Two Little Orphans Part 1 - A Short Story

Written in 2021 | Rewritten in 2024 | 4,383 words

The story you are about to read is a “vomit draft.” This means that it is in its rawest form of writing and has no professional editing done whatsoever. But I welcome any corrections, grammatical or otherwise, you may find.

PART I 

Helen blinked back tears while her husband, Tom, gripped her right hand tightly. Sitting behind a desk much too large for the cramped office, sat Dr. Cooley, revealing results of the battery of tests they both endured to get straightforward answers why Helen hadn’t conceived yet. They had been trying for over a year before Tom felt enough was enough. The strain it put on both of them was more than either could bear. The time came to consult a doctor. After much research and recommendations from close friends, they gave Dr. Cooley a try. 

He was an older man than the picture they found of him online. It worried Helen to be consulting a doctor who appeared to be their age. But she soon shed her doubt when she met him. Balding on top with wisps of gray hair held behind his ears by a pair of thick black-framed glasses that made his eyes appear twice as large as they actually were. Every time they met with him, he sat at his desk. He wouldn’t administer any of the tests, he had assistants for that. He earned his living by examining the results and giving sound advice as to what they should do. All of his reviews were glowing, and the friends who recommended him did nothing but rave, and Mr. and Mrs. Miller could see why. 

He delivered terrible news that no woman wants to hear; “I’m afraid you have viable ovaries, Mrs. Miller.” The words hung in the air like a large boulder ready to crush her. His words came like a whisper as he continued to ramble on about their options. Helen couldn’t hear anything else after that. She just focused on her blinking. Must be strong for Tom. And hoped he would never let go of her hand, even though his grip was so tight she thought her fingers would snap at any moment. She couldn’t face him. Not now. Not yet. 

“...I think it would be the best thing for both of you.” Helen heard those last words, and it snapped her back inside that tiny room. What would be the best thing for them? She wanted to ask, but her mouth was terribly dry. He offered them water. Her husband declined and Helen didn’t hear it. 

Dr. Cooley pushed his chair back, and for the first time got to his feet. They both used to make bets with each other as to how short he was. Dr. Cooley reached over his desk and stretched his hand to shake Tom’s firmly. Helen watched the exchange, a blink letting one tear fall, and she quickly swatted it away with her hand. The doctor then turned to her with a smile a grandparent gives their grandchild, who’s run to them with a scraped knee after falling off their bike for the hundredth time. A reassuring smile that they will be alright. They will get back on that bike and try again, and one day they won’t fall. 

He gripped Helen’s hand, and she knew he felt the wet tear she wiped. I don’t want your pity. She wanted to pull her hand away, but he gripped it. Much tighter than she thought he could at his age and was impressed. 

“Not to worry, Mrs. Miller. The answer will come if you only let it.” 

In the car, her husband tried to smile for her sake as he started the engine and made for home. 

“What do you think?” Tom asked, looking over at Helen briefly. She just stared straight ahead, not ready to face him. 

“Think about what?” she asked. 

Tom figured she heard little of what the doctor said. He could tell because she had a blank expression on her face. He knew it well. It was the same expression she had when he asked her to marry him. She assured him it was just a surprise, as she wasn’t expecting him to ask so soon. They had been dating for over six months. He thought it was time and wanted her to know how he felt. She said ‘yes’ but two years later he had his doubts on whether she truly meant it. 

“The cabin. Dr. Cooley thinks we ought to get away to talk about our options. It’s up in the mountains. I told him how much you love the snow…” 

Helen turned to him, her eyes red with the strain of trying not to cry. He had the luxury of needing to keep his eyes on the road while driving and was inwardly thankful for that. “And what exactly are our options?” Helen asked. She didn’t mean for it to come out as harshly as it did, but clearly they had a long conversation that she had checked out on and was frustrated at herself for not taking the news as easily as it seemed Tom had. 

