The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (read this if txt) 📕

He rubbed his face and said, “I’m like a bull in a verbal china shop. I mean well, but my words are clumsy. It’s one of the reasons I don’t talk much; I save time by not having to explain what I meant to say ten minutes after I said it.”

Eileen sighed. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t taught to feel fear the way she had been. She wondered what it was like to be a man, given respect and privilege just for the sake of it. Still, she couldn’t discount that being a beneficiary of a system didn’t make Holden a victim, even if it made him unknowingly complicit.

“It’s stressful always looking over your shoulder when you’ve done nothing wrong,” Eileen said, shaking her head at the injustice of it.

“You’re not wrong, but I didn’t think you’d be okay with being in the dark all night. I assumed going for help was the wisest thing to do.”

Eileen felt guilty for jumping to conclusions. “It’s not that dark,” Eileen said, motioning to the flickering light in the verandah.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I guess. But if you change your mind, it's not a long walk. We just have to hope that it doesn’t rain too much since this area is prone to flooding.”

No sooner than he said the words, it started to pour. Eileen sighed. She was caught in the no-man’s-land of bad decisions where no matter what you did there was a downside.

Holden shook his head in disbelief. “As much as it pains me to quote Clifford, a few years ago he mentioned that scientists created a phone you can use anywhere. ‘Practically fit in yuh pocket, boss’ he’d said. One of those would be perfect now,” Holden said, raising his voice above the din of the rain that pounded the car’s roof and rattled the windows.

Eileen imagined stuffing a rotary phone in her purse and knocking on doors to ask strangers to use their wall sockets.

“How would they even work?"

“Radio frequencies. That’s what makes them completely portable. Clifford predicts that in thirty years, everyone will have one.”

She frowned. “I can’t picture my bag ringing when I’m in town. And who on earth needs to use a phone all day?”

Holden wrinkled his eyebrows. “For Clifford to call and ask for orange money all the time? I could do without one.”

Eileen laughed. Lighting forked and split the sky with thin silvery cracks of electricity overhead and gave Eileen second thoughts about waiting out the storm. She peered through the heavy rain at the house’s covered verandah and wondered if they shouldn’t wait it out there.

“You’re a man of science. Should we be inside a tin can when there’s lightning?”

He shrugged. “We’re fine as long as we don’t touch metal.” His eyes lingered on the door’s hanging rods and the exposed ceiling where the roof-liner used to be. “So make yourself small.”

Eileen giggled.

A hint of a smile played on Holden’s lips. “The last time I was caught in a storm like this, Paul and I got our asses cut for tracking mud inside the house.”

In her mind, Eileen wanted to smile and nod, but her mouth had different plans. “Then why do you hate him so much?”

“I don’t hate Paul. Well…maybe it seems like I do,” he said resignedly. “I hate how easy he’s had it. He went to a better mortuary school and stayed there twice as long because he didn’t focus on his studies. If that were me, my father would have shouted at me to get back to Barbados however I could, because he wouldn’t encourage slacking off with his money. Then Paul got the new funeral home in the will.” He bit into his lip so viciously Eileen thought he would draw blood. “That was the one that hurt.”

She thought about what he said. “It does sound like you got the dirty end of the family stick. But ‘the Lord don’t put more on a man than he could bear’, as the old people always say.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Eileen smiled. “One lesson I’ve learned from working with you is that every emotion has its uses. Sometimes, bitterness can help drive us forward because we become so determined to have the last laugh. You never know; what you’re supposed to have in this life might be even greater.”

He grunted the way one does when words have too much wisdom to deny, but sting too deeply to easily accept. “These things take some getting used to. I’ve often considered just splitting the two businesses, letting him keep his building and I keep mine instead of having him leech off me. But… I guess maybe I find comfort in feeling like I’m looking after him.”

Eileen took a deep breath. “All we can hope is that these things are worth it in the end.”

Holden searched her eyes with his. His voice was low as he said, “It’s hard asking for what you want in this life while feeling you have no right to it.”

Eileen’s heart skipped a beat and she regretted the infinitesimal moment when her lips parted and she held her breath. Was she reading too much into what he said? Or was there truly more to it?

“What is it that you want?” Her nerves got the better of her and she hastily added, “From your brother, that is.”

He tore his eyes away and looked down at his hands. “You’ve seen the bills; you know by now that I’m paying for Paul’s fancy facility.” Resentment tainted his voice as he said, “I co-signed the loan while Paul was studying overseas. I didn’t imagine my father could die, if that makes any sense. Putting people in the ground every day can make you detach yourself from the fact it could happen to you.”

Eileen was hesitant to ask, but the solution seemed so simple that she had no choice but to make it tangible, give it wings so it could float into the air and alight in Holden’s