Chapter 3 - Welcome to My World
By 2:00 a.m., the paperwork was signed, the discharge instructions were stapled together in a thick packet, and Oliver was sitting in the passenger seat of my ten-year-old Honda Civic. He wore a borrowed oversized gray hoodie from the hospital lost-and-found, his left arm resting carefully in a sling.
The drive back to my apartment in Northeast Portland was dead silent. The windshield wipers clicked back and forth against the light drizzle, a steady, hypnotic rhythm that matched the ticking of my own racing thoughts.
I was thirty-two years old. My apartment was a cramped, second-floor walk-up with a squeaky floorboard in the hallway, a perpetually dying fern by the window, and a refrigerator stocked mostly with Greek yogurt and leftover Thai food. I had a cat named Barnaby who hated strangers, a steady job as a senior data analyst at an environmental non-profit, and a life carefully curated to avoid drama, chaos, and emotional landmines.
Now, I was suddenly a foster guardian to an eleven-year-old federal fugitive’s son.
What on earth have I gotten myself into?
We pulled into the gravel parking lot behind my building. The neon sign of the laundromat across the street flickered a dull, buzzing red through the rain-streaked window.
"We're here, buddy," I said softly, turning off the ignition.
Oliver stirred, rubbing his good eye with his sleeve. He looked up at the aging brick building, his expression unreadable. "Is this where you live?"
"It's not a mansion, but it has good water pressure and the neighbors are mostly quiet," I smiled gently, stepping out into the drizzle and hurrying around to open his door.
Inside the apartment, Barnaby the cat took one look at Oliver, hissed softly, and bolted under the sofa.
I flicked on the hallway light, tossing my keys onto the small wooden entryway table. "Make yourself at home. You can take the pull-out couch in the living room tonight. Tomorrow, we'll figure out clothes, groceries, and turning my spare den into an actual bedroom."
Oliver stood awkwardly by the doorway, his casted arm held stiffly against his chest. He looked around the tidy, modestly furnished living room—the stacks of paperbacks on the coffee table, the framed botanical prints on the walls, the warm amber lamp glowing in the corner.
"You don't have a TV in here," he observed quietly.
"Nope. Books build character," I teased gently, trying to coax a smile out of him. "Though I do have a laptop if you're desperate for cartoons."
He walked slowly toward the bookshelf, his fingers trailing lightly over the spines of my novels. Suddenly, he stopped. His hand hovered over a small, leather-bound photo album tucked between two heavy textbooks.
"What's that?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
My chest tightened. I walked over and gently pulled the album out. On the cover, written in faded silver ink, were the words: University of Oregon - Fall 2012.
"That," I said slowly, turning the cover open to reveal Polaroid pictures of two laughing college girls sitting on a grassy campus quad, sharing a giant pretzel and wearing matching oversized sunglasses, "is history."
Oliver stared down at a picture of Rachel—her dark hair blowing wildly in the wind, a bright, mischievous grin spread across her face.
"She looks happy there," Oliver murmured.
"She was," I replied, a sudden lump forming in my throat. "We both were. Before life got complicated."
Oliver looked up at me, his dark eyes searching my face with a maturity that felt entirely too heavy for an eleven-year-old. "Did you hate her? When she left?"
The question hung in the air, sharp and unvarnished. I closed the photo album with a soft thud, placing it back on the shelf.
"For a long time, Oliver? Yes," I admitted honestly. I wasn't going to lie to him. "I was angry. I felt abandoned by my best friend. But standing here tonight? Mostly, I just feel worried. And right now, my job is to keep you safe until we figure out where she is."
Oliver nodded slowly, climbing onto the pull-out sofa and pulling the quilted blanket up to his chin. Within ten minutes, exhausted by shock, trauma, and the sheer weight of the day, his breathing deepened, and he fell fast asleep.
May you like
I sat in the dark armchair across the room, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, listening to the rain tap against the windowpane.
Little did I know, the quiet sanctuary of my apartment was about to be shattered before the sun even came up.
