Page 85 of Just Another Missing Person

“She once said it’s near the beach—I... maybe the police will tell us?” I say.

“Let’s ask them for her address on the way,” you say urgently. That laser-beam gaze again.

“Andrew,” I say. I blink back tears. I still need to say it. I need to say it before I come with you—before I engage with you. “You didn’t kill her,” I say softly. You’re pulling a coat on, but you stop and turn. Those eyes rove to me again.

“No.” You lower your eyes to the ground, start putting your coat on. “I didn’t kill anyone,” you say dejectedly. I reach for you, now, and I wonder if this is enough. This gesture, this olive branch, born primarily out of my own relief. If it will make up for suspecting you. If you can possibly understand how it all looked. And how, too, I suspected you primarily because I suspected myself: of inadequate parenting.

“I was protecting her,” you add. “From all this.” You wave an arm, though I don’t understand what the gesture means. “Trying to,” you add softly, and I see now that your eyes areglassy. I close mine in response, lean into the glorious, glorious feeling flooding my blood: calm. You haven’t killed anybody. And, more than that: you are good. So good that you will take these accusations and do nothing with them, in order to help her.

“Who is watching her? Who is watching Sadie?” I ask.

“Somebody bad,” you say. Trainers on, one arm in your coat, you blink.

“Who?”

“The police,” you say.

42

Lewis

We’re in the backroom, the one full of mad pancake sauces and tinned hotdogs. There hasn’t been a single patron since I arrived an hour ago, which is good, because I can’t stop fucking crying.

I can see your collarbones, your shoulders a perfect coat-hanger shape. You’ve lost so much weight, lost the luster in your now-dark hair, lost the fat in your cheeks. But you’re here. It doesn’t feel real, but you are.

You’re wearing black ballet flats and a skirt that comes to your skinny knees. For the first time in your entire life, I don’t see you when I look at you: I see me. You’re sitting on a box of Annie’s Mac & Cheese, one foot bobbing nervously up and down, the same way I do, and you’re looking at me.

It’s you. How is this possible? Surely, people don’t get as lucky as this? I have never once thought I might be dreaming, but I do, today. My arm has pinch marks on it. I’m too scared to tell Yolanda. I’m too scared to do anything, lest you disappear again, a mirage on only my horizon.

“It’s me, I know,” you say, and, as you say it, your mouth forms it: that perfect Little O I had missed so much.

“How did this happen?” I say simply, reaching out a hand to you. It’s warm in mine, like a little pocket of happiness.

I scoot over on my box—of graham crackers—that is slowly bowing under my weight. I put mine next to yours, and now we’re here, hands linked, and I’m listening, Sadie, I’m listening, but there’s nothing you can say that will make me not pleased you’re back, and okay. Nothing.

You have gone white. The texture of your skin seems to change with it, becoming dry, lined around the mouth, like a smoker’s.

“Are you in any danger?” I ask.

“Yes.” You glance at the door we came in through, and then at another door, a fire door with a wide metal push bar across it.

“From who?”

“I knew it’d happen,” you say. You turn your gaze to me. “I...”

You raise your shoulders to your chin, begin fiddling with one of the chocolate-pudding cans just above your head height, not looking at me. Everything you are doing is so quintessentiallyyouthat it hurts my eyes. It’s so real it’s almost technicolor. I have lived with your avatar, Olivia, for a year. My only connection to you invented social media posts born out of bastardizations of phrases you once used. And now you’re here.

“I can’t come back,” you say quickly to me. “I can’t.” You catch my gaze.

“Why?” I press, but I’m not worried: of course you’re coming back.

You close your eyes. “I can’t.”

“Sadie,” I say, and suddenly, I’m a parent again, just like I told Yolanda we would always be. “We do not care whatyou have done. We—we have had our hearts broken. And mended,” I add, in case you think I’m blaming you. I don’t have it in me to blame you. Don’t care enough. I’m punch drunk, a guy so in love he doesn’t mind anything at all.

“I know.”

“Have you been here the whole time?”

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