A/N: Big apology for sending this story on hiatus. I got writers block and college applications and school got in the way and before I knew it, it was summer. So again, I shouldn't of been so lazy with this. I've also been second-guessing my decisions for the next parts of this story so I have many versions typed out, but I've decided on this one.
If your memory of the story is hazy, let me recap.
Casey met Ryan and things were going well until Michael scared him away. Michael went on vacation at the beginning of the summer. When he gets back, Casey, still unaware of what Michael did, takes a greater liking to Michael and they share a kiss. There is awkwardness after and Michael screws up and hooks up with someone else.
For Abby, she is no longer sick and is ready to go back to school. The man she saw at the apartment was indeed not her father, according to Casey, and she still is manic as ever to hear the rest.
With that Casey slammed the door to her room and proceeded to blast the loudest and angriest music she could get her hands on. She knew well enough that Michael would not remember everything that had gone down. For that she considered him lucky and only slightly wished she was too drunk to remember it as well.
"That was pretty stupid," Abby interjected as Casey sat back on her daughter's bed and sighed. "I mean sure mom, running off and not facing what you did was pretty immature, but Michael sleeping with someone else because he is confused on what happened is way worse."
Casey nodded in agreement trying to move on with the story, but Abby wasn't finished yet.
"It's like: Hey, I'm Michael. Because I just kissed this girl who I'm supposed to be just friends with, I have to go hook up with someone completely random and insignificant to fix things!" Abby finished her attempt at mocking Michael and settled down. "I just don't know why boys can reason like that."
"Yeah, I know sweetheart. But the past is the past."
"Doesn't mean we can't learn from it." Abby cut in with a smirk across her face.
"What does that mean?" Casey wondered out loud as her daughter just sat there smiling, a yawn slipping out in the process.
Abby was a pain to get off to school the next morning. At every opportunity she asked her mom more questions about the story and when she would continue it. Casey's mind had strayed however and she was currently occupied with a strong curiosity towards that man at the apartment. At first, she had merely shrugged him off as her mind playing tricks, but now that she thought about it more, her initial suspicion seemed plausible.
As soon as Abby was out the door and on her way to school, Casey quickly dialed up her assistant at work and asked him to postpone any meetings, calls or new assignments that would come up until she got back that afternoon: Casey had some digging to do.
The first place she tried was the Internet. The idea of looking him up online was so simple, yet it evaded her till now. First she googled him. Like any normal being on this Earth, there were only three things with his name attached to it. The first was a player profile he had made when he attended university with her. It was old and out dated. It had his records from high school and university and basic stats. But as she expected, nothing on it could help her with what she was looking for.
There was of course a Facebook search attached to him as well. She skipped over it and moved onto the third site: LinkedIn. Like a business version of Facebook, the long list of names similar to his showed up below the search bar. A couple people had pictures attached to their names, none of which were his, and others had small résumé of places they worked or attended school at. Casey was blown away by how many of them had the same name as he did. There was an older looking gentleman who worked for Dell and attended Brown. The one below had no picture, but it listed over ten jobs in work experience. Casey scrolled over them multiple times but couldn't deduce whether he was on the list or not. From software analysis to international sports and wellness ambassador to senior commercial contract manager, the job listings all blended together. Casey's knowledge of his eventual career path was circumstantial at best and her best bet lay with Facebook.
Logging onto her own profile, Casey typed his name in again in the search bar. The short time her computer spent loading the results felt like the passing of years instead of seconds. Finally, she saw him, second from the top. He was the only one in his profile picture. She let out the breath she had been holding in and surveyed his profile. They weren't friends, but shared twenty-eight mutual friends. He was single. Another breath held in was released. He had a lot of information private, but it listed Queens as the university he attended and a business school she was not familiar with. Below in the 'about me' section it had his birthday and his political preferences. Casey laughed at his comment under the latter. "Myself?" she questioned him as she thought back to her own answer to that question: a long empty space left blank. It was just like him to still be goofy at this age.
Finally she spotted the info she had been searching for the moment she powered up her laptop. Under the current city section was a map and in the center of that map was a light red marker pointing to the city of Toronto.
Casey felt momentarily accomplished. Sure, this new evidence didn't prove it was really him, but it was a start. She took this first broken barrier in her own little quest for the truth as a stopping point for now however. Putting her computer back in her bag, she set out for work early that afternoon with an idea just taking root in her mind. Although her career was far from what she originally wanted to aspire to before she found out about her pregnancy with Abby, her job in one of Toronto's biggest advertising firms might actually help her out.
Abby got back from school around 4:00 pm that night to find her mom still at work. Like always, she went across the hall to her old neighbor's place and waited there till her mom got back.
Mrs. Samuel greeted her kindly as she stepped into the lady's apartment. It smelled musty in there like usual and all the shades were drawn so the only light emitted came from an antique lamp beside the couch and small slivers of light coming in below some of the doors.
"Is your mom still out?" She asked Abby before going to the kitchen to get the girl a glass of water.
Abby nodded before chugging back the cold liquid, the cool feeling refreshing Abby after her walk home.
Abby took a seat at the dining table and took out a small gaming device for entertainment. Before turning it on however, she noticed Mrs. Samuel still hovering above her, like she was waiting for something. This event was particularly odd as Mrs. Samuel usually retired to the couch to read once Abby came in.
"Yeah?" Abby asked sort of rudely as Mrs. Samuel took a seat across from her.
Without warning or an introduction for that matter, the older lady set off into a long story involving her husband and sister when they first moved to Toronto. Abby took this as a sign to put away her device and sat attentively waiting for Mrs. Samuel to continue.
