Finding Fiona by Emily Ann Ward

it was new, put in after the
fire.
    “ Do they have a vault?” Hannah
asked.
    “ Yeah, about that…” James said,
stepping out of Fiona’s room. “There is a vault, and it had
fireproof doors, but we haven’t been able to open it.”
    Keith walked past them, his hands full. Hannah
reached forward and helped him into the kitchen.
    “ Where is it?” Fiona asked
James.
    “ It’s downstairs.” He called over
his shoulder, “We’ll be right back. I’m going to show Fiona the
vault.”
    As they walked down the stairs, Fiona’s body
tensed. She felt like someone was going to grab her when she
reached the bottom. She jogged down quickly, passing James. He
raised his eyebrows at her.
    “ Those stairs give me the creeps,”
she said sheepishly.
    He took her across the lower level, past the
offices and the lab to a door Fiona hadn’t noticed before. He
opened it, and they entered a hallway. A large metal door stood to
their left with a keypad on the wall next to it. Fiona ran her
fingers over it. She’d definitely been here before.
    “ No one knows the combination?”
Fiona asked.
    James shook his head.
    “ What’s in here?”
    “ No idea. Could be anything,
really…”
    “ Except for our photo albums,”
Fiona said, cracking a smile. “That would have been a good
idea.”
    James nodded in agreement. “Yeah, no kidding…
although, I didn’t see any birth certificates or social security
cards. They could be in there.” He paused. “We could have paid
someone to break in, but it’s a lot of money, and Walter couldn’t
pay for it after restoring the house.”
    Fiona tensed. Walter. What else did Troy lie
about? “And everything in here would still be intact?”
    “ I think so. There’s no way to
tell.”
    Fiona bit her lip, staring at the keypad.
“Have you tried birthdays?”
    “ Yeah, birthdays, social security
numbers, phone numbers, everything we could think of.” James
stepped closer. “You think you might know it?”
    She shook her head and met his eyes with a
frown. “I don’t remember anything, I told you.”
    “ You remember some things,” James
said. “You remembered the fire, the car wreck, the girl who was
driving you…”
    She remembered death. Not life. She
thought back to her journal– her journal, not Elizabeth’s .
A smile crossed her face. “I remember getting a Rottweiler puppy
for Christmas.”
    James grinned. “Alfred.”
    “ How old was I when I got
him?”
    “ Oh…” James’s brow furrowed in
thought. “Well, he was seven when I met you, so you were probably
nine.”
    “ How did we meet?” Fiona asked,
leaning toward him.
    “ We met at a high school football
game,” James said. “You were going out with a player on the team my
school was playing against.”
    “ What school did I go to?” Fiona
thought she was tired of hearing of her past life, but her
curiosity was piqued again.
    “ Abigail Adams, and I went to
Washington Chambers,” James said. “Even though you didn’t ask which
school I went to.”
    Fiona smiled. “And how did I meet Keith,
Sarah, and Faith?”
    “ You went to high school with
Keith, I went to school with Sarah, and Faith was your roommate at
NYU.”
    Fiona touched his wrist and trailed her
fingers down toward his. “I’m glad you found me. I wonder…” She
sighed. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop thinking about Troy and what he
did.”
    “ Me, neither. He knew where you
were all this time, and he never told anyone?” James shook his
head.
    “ I can trust you, right?” Fiona
asked, making eye contact with him. “I didn’t like Troy, and I
didn’t really trust him, either, but… he was one of the few
constants in my life, and I was… I don’t know what I’m
saying.”
    James gently let go of her hand to cup her
face in his own hands. “You can trust me.”
    They stood in silence for a moment, and Fiona
almost thought he might kiss her. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel
about that. She felt both dread and pleasure at