Who: Shelby Thomas and Max Mendelson. Where: Shelby's place. What: Shelby's looking to find out what happened to her family and Max is the right man with the plan to do it! When: April 4, 2020, afternoon-ish?
But I would not give you false hope On this strange and mournful day When the mother and child reunion Is only a motion away...
There were papers and Shelby’s laptop strewn across the dining room table when Max showed up at the house she shared with her grandmother. She’d been anxious, and had been googling her parents name while she waited for him. Obviously with no luck. It just kept bringing up the same research papers her parents had written years ago.
“Hey, come in,” Shelby greeted as she threw the door open. “I really appreciate you making some time for this.” Probably she should start thinking about whether or not she needed to pay him for his assistance, since no doubt he was way more tech savvy than she could possibly dream of being.
“Hey, it’s totally my pleasure,” Max replied, following Shelby into the house. “If I can help you find any information about your family, the effort is super duper worth it.” Even though Max was confident in his tech and investigative prowess, he was careful not to get Shelby’s hopes up too much. It was entirely possible (and, when he considered it, probable) that he wouldn’t find anything about her family at all. Or, he thought sadly, he’d uncover something she didn’t want to hear. He didn’t doubt for one second that Shelby could bear the disappointment of her family not being alive after all this time bravely but that didn’t mean Max wanted to have to deliver that kind of bad news. He’d really come to like and admire Shelby, and not just because she and Sasha had started hanging out. She was smart and ambitious and kind; Max desperately wanted to give her happy report. At the very least, he hoped to at least give her some sort of closure.
“I’ve got things set up on the dining room table, since it’s the biggest space for computers and stuff,” she added, laughing at herself a little because she sounded jumpy. She was just nervous. Not because of Max, but because of the possibilities.
“Cool, cool, cool,” Max replied, eager but equally nervous. He pulled a laptop out of his bag and then another and set both on the dining room table. Even though technology was more readily available since Austin had reconnected to the rest of the country, these two computers were of his own design and specs, meticulously scrabbled together from scraps he’d accumulated over the past several years. Just for good measure, he set down a new-ish tablet he’d acquired from the mail order catalogue as well. When he felt satisfied with his set up, he sat down and invited Shelvy to take a seat next to him. He started rifling through the paperwork she had gathered, looking over the information with a discerning eye.
“Wow, you’ve been to a whole lot of places,” Max said with a low whistle. Shelby (and, by extension her family’s) extensive travel didn’t make his job more difficult, necessarily. It just gave him a wider net to cast. The more information he had about them the better.
Folding herself onto the chair next to Max, she smiled a little at his exclamation. Until it was laid out the way it was, she never took into account how well traveled she had been growing up.
“My parents are both researchers,” She explained. “You can probably rule out most of the London travel as being relevant, since that was for me. But last I knew my dad was in South Africa again, so…” Shelby hadn’t been brave enough to look at whether or not other continents survived the outbreak, or whether they had been touched. “My mom was up in Canada.” Even though she was trying to be optimistic, it felt like grasping at straws, only because she didn’t know where to begin.
“We heard from her shortly before communication went all mushroom-cloudy.”
Max nodded and rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he continued to peruse Shelby’s paperwork. Just because Shelby’s father had been on a different continent didn’t necessarily mean he was gone, or unable to be found. Max actually had no idea what other country’s networks looked like now but if South Africa was up and running still, he was confident he would be able to look into their records. On the other hand, Canada, and the information on Shelby’s mom contacting before things went dark, was a promising lead. He’s leave looking into her for second in the hope it might turn up more solid information.
“Let’s concentrate on your dad first,” Max said decisively after a few moment’s consideration. He wasn’t always the take-charge kinda guy but this was something he knew he was good at and, besides, Shelby was counting on him to dig up something. Max’s fingers danced across the keys of the left hand laptop. After a minute of furious tapping, Max paused, and looked up at Shelby.
“I just wanted to say that...that if I don’t find anything, or find something that’s hard to hear, you’re not alone,” Max said softly. He offered a hopeful smile. “You have family here, and I’m not just talking about your grandmother, okay?”
Shelby returned his smile with one of her own. “Oh, I know,” she assured. “I don’t think I could have asked for a better group of people when I moved down here.” She had always had friends, but it wasn’t until Austin that it seemed like she realized how important those friends were.
“Anyway,” she continued, shifting in her chair, “my dad was with a marine research group in Cape Town, South Africa when I talked to him last. Their communication was kind of spotty because they were on the water a lot, but he sent an email.” She pressed a few keys on her own laptop and pulled up the email to show Max. It wasn’t anything too personal, just the typical family talk and parental encouragement. At the bottom it gave both his full name, title, and the organization he worked with.
“They still have a website up,” she said, meaning the organization. “We could probably find an address for them there.” Was that even a thing that they needed? She wasn’t sure.
Max glanced over the proffered email, nodded, and then wordlessly clicked over to the research organization’s website. He frowned but tried to rearrange his face into something less negative when he turned to Shelby.
“The site is up and running but it hasn’t been updated since before the outbreak,” Max said, pointing to a date on his screen. Still, he wasn’t about to let that put him off.