“Maybe we should discuss them when we’re at the cabin,” Tom said as more of a statement than a question. He always made statements, and it drove Helen crazy whenever he did. As if her thoughts or opinions were irrelevant. He had it all figured out and would take care of everything. All she had to do was keep the house clean, cook his meals, fold his laundry, and provide him with children. He wanted two. So far, she kept good on three out of four. 

“When are we leaving?” 

The ‘when’ didn’t really matter as she had no job and therefore no one she needed to ask permission to take time away from. No one, that is, except her husband. She had no living parents and therefore no one she needed to inform of her whereabouts whenever she went somewhere, which was hardly ever. She had one younger sister who was too busy traveling the world and never in the same place long enough to warrant anything more than the occasional postcard in the mail showing where she’d just been. Helen envied her baby sister. Her baby sister did not envy her. 

“First thing in the morning,” he said, very matter-of-factly. It was at this point that he waited for his wife to make a sarcastic remark about missing work and if that was such a wise idea currently in his career. Tom was always looking to get ahead, and a promotion was always just around the corner. Truthfully, he threw himself into his work to get away from his wife. The last year of trying and failing was not fun for him. But his mother reminded him that no matter how hard it was on him to watch Helen suffered more. He couldn’t watch and therefore he worked himself to distraction. 

But this time he knew Dr. Cooley was right. They needed to get away and spend time with just the two of them. Dr. Cooley gave them some really valuable advice and options that Tom hadn’t considered. He wished his wife had heard them so he wouldn’t have to recount them to her. He knew how much she trusted Dr. Cooley. There was no way Tom could deliver the information with the same kindness and whispering tone. 

“I’ll start packing when we get home, then.” Those were the last words his wife spoke to him for the rest of the day until the following morning. 

She laid out his clothes for him on their bed and left him to pack it however he wanted to in his own suitcase while she busied herself packing toiletries and her clothing. By morning, Tom had put their suitcases in the trunk of their car and had the heat going in the car. Helen brought out two thermoses filled with coffee, one of them done just the way Tom liked it. 

They did the first leg of the trip in silence. Tom wanted desperately to turn on the radio but knew it would only start an argument. He’d rather listen to talk radio, and she’d rather listen to rock or blues music. Helen wanted desperately to turn on the radio but knew it would only start an argument. Tom hated listening to music while driving. She tried to explain to him the sole purpose for having a radio in a car is to listen to music while driving. But he’d always counter with the same line: “If that were true, there would be no talk radio at all.” 

The simplest solution they both came to on their own was to not turn the radio on at all. Which left only one way to break the silence that lived between them. 

“I looked up this cabin online last night,” Tom said, gripping the wheel and delivering a half-hearted smile to his wife. 

“Oh, really? What’s it like?” For the first time, she was actually interested in what her husband discovered about this cabin. After all, Dr. Cooley recommended it to them. 

“Well, for starters, it looks like we’ll be way up at near the top. There are no neighbors or anything within miles of us. So, I’m thinking we’ll stop off at a local grocery store just before we head up the mountain and get whatever we need for food. I wouldn’t want you to have to go a day without a PayDay™,” Tom said, winking slyly at his wife.  

Helen smiled but turned away a moment too late. He saw it and knew he’d won her over. “I don’t know what you mean, Tom Miller. I have no such cravings.” 

“Oh, yeah,” he said, and leaning over, he pulled down the glove compartment to reveal a PayDay™, the only thing in there. They both laughed and the rest of the ride was much smoother. Tom even turned on the radio and found a rock station just for Helen, which she turned down so they could continue talking. 

When Tom pulled off the highway and slowed down as they reached the grocery store, the sight of it silenced them both. It looked like it hadn’t been updated or cleaned since it was first built several hundred years ago. Helen had to wonder if any of the food found in there would even still be good and wanted to caution her husband to look at all the expiration dates when picking things to buy, but his smile stopped her. They were having such a good time. No need to ruin it with possible food poisoning. 

