(Photo by Janejira Damron)

The last family finally left, dragging their crying child who wanted to stay. It was both a compliment for all the hard work that went into making The Kid’s Corner a fun place as well as a tiring and annoying reminder of another late closing that would keep everyone working just that much later as they cleaned and put everything away in preparation for the next day.

As soon as the elevator doors closed and the family was out of sight, Sammy pulled the security gate down and locked it. She flipped the main lights off in the lobby and turned to join in with everyone else to get The Kid’s Corner ready for tomorrow.

“Hey, Sammy,” Jordan called from across the main floor, “is this one of ours?”

He held up a teddy bear as he walked over towards her. The bear itself was decently large, being on the bigger side of things. Sammy was impressed by it’s weight as well as the stitching. He had a name tag on the back of his neck where someone had written Theofore.

“It’s not ours,” she said at once. “I wish it was, though.”

The stuffed animals they had were often in need of repair or replacement. It was an occupational hazard, being a stuffed animal in a kids play place, she supposed, but it was also due to the budget they had to work with. High quality toys would last longer, but they also cost significantly more money.

“Well someone loves him,” Jordan remarked, pointing to the spots around the left arm and neck where the fur was beginning to show signs of wear.

“Put it in lost and found,” Sammy told him. “They’ll be back for him soon enough.”

She handed back the bear and Jordan did as instructed. The lost and found was a small series of shelves behind the ticket counter that parents could see but the kids could not. It tended to keep the kids more honest as they had to describe what they were looking for without seeing all the other toys.

The next day, Sammy worked the ticket counter and wondered when the bear would be claimed. She smiled as she welcomed each new guest into The Kids Corner but no one came for the bear.

No one came for him the next day either, or the day after that. Usually, that was the longest they held onto anything in the lost and found since it was so incredibly rare for anyone to come and claim anything after three or four days had passed.

“Sorry, Theofore,” Sammy said after another day went by without anyone coming to claim him.

Everything else that had been on the shelves when he’d first been added was gone now. Either from being claimed or thrown away. The bear would have been tossed out or added to their own supplies, normally, but Sammy didn’t feel right doing that. Theofore was someone’s special bear, she just knew it, and she wanted to wait and see if anyone would come and claim him. They had to. He was too good to just be left and forgotten.

“It’s probably just some rich family,” Jordan remarked once when the subject was brought up. “They probably just bought the kid a new one instead of trying to figure out where the kid left it.”

“That’s just sad,” Sammy replied, but she had to admit it was a possibility.

The next day she took Theofore off the shelf and sat him on the ticket counter next to her. She hoped the family would come back and the kid would see him. That way, even if the parents had replaced him, the kid might have a chance of recognizing him and getting him back.

“Why d’you care about the bear?” Jordan asked after the second week. “Just toss him in with our other stuffed animals.”

“Someone loves him,” she stated, “and eventually they’ll come back for him.”

“You’re the boss,” Jordan replied with a shrug.

Why was she holding onto Theofore for so long? If she really asked herself that question, she couldn’t come up with a better answer than the one she’d given to Jordan and everyone else who’d brought it up.

It was the third week when a couple came in on their own without any kids. The husband was pushing the wheelchair that the wife sat in and both of them bore marks of injuries still healing. They immediately locked eyes on Theofore and Sammy felt her stomach clench.

“Is this yours?” she asked the couple.

They nodded and both had tears in their eyes.

“Yes, thank you,” the husband said through a constricted throat. “We weren’t sure it would still be here.”

Sammy handed it over and the wife accepted it, holding it close to her chest and stroking the soft fur and muttering the bear’s name.

“Thank you,” they both said and then they turned back around and were gone.

It wasn’t until then that she realized she hadn’t asked what had happened to them, although in retrospect it was probably for the best that she had forgotten to ask them that. The absence of any child was hint enough, along with their injuries. If she had to guess, she’d say there had been an accident the day they left the bear behind. Judging from the state the wife had been in she likely had only recently gotten out of the hospital.

“Well that was depressing,” Jordan said from behind her, startling Sammy and making her jump.

She glared at him and he ducked away. Word must have spread quickly because no one brought up Theofore’s absence from the ticket counter. Most of the employees gave Sammy a wide berth for the rest of the day and a tray of mini-cupcakes were even delivered to her anonymously near the end of the day. She gave most of them out to kids but did eat a good number of them. Probably more than she should have eaten but it was that kind of day.

By the time she was locking up the security gate, everyone else was already hurrying to clean up so the could go home and get away from the unpleasantness that seemed to have been smothering them all day.

“Not every returned lost and found has a happy ending, huh?” Jordan quipped as he left, though he said it more as a thoughtful rather than a mean spirited way. “That’s life, I guess.”

Sammy watched him leave and then shut off the lights. She was glad tomorrow was her day off and she was going to probably spend most of it lying in bed and snuggling her own stuffed animals.