“Let me poke around a few more places,” Max said and for over a half hour, his fingers danced across the screen. Normally, he’d feel weird and rude not speaking to a companion for that amount of time but once he got going, it was hard to reconcile things like manners and politeness when his priority lay with gathering information on Shelby’s dad. With each new idea or lead Max found on Shelby’s father, he ran into dead end after dead end. At the 45 minute mark, his last ditch, grasping at straws idea lead, again, absolutely nowhere. He sat at the keyboard for a moment, not typing, while he gathered his courage. He put his hand on Shelby’s arm. She knew without him saying anything that she should probably be prepared for the worst.
“I wasn’t able to find anything about your dad dated after that email,” he said, gesturing to the piece of paper. She sighed. “But you know that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gone. It just means there isn’t enough information about that part of the world and how they fared with the outbreak as we’d like. Don’t give up hope, okay?”
He offered her a small smile. Even though her dad was still M.I.A., there was still Shelby’s mom up in Canada.
It wasn’t a lot, but at least it was an answer. Africa was a long ways away, so Shelby had already been trying to keep her expectations low when it came to her dad. Max was right, though, she knew that it wouldn’t be good for her to assume the worst.
“Could you tell me a little bit more about your Ma?” Max’s voice was soft, comforting.
Shelby nodded and took a deep breath before she dived into an explanation about her mother.
“She’s an environmental researcher. Rose Phillips,” Shelby started, “more than likely you’ll find information under her name, rather than a company. She freelances with a handful of different research groups, whenever they need her particular expertise.” Truth be told, Shelby didn’t entirely understand it, but she could give an explanation easy enough. “The group she was working with when the outbreak happened, they were in Ontario and Quebec, I think.” She passed a few pieces of paper over to Max that outlined the group her mother would have been with.
“It would probably be easier if she used social media more, but her Twitter is a ghost town, and I couldn’t get her to use Instagram.” Shelby made a face that said everything her words didn’t about how much of an inconvenience her mother’s stubbornness had been.
Max let out a soft chuckle.
“Most people would be thankful that their parents don’t use social media.” The thought made him sad somehow; he could almost imagine his own Ma trying to navigate modern social media. He hoped Shelby’s Ma would have all the future opportunities to embarrass her daughter on the world wide web, unlike his own. He perused the papers Shelby slid in his direction, gnawing on his thumbnail thoughtfully as he took in their contents. He fanned out the sheets on the table, nodded at Shelby resolutely, and got to work.
Max’s hypothesis that it would be easier to find information on Shelby’s Ma as opposed to her dad proved correct. He got dozens upon dozens of hits on Rose Phillips, though at first glance they were all from before the outbreak. Not letting that deter him, Max plowed on. He hardly noticed the time passing as he delved deeper and deeper into public records (as well as quite a few not-so-public records). He kept tugging on threads; some unraveled as soon as he looked into them. But one, he found, kept unspooling further and further; getting closer and closer to the present. His eyes went wide when he found a mention of Rose Phillips well past the outbreak date. Not wanting to get Shelby’s hopes up just yet, Max continued, moving into obscure journals and private databases. After near an hour, Max gasped.
“Oh my God,” he breathed, his hand going to his mouth. He looked to Shelby, his eyes wide. Her expression mirrored his, with only a dash of confusion, and a little bit of hope. “She’s there. I mean, she’s alive. As of…” Max glanced at the screen to confirm what he already knew. “Three weeks ago.” A beat passed and Max smiled; a huge, toothy grin. He wiped a tear away with the back of his hand before pointing to a line of text on the laptop.
“There’s an address. And a phone number.”
Stunned, Shelby blinked a few times, then a few more. Then she blurted out, “Seriously?” Like maybe Max was pulling her leg. Except he didn’t do things like that; he was one of the nicest guys she knew.
“Can you write it down, or send it to me, or something?” There was no way she would be able to do it herself, her hands were shaking with a sudden onslaught of emotions. She was overwhelmed. Somehow, after they hadn’t found anything out about her dad, she had assumed that that would be the story with her mom too. Except it wasn’t.
“Oh my god,” she murmured, smiling and laughing a little, so she wouldn’t cry instead. “I,” she paused, another hiccuped laugh escaped, “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to call the number.” Maybe tomorrow, after it had sunk in. “Thank you so much, Max. Seriously, you don’t even know.”
She scooted from her chair to throw her arms around Max in an awkward, seated hug. She didn’t care, he’d made her week with his masterful sleuth skills, he deserved a hug.
“Oof,” Max exhaled, slightly winded by the enthusiasm of Shelby’s hug. He returned the embrace eagerly.
“Thank you so much!” she said again, as she scooted back onto her own chair and let Max go. “So, so much.”
“You are so very, very welcome,” Max said, turning back to the laptop with a smile. He screenshot Rose’s information and sent it it to Shelby’s freenet handle. And, for good measure, Max took out a piece of paper and jotted everything down on that as well. He gathered his things and slid the paper across the table underneath Shelby’s fingertips, pausing to squeeze her shoulder before he left.
“I think it's high time you called your Ma don't you?”
“Yeah, I, I guess I should,” Shelby replied, still smiling as she stood to walk Max to the door, and with that, Max took his leave so Shelby could find what she had been looking for.