Upon opening their doors, they were immediately hit with a burst of cold in the air. They both rushed to open the backdoors and grab the coats they put there and giggled at each other. Hand-in-hand they walked into the grocery store. 

To their surprise, it was much more organized and slightly cleaner inside than outside. 

“I guess this is what they meant when they said, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’” Tom said, whispering in Helen’s ear. She swatted at him, but he moved before she could hit his face. His whispering always tickled her ear, and she didn’t like it, but he’d risk the swat just to see her cheeks turn red with a blush. Only, this time he figured her cheeks were red from the cold. 

They grabbed a cart and agreed to take the store aisle by aisle. If they were back home, Helen would be on her own in a super-sized grocery store with a laundry list of items they needed. She liked this much better. Especially as Tom was about a foot taller than she was and could easily reach things on the top shelves. She hated having to ask for help and would sometimes go without a certain item if she couldn’t find a tall female employee to help her. 

The store was completely empty except for them, an employee who seemed to follow them around the store, appearing in the next aisle before they got there, stocking a fully stocked shelf. Helen noticed him straight away and was touchier with her husband than she’d ever been, to let everyone know they were together, and she was definitely not available. 

Once done scouring the entire store, they made their way back towards the cash registers to check out. There was a row of three registers. The one closest to the exit had a woman seated on a stool, flipping through a magazine, ignoring Helen and Tom until they smiled at her and piled things onto the small counter space.  

“Good afternoon,” Tom said, leaning forward and squinting to read the woman’s name tag, “Rachel. Must be nice being out in the wilderness and the quiet.” 

She shrugged at him and began chewing a piece of gum she had been nursing since her shift started. She aimlessly passed each item in front of a scanner gun she had beside the counter. Tom found himself impressed with how easily she could do this without looking for the barcodes. He found it mesmerizing. Helen had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and wanted to leave. She grabbed his forearm and squeezed it tightly, but Tom ignored it. Instead, he grabbed the grocery bags as they were filling up on the carousel at the end of the row of registers. 

“You guys staying up in the mountains?” Rachel said, which shocked Helen to hear a voice other than their own. It had been hours since they left the city and all that time, it was just the two of them talking to each other. Helen didn’t hear the question directed at her. “Do I got somethin’ on my face, lady?” 

Tom straightened up to see that Helen had a strange look on her face. Her all too familiar blank expression she got whenever she was someplace else. He often wondered where she went when she wasn’t in her body. Would she rather be there than where she was? Rachel wasn’t to know the nuances of his wife, and so he spoke up quickly. 

“We’re staying at the Cabin on the Mountain.” Somewhere off to the side there was a loud crash as something fell. Rachel stopped chewing her gum, and it looked to Tom like she was so shocked she swallowed it. “Do you know it?” 

“You’re staying there? Why? Who are you? Some writer?” Rachel asked her litany of questions so quickly, Tom could hardly keep them all straight in his mind. 

“We’re just looking to get away from the city for a while, that’s all. It was recommended to us by our…,” Tom said, but stopped himself. Mentioning a doctor might encourage more questions, and he could tell by Helen’s continued blank stare he needed to get her back in the car. “...by a friend. We’re not writers. Why would you think that?” 

“You don’t know about that place?” Rachel folded her arms and shook her head in disbelief. Her initial impression of them had lowered even more. 

“What’s there to know? It’s just a cabin with a beautiful view.” Rachel went back to scanning and bagging the last of their grocery items. “Right?” 

“Sure, if you don’t mind that it’s haunted.” 

Helen snapped back to reality, her eyes widening. “Haunted?” she asked. “Did you say haunted?” Her voice rose loudly and echoed throughout the store. An elderly couple entered and stared at her, whispering as they walked by. 

Tom hurried to put the last two bags of groceries in the cart and placed his wife’s hands on the handle of the cart, pushing them both towards the exit. 

