Unsung Requiem by C.L. Stone

She Was A Lost Girl

The air in early February in Summerville, South Carolina matched my hopes for the task we had out for us: gloomy, threatening rain.

A chill I couldn't shake.

Gabriel and I stood close together, my arm behind his but touching. Waiting was the tough part. The door inside the garage could open.

My stepmother could come out and find me here. It could trigger more trouble. While standing outside the two-story gray house it seemed large and hollow, even more so than when I had lived inside. The last time had been maybe a month before.

Gabriel was so much taller now than when I met him last summer. His hair was cut short underneath now, and he had a mop of strands on top of his head, including the two blond locks near the front, a contrast against his natural russet color. Lean, strong, a punk rock, and gruff appearing.

As we stood together, I noticed ink marks on his arm. I reached for it, drawing it near to see he'd drawn a scene out of a movie we'd watched last week, with a girl alone on a train with a spirit and a mouse. Drawn to look like a tattoo but a few spots had faded to show it was just pen ink.

I was about to ask him if he'd been thinking about getting tattoos again when the door opened.

My sister appeared and spotted us. Silently she stepped out, closing the door behind herself. Her hair was up at the moment, in a high ponytail on her head with a scrunchy tie, wearing jeans and a halter shirt I didn’t recognize, and new Nike sneakers.

When did she get those? However, I did then notice there were empty delivery boxes piled neatly near the garbage bin just inside the garage. I hadn’t thought about them before. It didn’t matter. I imagined without me in the picture, she was able to get money to buy things, possibly on the internet now that our father had abandoned the house and everything in it. I wasn’t sure how finances were working for the house right now but I was glad she was able to get what she wanted.

“I couldn’t find anything in the house,” Marie said. “I’ve looked every time she went into the bathroom.” She motioned to me. “You can double-check. I can ask her to do something…”

She knew I could sneak in quietly, without being seen. It was too risky though. I just hated to prompt whatever mental illness she carried, triggered often by my appearance. The heated divorce proceedings she was in were bad enough.

“Maybe it’s in the boxes,” I said, pointing to the extremely large shed with two garage bay doors toward the back of the driveway. “Can we go look? If I find yours, too, I’ll bring it out.”

She seemed hesitant but nodded. “I should stay inside. Less suspicious.”

Not to mention she probably didn’t want to hang out with us for an afternoon sifting through boxes.

Marie went back inside. We headed to the shed, moving quickly to a side door and entering, not even daring to turn the lights on inside. Instead, we used our phones as lights, scanning the space. We slowly made our way in, until Gabriel grumbled.

“We’re not going to find much looking in the fucking dark like this.” He went back, turned on the lights.

He continued, “If your stepmom…ex mom…asks about it, Marie can come back out and turn the light off…make some excuse.”

Made sense.

Part of me had that inkling of paranoia, guilt, and fear of getting caught, the same I carried with me nearly all my life in that house.

The number of boxes seemed bigger than last time. Or maybe now standing here, I got the full realization of we never really moved in, or we carried so many items that I never thought to look at, mostly because I considered the items to be not mine to look through. My mother often scolded me for pilfering.

Some boxes, I thought, had our old toys. We never really threw anything out, not toys, not kid clothes, and we didn’t have garage sales. We just put them in boxes and tucked them into the garage, as if boxing and tucking away was enough to forget they even existed.

“There’s got to be something in here,” Gabriel said. “They couldn’t enroll you in school without a birth certificate and shot records.” He went to one of the boxes and opened the top, peering inside. “Could be anywhere though. This might take a while.”

“Can’t we get the copies that were made at the school?” I asked.

“Those we’ll delete,” Gabriel said. “But we need the originals. We can't have them brought up after you've left. We'll be lucky if your dad doesn't have them with him. We’ll already have to send Luke in to fetch anything related to you if he does have anything.”

Being a Ghost Bird was tricky because it involved not having any background to trace you with. I still didn’t know the need for someone like me, but it seemed important. Our team took great care in ensuring my identity would be as obscure as possible. The outside world had to not be able to trace me.

Gabriel picked up a couple of old dusty cloth, hardbound books out of one of the boxes. He opened them, flipping through pages. “Check every page. Sometimes things get tucked in, you know?”