"I was not used to buildings taller than a couple stories you see," Mrs. Samuels continued. "My sister and I grew up outside of Sussex, New Brunswick. I don't remember my dad, but my mom told me when I was ten that he had died just a few years after my sister was born in a mining accident. My mother remarried when I was 15 and died shortly after giving birth to my younger brother. We stayed with my stepfather for a year until my younger brother died from complications involving weak lungs. After that, my stepfather left unexpectedly and my sister and I stayed with some friends until I had enough money to take a bus to Quebec. I met my late husband there."
I'm sorry for all of your losses," Abby said with swollen eyes as her hands rubbed the sides of them. "I never knew you had it tough."
Mrs. Samuels shook her head and smiled weakly. "It's not your problem to worry about Abby."
Mrs. Samuel's gaze faltered as her mind toured the expanses of her memory.
"It's funny," she finally spoke up, breaking the silence. "I remember the fondest of details from my earlier years, but I can never remember what I did the day before. I remember the uniforms I wore when I attended school in Sussex and my mom's perfume she wore to church. My sister's voice is still crystal clear in my mind, you know."
Abby nodded. "What happened in Quebec?"
"Well, I wanted my sister to finish high school, even though I didn't, so I got a job to support us. We stayed the first few weeks there with a family whom we met on the bus, but after that, it was just she and I for a year. When I changed jobs the following year, I met my husband. He was five years older than I and was working there to pay for his dad's medical bills. We connected over our hardships even though I could barely understand him at times. His German accent was thick and his slang French was hard for my few years of languages in school to comprehend. He picked up English quite quick though and by the time my sister had graduated, we were engaged."
Abby's eye brows furrowed in confusion. "How old were you?"
Mrs. Samuels laughed innocently. "I was 20, not too young really. My sister received an offer from a paper in Quebec City after graduation and my husband suggested moving to Toronto with his dad to seek better health care and new job opportunities. I wanted to follow my sister, but I gave in."
"Do you think you made the right decision?"
Mrs. Samuels considered it for a while before nodding slowly. "Even though his dad ended up passing away three months after we moved here, the pay was better and I was able to get my high school equivalent which led me to attending U of T and my degree in linguistics."
"Languages?" Abby asked skeptically.
"Yes. Languages indeed. I always thought you were pretty clever you know. Do you remember what happened when you first moved in?"
Abby shook her head thinking back to when her mom and her first met Mrs. Samuels. She couldn't recall the day or any day close to it.
"Well I'm pretty sure you were about four years old and you were so vibrant compared to your mother at the time," she said thinking back. "Your mom was under a lot of stress and when I saw you following her up and down the stairs asking her loads of questions while she moved in, I decided to lend a hand. I watched over you in your apartment as your mom carried the smaller furniture and boxes upstairs. You were so interested in everything. After your mom brought in a folded table, the door-stopper to your front door slid back again like it kept doing all day and you went up to the door, put a piece of packing material in between the wall and the door and let it sit there so the door would never close. I thought it was clever."
Abby smiled quite pleased with her four-year-old self. Then she got an idea. "Do you remember much about my mom back then?"
"Some things, why?"
"Did anyone come to visit?"
Mrs. Samuels put her hand to her chin and she thought long and hard. "Her mom, your grandmother did a lot at first. Your aunt Elizabeth came for your birthdays a couple of years. I remember a young lady came with your grandmother many times and a boy only a few years older than you visited sometimes as well, though I think he was actually your uncle. There was also an older man and his son that came once with your grandmother too."
"Do you know who the younger guy was?" Abby asked fervently. She assumed the older man was her grandmother's husband whom she was not related to, but she always wondered about his two sons.
Mrs. Samuels shook her head. "He was sort of tall, brown hair. He had this sort of goofy grin on his face all the time."
Abby nodded ready to ask more when Casey knocked on Mrs. Samuel's door. She rose out of her chair and answered it before calling to Abby.
"Hey," Casey said nonchalantly once inside their apartment. "How was school?"
Abby rolled her eyes. "Uneventful as always mom. I had a good talk with Mrs. Samuels though. She told me about her life growing up in Sussex and Quebec and how she met her husband."
Casey smiled sweetly. "That's nice. You don't get to talk with her much, eh?"
Abby shook her head. "She doesn't usually open up to me. "
"What else did you talk about?"
"That I was a clever kid," Abby paused. "That's about it."
Casey chuckled. "You were clever. A pain in the butt though."
Abby stuck her tongue out at her mom before retrieving the glasses and plates for dinner.
"Are you going to continue your story tonight? I couldn't help thinking about it at school."
Casey looked down at her daughter. Abby was just like Casey: Persistent, stubborn and clever.
"Yeah, after dinner I can."
"During dinner?" She asked cocking her head.
"After," Casey said louder shooing Abby out of the kitchen to start her homework.
Math never went by this slow for Abby. She only finished half of her homework before dinner and was stuck at the table doing the rest after. She thought of how her time could be better spent at that moment and wished for her homework to be gone.
She kept one eye on the clock at all times as well, watching as the time Casey had to retell her story dwindled down to twenty minutes.
"Done!" Abby shouted after running into her mom's room. Casey was on the phone and ushered Abby out, her tone quite serious and urgent.
Abby listened through the door.
"I know that it's like twenty years old but-" There was silence on the other end as Casey waited for a response on the phone.
"Can't you help me out just once. I really want to run that ad…. For a friend okay?"
There was more silence. Abby kept her ear pressed to the door trying to make out words.
"Thank you so much!" Casey yelled in the other room.
The door quickly opened as Abby jumped back.
"Yes?" Casey asked suspiciously.
"Story?"
"Homework done?"
Abby nodded.
"Your room, five minutes."
"But I usually go to bed in fifteen anyway."
"Fine. You can stay up an extra twenty," Casey responded, suddenly eager to continue.