“Have a nice day,” Tom said over his shoulder to Rachel, who started talking to the strange employee who’d been following them throughout the store. Tom and Helen could hear the two of them laughing loudly before the sliding doors closed, muffling anything inside. “Get in the car, Helen. I’ll put these away.” He took the cart from her and unlocked the car with his key fob. 

Helen walked up behind him, her voice in a panic. “Did you hear what she said? Haunted. She said the damn place is haunted. By what? Why did you rush me out of there?” 

“It’s not haunted, honey. She probably says that to everyone who comes here. A part of the tourist attraction. I saw some articles about it when I searched online. I just didn’t think she’d bring it up to total strangers.” He finished putting all the groceries in the car's backseat, then he took Helen by the elbow and led her towards the passenger side, slamming the door shut as she folded her arms and pouted. 

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she said. Tom started the car and pulled out, starting their journey up the mountain. 

“You know how you get about things like that, Helen.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, staring daggers into the right side of his face. 

“Nothing. Can we just drop it? Look around. You’re missing the sights. Isn’t it beautiful?” 

Helen looked out her window and had to admit, it was beautiful. Nothing but sky and treetops for miles. No tall skyscrapers or large groupings of houses in a row, suffocating each other. She lowered her window and took a deep breath. Tom did the same. For the moment, all talk of a haunted cabin had ceased as they took in the surrounding nature. 

The first few days and nights in the cabin are some of the best days Helen and Tom have had. Their first real vacation since their honeymoon. On their first day there, they jogged and encountered a family of four deer. For what seemed like an hour, they remained perfectly still and marveled at the beauty before them as the deer didn’t realize they were so nearby. At night they would play some old board games they found in the cabin, reminding them of their childhood. But mostly they laughed. Tom can’t remember ever seeing his wife laugh so much in so many consecutive days. He hated to bring it all back to reality. But while the reason for being there was to unwind, it was also to discuss their next steps for creating a family, and it seemed like Helen would not bring it up. 

“It’s a shame we only have another week here, isn’t it?” Helen asked, gathering up their plates and putting them on the counter in the kitchen. “I wish we could stay forever, don’t you?” When she turned back, there was a grin on Tom’s face. “What?” 

“You know, ever since I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you wash one dish. Even here, with no dishwasher. You put the dishes next to the sink and I come behind you and wash them.” 

Helen slinks over with a pouty expression on her face and sits on his lap. They touch foreheads. She always does this to either change the subject or get her way with whatever she wants. Tom tries to hold a serious expression on his face, but he never could. Eventually, he breaks and smiles as she nestles her face into his neck. 

“Admit it, you never married me for my housewife skills.” 

Tom whispers in her ear. “It’s time, Helen. We can’t keep dancing around the reason we’re here.” 

Helen stiffens and gets off his lap, folding her arms in defiance. “You never change. Same old Tom. Just when things are going good for too many days, you have to bring it all to a grinding halt.” 

“That’s not what this is. And you know it. Look, just sit down and I’ll tell you what the doctor had to say. You know, there are other ways to have a child that don’t involve you getting pregnant at all.” 

She knew he wasn’t trying to dig at her or hurt her, but it hurt just the same. And Helen was never good at keeping her feelings or her temper at bay. “Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you,” she said, walking over to the radio and turning it on. It was talk radio, but she didn’t care. Anything would be better than the conversation they were having right now. 

“Turn that thing off.” 

“I’m done,” she said, turning the volume up on the radio. 

Tom slams his fist into the table. If Helen got a nickel every time he did that, she surmised she’d have enough money to live comfortably on her own. Every now and again she even wondered if he wished it was her face he was hitting instead of the table. 

“This just in: Major snowstorm headed our way. If you’re in the Shenandoah area, especially up in the mountain region, the time to batten down the hatches and get whatever you might need in case of a power outage or getting snowed in, is now. I repeat, for all you vacationers out there, head to your local grocery store.” 

