Chapter 13

Brandt

I was in my office jotting down notes for the upcoming meeting. The AI we had been developing was ready for the testing phase, and it was a really huge deal. We wanted to make sure we crossed all of our t’s and dotted all of the i’s before we released the first version to the public. We knew they would sell like crazy, and we wanted their quality to be beyond company standards.

“There’s a package for you,” my secretary said over the intercom.

“Great, bring it on in,” I said, turning off the com.

She walked in, handed me the envelope, and smiled. I looked down at the packaging and got excited almost immediately. I had found a site online that would send me county records of residents living in Camden. I was hoping the information inside would give me some sort of clue to how I could find Emma. She still was the primary thing on my mind, but instead of continuing to fight it, I embraced it and let myself be okay with the idea of eventually putting all of it to rest. I had been searching for Emma for a month, calling Camden, looking for social media pages with similar names and towns, combing through their local yellow pages, but there still was no leads. I only had her first name and the name of the town she said she was from, which apparently wasn’t much. I had thought with that information and the fact that the town was so small, it would be a slam dunk, but it appeared people there were a little less willing to talk to me than I thought they would be. I guess it was strange to have a man calling about a woman who lived in their town and for him to not know more than her first name.

Standing on the balcony a month before, I had promised myself I would do everything I could to find her, no matter what resources it took or how long it took to do it. I didn’t even wait until the next day to start, diving right in and starting to look around. I had to admit, the search had become sort of an obsession, me taking most of my free time and after Sicily went to bed at night to look up anything I could think of that might help me find her. I had talked to one private investigator, but he said with the distance and the little information, the case wouldn’t be worth his time and effort. It was irritating, but I understood where he was coming from.

I finished up my notes for the meeting and then grabbed the envelope and opened it up. I pulled the stack of papers out and took my pen, going through each line carefully. I came to an Emma, but the birthdate put her somewhere in her seventies. That definitely wasn’t the woman who had been in my bed that night. I went line by line through every single page and then again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I sat back in my chair and pulled my hands to my head, staring down at the envelope. There was nothing there, not one single Emma in the books. I asked myself if I had gotten the town wrong, but I was ninety-nine percent that I was right on the money from what she’d told me.

I grabbed the stack of papers and tossed it in the shred bin, sighing as I turned back to the computer. That had been the third company I had gone through and the third file I had received. All of them had been different with different names, dates, information, but not one single one of them had anything on the girl I had met a month before. I was coming up empty at every turn, and it was frustrating. Actually, it was more than frustrating. It was starting to feel absolutely hopeless. I had no real understanding of why the universe would reveal this girl to me and then lead me down a thousand dead-end roads trying to find her.

“Hey there,” Trevor said, walking into the room and sitting down. “Why do you look like your puppy just died?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just another search coming up empty on Emma, that’s all. What’s up?”

“You’re still searching for this girl?”

“Yeah.” I clicked off my computer screen and leaned back in my chair.

“Dude, seriously, this is getting a little ridiculous,” he said. “I supported you at the beginning thinking you would do a little Google search, maybe call around and then be done with it. You’re chasing a ghost, man, and I think you’re doing it to keep your mind off actually going out there and finding an actual girl.”

“I told you I wanted to see this through,” I said. “And I’m not chasing a ghost, trust me. I had her in my fucking hands. I’m not avoiding finding another woman. I just want to make sure this gets out of my head before I start trying.”

“It should already be out of your head, dude,” he said. “She left and didn’t leave any way to contact her. Obviously, you were a lot of fun on vacation, and that was it. I don’t mean to be harsh, but someone has to say it to you eventually.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said, picking up my jacket and briefcase. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking a half day,” I said. “See you at the meeting tomorrow.”

I left the office and jumped in the town car, heading back to my apartment. I needed to clear my head, get my mind straight about all this stuff. When I got home, I changed into some comfortable clothes and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I went down into the living room and sat down on the couch, leaning back and closing my eyes. Maybe Trevor had a point. I had been at this nonstop for a month and still wasn’t any closer to finding this girl than I was the day she’d left. Maybe I was chasing a pipe dream, hoping for something I knew I would never find. Emma had run out of this house in the middle of the night without one single word. Trevor had pointed it out, and I couldn’t ignore it. If she had wanted me to find her, to contact her, she would have left a note, a phone number, her last name even. But she hadn’t. She had dipped out and left me here wondering if I was losing my mind or not.

I had spent so much time tossing away phone numbers from women that it was crazy I was now hunting one down like a nutbag. Maybe karma was having a heyday with me, getting back at me for passing up women who actually were interested in me, calling them back, and taking them out. Before I could think any more about it, the front door opened, and Sicily came bolting in the house, stopping and smiling big at seeing me on the couch. She ran over and jumped in my lap, squeezing me around the neck.

“What are you doing home?”

“I just wanted a half day, that’s all.” I kissed her on the cheek. “But act like I’m not here and go do your homework.”

“All right,” she sighed. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said, watching her run into her room and close the door.

My mom walked in and set her stuff down on the table, looking over at me and smiling. She had picked up Sicily from school and brought over food to make for dinner, figuring it would be another late night at work. I had been working a lot of late nights recently between the search for Emma and the new project coming out. She walked over and plopped down on the couch next to me, handing me the mail.

“I’m happy to see you home,” she said. “Though you don’t look happy to be home.”

“I am.” I took in a deep breath. “I want to tell you about something. On Valentine’s Day, I met a girl, a girl who made my world stop. When I woke up the next day, she was gone and didn’t leave any note or any way of finding her. I tried to let it go, but I couldn’t, so after a couple weeks of torturing myself, I decided to try to find her.”

“Any luck?”

“No,” I said. “A month of trying and no luck at all. Trevor said I’m chasing a ghost, and I need to get my head back here instead of looking for some girl.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“I don’t know.” I sighed. “No, that’s not how I feel. I made myself a promise that I would find her and either something would come out of it, or I would put it to bed. I’m getting frustrated and tired though.”

“I think if this girl and this search is in your heart, then that is what you need to follow,” she said. “Your brain will always try to take the easy route. You know that. It’s harder to follow your instinct but so much more rewarding in the end. I haven’t seen you this happy in a really long time. At least not when you’re going about your everyday actions. Actually, I take that back. I have never seen you this happy about something. When you just talked about her, I saw a twinkle in your eye, a twinkle. That is the same thing I saw in your father’s eye every time he came to pick me up for a date. The same thing I saw when he said, ‘I do.’ That is something really special, Brandt. That is what I was talking about when I said the life-changing kind of love.”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “I just don’t know when I’m supposed to say enough is enough and put it away. I don’t want to be doing this when I’m seventy.”

“You’ll know when enough is enough,” she said. “But as long as that twinkle is still there, you still have more in you. I’ve seen a sense of motivation and determination in you that has been gone since Josie up and left, probably even before that. I’ve seen that take effect of your business life, your personal life, and everything between. Whoever this girl is, she lit a fire under your ass, and I want to meet her so I can personally thank her for that.”

“She’s an amazing woman,” I said, smiling. “At least she was that night. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m being drawn to her. It’s like a force I can’t control.”

“And let me guess, no matter how hard you try to force it out of you, it keeps coming back,” she said.

“Even stronger,” I replied, laughing. “She’s everywhere I look, in everything I do, and I don’t want to let go of it yet.”

“Then don’t,” she whispered. “When you find her, no matter what happens, you’ll be glad you stayed the course.”

“I hope so,” I said, looking out the window. “Because if I don’t, I might regret it the rest of my life.”