Free Coming Back by Emma South

hallway.  “Really?”
    “Yes, really.  I’ll be with Dean and back for dinner.  Police escort.  OK?”
    “Well… yes, of course.  OK.”  Mrs. Jayne took the news with mild shock.
    Christie picked out her shoes from a pile near the front door and lifted a light coat off a hook before stepping outside as she shrugged it on.  I was a couple of steps ahead of her and offered her my hand when I noticed how wet the steps were.
    “Careful, it’s a bit slippery here.”
    I couldn’t help but smile when she took the help I offered.  How often had I hoped to have her hand in mine, to walk through the kingdom of Warfields with its princess at my side?  An embarrassingly large number of times was the answer.
    Unfortunately, the illusion evaporated quickly when she retracted her hand at the bottom of the steps, but I remembered it like a burst of warm sunshine that passed over me through a tiny break in the clouds.  Even tired and hurt as she was, I felt lucky for any time spent with her.
    I decided it would probably be a pretty crap idea to take her to help me exercise King in the park she had been abducted from, so I brought her out past the old McKinley farm to a sparse forest with a clearing not too far in that was peaceful and private.  I loved it there, and so did King.  Hopefully Christie would too.
    We took turns using the ball thrower, a kind of plastic grabber at the end of a long handle that helped to launch the ball a lot farther a lot easier.  It didn’t take long before King smelled of wet dog and was panting happily.
    “So what was it like meeting Harper?” I asked, sending the ball bouncing off a tree at the edge of the clearing and handing the thrower to Christie.
    “Um…” she pondered it while King brought the ball back and then sent him scampering off in the other direction.  “Confusing,” she finally finished.
    “In what way?”
    “She… wasn’t what I expected.”
    “What was she then?”
    “I dunno how to explain it.” Christie paused and sighed, giving me the thrower back.  “I wanted to hate her.  I wanted to tear her a new one.  You know?”
    “So you don’t and you didn’t?”
    “She wasn’t what I expected,” Christie repeated quietly.
    King brought his prize back, dropped it in between us, and wagged his soaking wet tail all over our legs as I scooped the ball up and fired it off into the distance.
    “I don’t know what to do now,” said Christie.
    “Hmmm?”
    “For a second there, I knew what I had to do.  The first step was to get rid of Harper, and everything else would fall into place.  But my life really is gone, there’s no coming back.  So what do I do?”
    I gave her the ball thrower.  “I heard King say you throw like a girl.  New first step, prove him wrong.”
    Christie smirked without humor and loaded her weapon, winding up and firing the ball halfway to the horizon with a grunt of effort.
    “Good one.  That’s one thing I always loved about you, Christie.  When you get pushed, you push back.  You’ve never let life walk all over you.  I bet when the Feds catch that asshole, you’ll be there in that courtroom looking him in the eye.”
    Christie didn’t seem to know how to take me mentioning there was something I always loved about her, and she visibly flinched at the idea of confronting her abductor in court.  I inwardly kicked myself for both slips of the tongue and tried to move on quickly.
    “In the meantime, I’ve seen a lot of your friends around town.  Most of them say they’ve barely seen you.  You could catch up with them, maybe?”
    “That’s another thing.  I… I don’t know if I can handle seeing them.  I remember how I used to be like it was a TV show or something.  People cried on my shoulder, I had good ideas to help.  I remember it… but not really what it felt like, you know?”
    I nodded and she continued.
    “I don’t know if I could handle their… disappointment.  I’m so much…”