredible that over ten thousand people, a small cult following, discovered and subscribed to my blog. More incredible still that a tenth of them financially supported my global trek. Yes, they believed they were giving to needy children. That occasionally — like today — I fabricated even my location, always gave me pause. But there was no other way. Their charity alone kept me traveling, and by the time I reached ticketing, £400 had been given.
“Well, all right then.” I pocketed my phone and grimaced. “We live to lie another day.”