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If you are reading this, I am dead.
Of course, he was dead—it was just like him. I stared at my father’s crumpled letter and the claim check that came with it.
G8, Baggage Storage, Union Station, Washington, DC, $10/day.
Apparently, my entire inheritance could fit inside a suitcase.
“This had better be good.”
I stuffed the claim check in my pocket, stretched my lower back, and looked up at the giant atrium of Union Station. I’d been on a Greyhound for a week getting here. I was sleep-deprived, dirty, broke, excited, and extremely annoyed at my father. Why couldn’t he have just sent my inheritance to my apartment like he did the letter? Why couldn’t he have not died and come himself instead? It had been over twelve years since I last saw him. I’d had a speech ready for the next time I did, if I ever did. It was a really good speech.
I spun in a circle, trying to find a sign for baggage claim. Fake garlands decked the halls, and a guy on a scaffold dismantled the huge tree in the center. The most wonderful time of the year had given way to January. A falling garland revealed a yellow sign pointing left to the platforms and baggage. A hysterical giggle wormed its way into my throat. If only I could park all my baggage for ten dollars a day and come back and get it later.
Heading deeper into the station, I followed the map, dodging tourists, travelers, and a surprising number of police in dark blue uniforms. Near platform J, the pleasing scents of pizza sauce and Chinese food from the food court faded into the smell of smoke and char. Near the end of a long hallway of chairs where people could await their trains, crime scene investigators in full bodysuits milled around the luggage storage counter set into the wall of the station. My heart started to beat strongly in my chest. I slowed to a stop, surveying an ugly smear of tar above the claim window.
Snagging a passing man in a sweater vest who looked official, I asked, “What happened?”
“Fire last night.”
All the blood in my body hurtled toward my head. “Fire where?”
He was already gone. Pulse pounding in my ears, I ran toward the counter, but I had to skid to a stop at the yellow “do not cross” tape. Behind it, what used to be a sign listing rates and times for holding baggage caught my eye. It was now a melted piece of plastic slag. I stood on tiptoes, trying to see into the storage room behind the counter.
One of the uniformed police officers held up a hand. “Ma’am, this area is restricted.”
I waved my claim check in front of his face. “But I have—something—in there!”
With a bored expression, he pointed toward a guy who stood near a door that said “employees only”. It was outside the taped area. “That’s the insurance agent for the company.”
The crowd between the agent and me was thick. Since I only topped out at about five feet and was traveling with nothing but a battered messenger bag from high school, it was easy to duck under multiple sets of waving arms to the agent. “I have luggage in there!”
A woman in fake fur shouted, “Get in line.”
Another yelled, “You and me both, honey!”
The insurance agent, a young black man in a familiar sweater vest with a lanyard of keys, waved a piece of paper in my face. He said, “Submit a claim.”
“I don’t want money. I want what’s in that room.”
“Right now, it’s a crime scene,” he said, hanging onto politeness by the barest thread.
The woman gasped. “They said it was a gas leak!”
Her companion scoffed. “And you believed them?”
The first woman continued her tirade, loudly proclaiming she needs to claim her grandmother’s gold necklace. I eyed her, noting the loop of old gold already choking her.
Rolling my eyes, I stepped in front of her. “No amount of money will ever replace what’s in that room.”
“Ma’am, there ain’t nothing I can do for you except give you this piece of paper.” He handed it to me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’ll make a deal with you. Just tell me it’s not all burned, and I won’t pester you any longer.”
A loud chime reverberated, and I glanced around. It could not be one PM already.
“Hell, most of it was water damage.” He turned away.
Forgetting about the time, I mouthed, Water damage? I tried to get his attention again, but found I couldn’t. My feet physically could not move, and I felt woozy. When I tried to open my mouth, nothing came out. Coughing, I tried to wrench my feet off the ground and landed on my back in a heap. I got up and tried to move forward again and failed. Gritting my teeth I stepped backwards with ease. Invisible chains pulled me away from the guy. Was I having some kind of seizure?
Freaked out now, I backed up until I hit the employee door next to the claim counter just outside the caution tape and tried to catch my breath from—not doing anything. What was wrong with me?
