Page 90 of Just Another Missing Person

45

Emma

It’s a crisp December day. The air sharp and painful, the rain black outside. But we’re here, together. Just us two, tapas, two beers. You’re good company. When you were little, I always imagined that we might do things like this, you sitting opposite me, opinions, witticisms, all that, all coming out of the body that I made with my own and that continued to grow outside of me. Sometimes I think people have children to have this sort of moment with their adult child. We made it. We’re through. You still need me now, but not like before, when you were little. It’s different. Good-different.

A waiter brings us another dish we’ve ordered. “Literally, what planet are we on?” you say, making room. “This is enough for ten people.”

I wave a hand. I’ve gone back to Cooper’s. Money flows plentifully into our lives again. We got rid of the Facebook marketplace bed: gave it away, to somebody who looked like they needed it.

You decided to protect Sadie, despite the risk to you. Despite Jonathan having lashed out at her, bloodied her clothes. She’d left, then, living under a false passport. She’d left you a lock of her hair; a promise she would one day return.

And, you know, when I found this out I thought: God, you are good.

You spent the springtime a year after Sadie’s disappearance making amends. You thought you must be a shitty person, for those newspapers, and Sadie’s father, to be so sure of your guilt. When you told me that, my heart cracked clean in two. You reached out to anyone who might have got the wrong end of the stick about you, including Olivia: a woman you gave the brush-off to when you’d first been chatting. You got back in touch to apologize for being rude. You apologized to hundreds of people that spring.

But you aren’t a shitty person. Every single thing Lewis accused you of was because you were trying to protect Sadie. Stop her selling passports. Stop her associating with the gang in Bristol. Everything.

“I’ve quit the therapy,” you say to me, out of nowhere. Like all confessions, pieces of information, small nuggets; from you, I welcome it.

“Why?” I ask.

You shrug. “You don’t need so much therapy when you have—I don’t know,” you say.

I wait, leaving time for you to say it. “Your life back,” you finish, eventually. You smile, then, a small, private smile, meant only for you, but, really dedicated to Sadie, who is back, and who is firmly, fully yours, once more. Not that she ever wasn’t.

“You know?” you say to me, putting patatas bravas into your mouth.

“I know,” I say.

“You all right?” You cock your head. “You look—I don’t know. Weird?”

“You know, I think I am all right,” I say, thinking that Sadieis the reason you never wanted to move far away. Your own safety from persecution be damned. You stuck around for her. My boy.

You smile, a goofy child’s smile, mouth full of potato, and the moment is so normal, but everything that came before it has taken so long that time seems to hover, suspended, for just a second. And then it breaks, and you reach across the table and cover my hand with yours, where it belongs.

46

Lewis

You are here on the sofa, where you belong. You’ve moved back in with us, and this is what we do every single night. You on the left, me on the right, Yolanda in the chair, the television on low. Sometimes Andrew is here, sometimes not. He’s welcome whenever. People still talk about him—about you—but you’ve got each other. And so you don’t care. You wear your love like armor against the world. The gang fell apart after Jonathan was murdered. Nobody wanted to pay a similar price for identity stealing and selling.

“Come Dine With Me, no fucking way. The narrator...” you say now, bowl of popcorn in your lap, remote control in your left hand.

“He’s funny!” I protest, while Yolanda laughs. The back doors are open, even though it’s December, freezing. It took us ages to do that. To let the world in again. To feel safe. But we do it, tonight. Winter sweeps its dank smells in, rustling the curtains, but we like it. It feels like freedom, to us.

You shift and stretch your bare feet out across the sofa. The oven timer goes off, and Yolanda gets to her feet, coming back after a few minutes with three full plates that wewill all finish. She hovers in the doorway for just a second, a plate in each hand and one on her wrist, the way she’s always been able to carry them. I know what she’s thinking, because I think it every time I see you, too: we just stand and marvel at how fucking lucky we got.

“The narrator is full of snark,” you explain, even though I had forgotten what we were talking about. “Snark is over. Earnestness is in, now.”

“Noted,” I say. “Another opinion. One from the ’gram?”

You glance at me quickly, charmed. Yolanda still doesn’t know about Olivia, and we intend to keep it that way.

“Put it on your own,” you say, quick as a flash, your face forming that amused Little O, then a smile, finally, finally, finally.

47

Julia

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