Gone

I was hopeful at first. She’ll show up. She has to be right around here somewhere. She always does this. I just need to look in the right place. Things like that happen on tv. They don’t happen to me. Plus she couldn't have gone far. I was only away for a minute. 10.

10 seconds into the quest, I felt worry begin to set in. Time is relentless. And it wouldn’t stop. Tick. Toc. 16. My hands begin to feel cold. 18. Fear. Worry. After 20 seconds, the regret of neglect overwhelms.

I was the older brother. I was supposed to know where she was. I was watching her. I was responsible. And now, she was gone. 26.

My imagination betrayed me. At 10, I wasn't old enough to understand what bad people did when they took children. But I knew about evil. I’d read about it before. I’d heard how adults get when discussing things like this. But never had darkness come so close, visiting our neighborhood and forever ruining our family.

A tidal wave of regret drowned out everything around me. I raced up the street screaming her name. Frantic. Desperate. “Please?!” I watch as my parents split up in search of her. The horror of this sight and my culpability in it are crippling. She’s gone. We are all destroyed.

43. I imagine her jumping out of the bushes next to me. I hear her laugh, that only moments before was bursting with joy. I feel her squirmy body resting on my shoulders while I offer her rides around the world that she knows and loves so purely— her persistent and curious eyes sparkle now in my memory, even while she somewhere despairs. God knows what they’ll do with her. Where was he while I went inside?

The sickness sets in. Cursed. The freedom of my childhood has been replaced with a chasm of regret that I've only begun falling into.

52. If only I’d watched more carefully. 54. If only I’d stayed outside. 56. If only we could turn back that minute when I let evil win.

And then, “Here she is!” Disbelief is followed by relief as the new reality sets in: she was inside the neighbor’s playing with her friend.

Thank you.