Chapter 7 - The Port Authority Midnight
The Port Authority Bus Terminal at eleven o'clock at night is the loneliest place in the world.
The rain had come through the roof in the lower concourse, turning the gray concrete floor into a series of shallow puddles that reflected the red neon sign of the donut shop. The air smelled of exhaust, stale tobacco, diesel fuel, and the wet clothes of thirty people who were waiting for buses that were always forty minutes late.
I sat on a metal bench near Gate 42, my red, white, and blue bag tucked between my shins. My hoodie was still damp from the walk from the subway, and the gauze on my left arm had started to slip, the small red spot where the needle had gone in showing through the white threads.
I had forty-two dollars left in my pocket. Enough for a ticket to Pittsburgh, but not all the way to Cincinnati. I'd have to wait until the morning agent came on duty to see if they had a discount for people who had a death certificate in their pocket.
A man in a wet blue security jacket walked past me, his keys jingling against his belt. He looked at my bag, then at my shoes, then he kept going. People like me were invisible here; we were just the background music for the city’s late shift.
"Autumn."
The voice didn't come from the gate. It came from the stairs behind the vending machines.
I didn't look up immediately. I thought it was one of the guys who sold the phone cards or the loose cigarettes near the entrance.
But then I saw the shoes.
They weren't Julian's polished oxfords. They were a pair of high-top black sneakers with neon green laces—the ones Adrian had been wearing when he sat on the stainless-steel table in the basement. He had his black hoodie pulled up over his head, his gold chain tucked inside the collar now, and his face was red like he had been running up the steps from Eighth Avenue.
He didn't have his phone out. His hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, and he was breathing through his mouth, his shoulders rising and falling against the yellow tile of the wall.
"The blood work came back," he said, walking over to the metal bench and sitting down two feet away from my bag. He didn't look at the other people waiting for the bus; he looked at the puddle on the floor.
"I don't care, Adrian," I said.
"It was a ninety-nine point nine percent match on the maternal line," he continued, his voice dropping into that high, thin register I had heard through his earpiece earlier. "Vance said it's the closest variance he's seen in ten years of handling the family accounts. You're... you're her daughter, Autumn. You're our sister."
"I know," I said. "I told you that at the precinct."
Adrian reached into his pocket and pulled out something that wasn't a piece of paper or a check. It was a small, blue woolen hat with three small rubber sharks sewn into the brim. The blue had faded into a dull gray-green, and one of the sharks was missing an eye from where the salt water had eaten the thread thirty years ago.
"Julian didn't lose it in the surf," Adrian whispered, his fingers twisting the old wool until his knuckles went red. "He gave it to her the morning she got into the car. I was sitting on the stairs by the pantry, and I saw him hand it to her through the window. He told her to keep it so he could find her when he was big enough to drive."
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He looked at me, his gray eyes wide, wet, looking exactly like my mother’s eyes when she looked at the tin roof before the rain started.
"Julian’s outside in the car, Autumn," Adrian said. "He won't come in here because... because he says the floor is too dirty. But he didn't send Arthur with the contracts this time. He sent me with the hat."
