The Four Winds

She moved past the vagrant and entered the station. Inside, the lobby was austere; one row of chairs against a wall, each one empty. Light shone down from the ceiling onto a man in uniform, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, at a desk with a black phone.

She tried to look confident. Clutching her fraying handbag strap, she crossed the tile floor, made her way to the officer at the desk.

He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache. He wrinkled his nose at her disheveled appearance.

She cleared her throat. “Uh. Sir. I’m here to report a missing girl.” She tensed, waited for it: We don’t care about your kind.

“Uh-huh?”

“My daughter. She’s thirteen. Do you have children?”

He was silent so long she almost turned away.

“I do. A twelve-year-old, in fact. She’s the reason I’m losing my hair.”

Elsa would have smiled any other time. “We had a fight. I said … Anyway, she ran away.”

“Do you have any idea where she’d go? What direction?”

Elsa shook her head. “Her … father left us a while ago. She misses him, blames me, but we have no idea where he is.”

“Folks are doing that these days. Last week we had a fella kill his whole family before he killed himself. Hard times.”

Elsa waited for more.

The man stared at her.

“You won’t find her,” Elsa said dully. “How could you?”

“I’ll keep my eye out. Mostly, they come back.”

Elsa tried to compose herself, but his kindness unraveled her more than cruelty could. “She has black hair and blue eyes. Well, almost violet, really, but she says only I see that. Her name is Loreda Martinelli.”

“Beautiful name.” He wrote it down.

Elsa nodded, stood there a moment longer.

“My recommendation is to go home, ma’am. Wait. I bet she’ll come back. It’s obvious you love her. Sometimes our kids don’t see what’s right in front of them.”

Elsa backed away, unable to even thank him for his kindness.

Outside, she stared across the empty parking lot and thought: Where is she?

Elsa’s legs started to give out on her. She stumbled, nearly fell.

Someone steadied her. “You okay?”

She wrenched sideways, pulled away.

He backed off, lifted his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I—I’m fine,” she said.

“I’d say you’re further from fine than anyone I’ve ever met.”

It was the bindle stiff she’d seen by the truck on her way into the station. An ugly bruise discolored one of his cheekbones. Dried blood flecked his collar. His black hair was too long, raggedly cut, threaded with gray at the temples.

“I’m fine.”