We each took a box at a time. Gabriel kept us organized by shuffling boxes to the opposite wall of the shed after they’ve been searched. The air was stifling and despite the colder weather, we were getting warm as we searched.

Gabriel removed his shirt after a while. His bare chest glistened with a light sweat. Lean, strong, with various muscle lines. His jeans hung low enough from shuffling around that the start of a V-line at the lower abdomen showed.

Despite being elbow deep in boxes and shifting items, I became slightly distracted. All the guys on the team were so attractive in individual ways to me. Gabriel was no exception.

His striking crystal blue eyes met my gaze, catching me staring at him.

I blinked rapidly, gazing into the box, pretending to shift through items but not really looking for a few seconds after getting caught.

After a few more boxes, we managed to find a collection of paperwork, tucked into a metal box that was unlocked. It had copies of information for both myself and my sister. Mine appeared to be photocopies but notarized by stamp and signature.

I gazed over my own birth certificate, unsure if I ever really looked at it.

October 6^th. No hospital, home birth. Illinois.

There were vaccination records as well, mostly scrawled out in pen and signed by a doctor.

Gabriel looked it over. He looked at Marie’s as well, comparing. “They look exactly the same.”

I looked over his shoulder as he held up the pages. The vaccination records were identical, as if we’d gotten shots at the exact same time. There were only very slight alterations to the dates. Even the signatures looked identical.

It was the same with the social security card. My name, but a very similar number to Marie’s and only two digits off. And mine was just a photocopy and not a real one.

“Forged,” Gabriel said. “Just enough for you to get your license maybe.”

“I guess for us, that’s good news,” I said.

Gabriel combed his fingers through his hair, gazing down at the paperwork. “We should keep going. And check the rest. Make sure there’s nothing left behind.”

I knew why he said so. We were hoping this was the last time I’d be here. After this, unless Marie or my stepmom needed my help, I wouldn’t be back.

Saying goodbye forever.

We were about finished up when Gabriel pulled an old Bible out of a box. I thought I recognized it. It had an old leather cover, large with gold along the edges of the pages. My parents never went to church, though my mother often brought up sin and God in her ramblings.

The old Bible in Gabriel’s hands didn’t seem particularly important to her or she would have brought it inside.

Gabriel opened it up, reading an inscription. “It says Sorenson,” he said. He held it up to show it to me.

As he did, something thin and small fluttered out from between the pages, landing on the ground between us.

A photograph. An old Polaroid sort with a white frame.

Gabriel picked it up, and he stopped, his mouth opening in surprise. “Jesus Fucking Christ,” he breathed. “Thought this was you for a second.”

My heart raced. I blinked, aware of what he was saying but the meaning behind it not connecting.

He flipped the photo to show me.

It was me, or my image. Me with a tiny baby wrapped in a blanket. In a room with a brick fireplace in the background.

At the white bottom border of the photo, there was an inscription: October 7^th. Winchester, Kentucky. One day old.

Kentucky?

I didn’t know what to say. It had to be her.

My real mother.

Gabriel flipped it back to look at the photo again. He breathed the inscription. “You’re shitting me.”

“I was born in Kentucky?” I asked. I hadn’t thought about it. I knew I had family there, that the Sorensons were from there, but I guess I assumed I was still born in Illinois. I hadn’t realized that might not be the case.

“Yeah, that,” Gabriel said, still gazing at the photo. He lowered it a bit, turning the image slightly as he stared. “But…I didn’t think.” He looked up at me. “This is where my mom is from.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

He nodded slowly. “I’ve got family there still. Cousins. Haven’t seen them in years.” He blinked rapidly. He rolled his head back and closed his eyes. “God, don’t tell me.”

“What?” I said, very worried about why he seemed so stressed out.

He smirked and shook his head. “It’s a small town Sang and fuck us if we’re…I mean it could be…we’re related.” He added quickly. “Distantly. There’s no way. I never heard of some Sorenson family relation.”

It seemed impossible. Still, my heart raced. Suddenly this was all too real. I’d held off thinking too much about my mom, where she was from, and what happened to her.

And now it was here, staring me in the face.