The roads will take time to plow, especially on the mountain. It can be several days the closer you are to the top. But our Shenandoah snow crew are the best at what they do. And now, a word from our sponsor…” 

Tom turns the radio off, startling Helen, who was listening to the announcer. 

“I’ll go to the store. You should stay here. I think we need some space, even if it’s for an hour,” Tom said. He doesn’t wait for Helen to agree with his suggestion. He puts on his boots, his coat, grabs his gloves and keys and storms out the front door. Slamming it behind him. She flinches when she hears him slam the car door and drive away. 

Alone in the house, Helen realized just how large it was for the first time. She needed a distraction before she heard noises or saw things that weren’t there. Not that she was prone to such imaginings, but she’d read too many tales where that’s the first thing that happens to a woman alone in a cabin. The thing to do was to open all the drawers. 

Helen figured they would all be empty as this was a rental cabin and therefore whoever was renting it wouldn’t leave anything personal behind. But she was curious, and it was a distraction that might yield results. It didn’t take long for her to find a journal in the top dresser drawer in their bedroom. It was the same color as the inside of the drawer and reasoned they had missed it because of this similarity. 

The cover and spine were both worn, so she knew it had to be ancient, the edges of the pages crinkled and yellowing. She could tell right away it had to be a journal. 

“Should I?” she asked no one, as no one was in the cabin but her. 

Hearing no objections, she nestled down on the couch by the fire, and opened the book. To her surprise, it was filled with spells. And beside the name of each spell was a date that went back to the late 1800s. Amazing, she thought to herself, and she carefully turned each page, giggling at each spell. If what they did or cured wasn’t funny enough to her, the words were. This has to be some sort of joke. 

She was about to close the book and put it back where she found it when she saw lights flash through the kitchen windows. Tom had returned. She looked at the clock above the fireplace mantel, shocked she had spent nearly an hour pouring over the book in her hand. She looked down at it and her eyes widened. 

Helen passed her fingers over the words, expecting them to change, but they didn’t. “For the Barren Woman,” she said aloud. 

The car door slammed outside, and she quickly closed the book, tucking it behind a nearby couch cushion so Tom wouldn’t see it. She ran to the door, and it flung open from a heavy wind outside. He came in carrying four full bags of groceries and she had to lean on the door to get it to close behind him. 

“Is that all of it?” she asked. 

He pulled his hat off, revealing red cheeks and a red nose that made her giggle to see. They were both not accustomed to such a cold climate. 

“Yeah, this is all of it,” he said, rubbing his hands together and breathing into them to get warm. 

“Well, I’ll tell you what. You go soak in a hot bath and I’ll take care of putting all of this away.” 

“Then can we…” he started, but she stopped him, planting a kiss on his lips. 

“Yes, we can. And I promise not to get angry like before.” 

Hoping she was being truthful, he hung his coat up, stepped out of his boots and trudged straight to the bathroom. Helen looked down at the groceries and sighed. It would’ve been nice to have his help to put things away like the first day they arrived, but she wanted him out of the way so she could read that spell. 

The sound of the water gushing in the bathtub snapped her into action and she sprinted to put everything away. By the time she finished, the water stopped gushing and she could hear him groaning as he stepped into the tub. 

She crept towards the couch, grabbed the hidden journal, then tiptoed to the front door, careful not to make a sound as she slipped on her husband’s oversized coat and boots. Her hand had just reached for the doorknob when she stopped. Tom was humming a familiar tune she couldn’t place. She shrugged and slowly opened the door, remembering how windy it was, she braced herself against it and closed it behind her. 

Standing in the cold, she knew she had to be fast. She opened the book and flipped through each page quickly till at last. There it was, the spell for a barren woman. She had to ask herself if she really believed in spells and magic as her hand touched her stomach. It was the one thing Tom wanted and she couldn’t give it to him. 

“I believe,” she said into the wind, and before she could change her mind, she read the words slowly and carefully under the light of a full moon.

TO BE CONTINUED…