Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,2

in her quiet voice as she joined me.

Coffee slopped onto my fingers, and I swore under my breath and shook off the drops.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Are you doing ok today?”

My eyes drifted over Zahra’s shoulders to Mason. “Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

“You seemed distracted in our meeting.”

“Processing,” I said. Processing was a magic word with people like Zahra and Richard.

“Elien.”

Her tone brought my attention back to her face.

“What?” I asked.

“Elien, you know that people who are experiencing post-traumatic stress—”

“Oh boy,” I said.

“—often have the mistaken belief that they deserve to suffer. They hold on to the past because they think it gives meaning to the suffering they witnessed.”

“I believe I’ve heard that a time or two.”

Mason was still standing there; it was hard to tell from a distance, but I was pretty sure his hands were balled up into fists in his pockets.

“And you know that getting better depends on the individual. Nobody can do this for you.”

“I believe I’ve heard that a time or two as well.” Then, because I couldn’t help myself, “Maybe you should be reminding Mason of this stuff.”

Zahra’s dark eyes caught mine. “Mason didn’t lie to everyone today.”

Slowly, I drew out the coffee stirrer and flicked droplets into the trash.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

I shrugged.

“So, we’re both going to pretend I didn’t run into you and Richard at Café Bartolome Wednesday morning. We’re both going to pretend you weren’t having a wonderful day.”

I shrugged again. “I’ve got a killer eye cream; keeps them from getting puffy no matter how much I bawl. I can scream and sob and fifteen minutes later, I look like a million bucks again. Well, a thousand bucks, anyway.”

“Elien.”

It was the same clinical, professional frustration that I’d heard one too many times from Richard. I let my gaze slide away and realized Mason had left.

“Gotta catch my ride,” I said, slipping around Zahra.

She caught my arm. “Elien, I’m sorry. That wasn’t appropriate; I didn’t mean to confront you like that. I just think—you have a way with people here. You help them. You helped Stephanie today, when Tamika was giving her a hard time.”

“Put it in my chart,” I said. “So you’ll have something to gab about with Richard at lunch tomorrow.”

Zahra pursed her lips. “May I ask you for a favor?”

“I’m pretty busy,” I said. “Tomorrow I have to have a panic attack and slit my wrists.”

“I think Ray is really struggling. Could you check in on him this week? Do you have his number?”

“Yeah,” I said. I tried to think back to what Ray had said, but it had vanished. Alanis Morissette on repeat. “I’ll text him.”

“You’re kind of a senior member,” Zahra said. “I think you could be a leader in the group, Elien. That might be good for you.”

“The only thing I’m a leader in,” I said, patting my stomach, “is carbs. If you need a general for the cinnamon roll army, give me a call.”

Zahra pursed her lips again, but I slipped away before she could say anything else. When I got outside, Muriel was already sitting at the curb in the Subaru. I flashed her an apology wave as I hurried down the steps of DuPage First Methodist. A few cars down, Mason was getting into the passenger seat of a brown Ford sedan. He paused, and then he turned and stared at me, as though somehow he had sensed me looking at him. I broke toward the car, slid in beside Muriel, and said, “Home, Jeeves.”

“I do not get paid enough for this,” Muriel grumbled as she pulled into traffic.

DAG (2)

Mason continued to look over his shoulder as he got in the car.

“In or out,” I said. “It’s a million degrees out there.”

“Yeah,” he said, dropping into the seat and dragging the door shut.

I fiddled with the A/C, which cooled the car to an arctic eighty degrees, and then realized the audio had cut out.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re sitting on my iPod.”

“You are twenty-seven years old,” Mason said, digging the brick of black plastic out from under his butt. He fiddled with the wire that ran to the tape deck, where an adapter was—in theory—supposed to be playing whale songs. Somehow Mason got himself tangled in the cord, and after almost a full minute of watching him get more and more wound up, I reached over and started the detangling process.

“You’re twenty-seven years old,” Mason repeated when he was free, shoving the iPod into my hands. “Twenty-seven. Two. Seven.”

“You’re twenty-eight.”

“You have a job,” Mason said, flopping