Until my next financial aid check arrived, I was eating ramen with a side of ramen and needed this money. During the trip, I’d bought ten advent calendars of fancy chocolate for a dollar each. I’d been rationing them ever since. A tiny voice in my head informed me that my “inheritance” might not even be money. I had come by my abysmal financial skills honestly from the father that strangers had just put in the ground. At that thought, I paused. Had they buried him? I wasn’t actually sure.
I shook off that and the whisper of grief I didn’t have time for. Whatever he’d left me, I could not be thwarted from my goal in the last twenty feet.
“Miss, are you okay?”
Blinking, I focused upward on an old man in front of me. I didn’t have to look far. He was barely taller than I was.
“Miss?”
Two other men stood behind him. They had to be his brothers. All three had manes of black hair, hooked noses, and tanned skin. The middle one smiled, showing off a serious overbite.
My warning radar pinged. I slid along the door, trying to put space between us. “I’m fine.”
“It is a tragedy, is it not?” he asked with a thick European accent.
Why are you talking to me? I thought, but I said, “Yeah it is. Did you have luggage in there?”
“Something quite precious,” the leader said.
“Mine,” the shortest one shouted.
“Okay.” When they didn’t move, I asked, “Did you want something from me?”
“Not yours,” Shorty added.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks for not offering.”
The leader narrowed his eyes. “Nice try.”
I leaned forward, matching his soft tone. “I haven’t tried anything.”
He straightened, knocking into his two companions. “You don’t want it?”
I frowned. “What are we talking about?”
“Look at you. You must be one of his. Another by-blow. But that doesn’t make it yours.”
I stopped, ears quivering. “What are you talking about?”
With false jocularity, the first one said, “Why, you’re his spitting image, Peallaidh.”
Peallaidh was my father’s last name, pronounced Pow-lich from the Scots Gaelic of our heritage. It wasn’t my last name. By-blow brought back an old twinge. He’d never married my mother, which had never mattered to anyone except her, me, and apparently three nosy strangers at a train station on the other side of the country. “You knew my father? Do you know what happened to him?”
The three blinked in unison as if they were one creature, not three.
The leader asked, “You don’t know?”
The short one crossed his arms. “Does too. She’s here, isn’t she? It ain’t yours.”
Surreptitiously, I closed my fingers over the claim check. He’d been in the prime of his life. Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been a peaceful end. I should have thought more about what was waiting for me when arrived, but I’d been blinded by the thought of cash.
Shorty reached out to touch my arm. I jumped. Inexplicably, I found myself five feet away from him. I’d only meant to get his arm off, but I’d somehow ended up vaulting backward. We all gaped at the floor before they shared a meaningful look amongst themselves. My action seemed to confirm something to them.
The leader jumped, closing the gap and got in my face. “You think you have a claim? You have nothing.”
I turned to get away from him, but investigators had pulled a blackened piece of luggage over the counter. In true mentality, the crowd around the agent reversed course to head for the suitcase. We were jostled closer and I glimpsed his ear through his hair. It looked like my father’s. Instead of a rounded, firm top, his flopped over, and it looked like someone had gnawed on it from lobe to tip. He snarled with sharpened teeth and disappeared. Literally. One moment he was in front of me and the next I couldn’t see him anywhere. But of course, that is not what happened. He had to have dodged or fell. I spun in a circle scanning the crowd, adrenaline making my hands shaking, and saw the kid in the sweater vest on the floor.
Sighing, I helped him up. Face scrunched in frustration, he said, “That’s it. I’m out. Nobody pays enough for this.” He pulled off his lanyard. After he threw it and the clipboard on the ground, he jogged away.
Was it a complete coincidence that three men with the same genetic mutation as my father and me showed up where his final legacy rested? And kept talking about what was theirs and not mine?
Idly, I played with the handle of the door I leaned against, debating if I should brave the mad crowd or try to find the strange men, but then I realized what I leaned against. I rolled my eyes, jogging to the abandoned clipboard and lanyard, then put it on. Gripping the clipboard, I strode back to the employee door, trying to cover the Cal sweatshirt and jeans I wore. Discreetly, I sniffed at my armpits. I smelled funky after a week on a bus and my strawberry hair was a nest of tangles, but I could do nothing about any of it to appear more official. I wasn’t sure I’d ever owned a sweater vest, but I tried to adopt a bored slouch as I fumbled with the keyring and got the door open.
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