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“I wanna give it.”
“Okay, honey, whatever you need,” he murmured.
I pulled in a deep breath and let it go.
“There are milestones,” I shared. “The time of having hope. The time that hope dies. The time you want the news they found her, but she’s gone, so you don’t have to worry what’s happening to her, or if it was bad, you know it’s over. There are also good things. We forget how it really is. How it is every day. We get caught up in the news. The divisiveness. The messages telling us that person in the grocery-store line, wearing a baseball cap you don’t like, is your enemy because they voted for someone you didn’t vote for. When that’s fucked. Every day, in a hundred different ways, we live together in kindness. In thoughtfulness. With care. Or at the very least, just courtesy. And when something like that happens, Cap, people are so good. So, sogood. Loving and supportive. Listening and trying to understand. Angry when you are. Sad when that turns. Not understanding why something like that can happen, and not afraid to show it so you don’t feel alone in that. It’s a beautiful thing. We live that beauty every day with the way we get along. And people miss it.”
“You’re right.”
I knew I was.
I knew I was, because that was all I had to cling to for nineteen years after someone who didn’t live in that world took my little sister.
“They never found her. Never even had any leads. He was a ghost. Just some guy who drove in a neighborhood that wasn’t his, snatched a six-year-old girl, then vanished into thin air. To this day I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. And I hope equally she’s dead at the same time I hope she’s alive.”
“That has to be hard,” he said. “And confusing.”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It doesn’t really feel like anything. It’s just always been my life for as long as I remember. Because the time before she was gone, when we were a family, it feels like a dream. Because it was so verygoneafter she was taken from us.”
“Fuck,” he groaned, turning into me so I held some of his weight.
God, it felt good.
And I needed it.
For this part especially, I needed it.
Because losing Macy was the worst thing that could happen.
And it wasn’t just losing her that made it so.
“Dad got lost in his rage. He was angry all the time. Angry at the police. Angry at Macy’s friend’s mom. Angry at Macy’s friend, who was six too, and she gave a description, and shared what happened, but she was only six. Not much she knew to say could help. Angry at my friend’s parents because Macy wasn’t invited to the party, when no one but people in our class were. Dad was just was angry at the world.”
“Hate to admit it, but I don’t blame him,” Cap said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, drew in another breath and let it go before I shared, “Mom disappeared inside herself. Became a ghost. I don’t know how either of us missed it, what was coming. When she killed herself five years later on the anniversary of Macy going missing, we should have known. We should have seen the signs.”
Cap’s arms closed tighter around me.
“You were too young,” he stated.
“Maybe,” I replied.
He gave me a tight squeeze. “Definitely.”
“Okay,” I wheezed.
He loosened his arms.
“After that, Dad became a shell. Filled with shame and guilt. I don’t know how he brushed his teeth and went to work. He was there and he was not. He woke up breathing, so by habit, he just went through the motions.”
“So you were alone.”
“I was, until I met Luna, then she gave me her family. Got a job at sixteen, saved every penny, and when I thought I had enough money, I got in my car and drove as far away as I could get from all that. Hit Phoenix, got a shitty studio apartment, a job at the mall, and here I am.”
His hand at my neck gave me a squeeze. “Here you are.”
“Yeah.”
