Page 7 of Since She's Been Gone

“I’m sorry you heard it, but everything’s fine now,” she said, trying to reassure me, even though she looked worried.

“What did Dad mean when he said, ‘Don’t we matter?’”

She looked at me, taken aback. She hadn’t realized I’d heard what they were saying to each other.

She paused before responding. “Your father would prefer if I didn’t work as much and were home more, but I love my job. Please don’t bring it up to him. It’ll just upset him more.”

At the time, I remember what she said struck me as odd for two reasons. First, I was well into my teenage years, about to start taking driving lessons, and even thinking about college, not a toddler who needed my mom around all the time. Second, she had never asked me to keep anything from my father before. But she looked upset, so I let it go.

Now, thinking back on that fight, I can’t help but wonder if it was really about her staying at home or whether it was about something else. Did she want out of her marriage? Was she unhappy with her life? Was she thinking of leaving us?

At her funeral, her friends, colleagues, and relatives came up to me and told me how no parent had ever loved their child more than she loved me.

If she’s still alive, how can that be true? Who abandons a child they supposedly love? The burning in my chest from earlier returns.

“The image quality isn’t good enough for these apps,” Eddie says. “We need more sophisticated software. I’ll call Paul. He’ll be able to help us.”

Paul is Eddie’s best friend. They met at the University of Michigan as roommates freshman year and quickly bonded as fellow technophiles. He was Eddie’s best man at his wedding with his late wife, and he’s also Sarah’s godfather.

Paul works in some capacity for the FBI that he’s not allowed to disclose and lives in New York with his husband, Anthony, a professor at NYU. I haven’t met them because Anthony has been ill over the last couple of years, and they haven’t been able to travel. Eddie has talked about Sarah, him, and me making a trip to the Big Apple now that Anthony is doing better.

“Do you think contacting Paul is safe?” I ask Eddie. “The woman warned me to stay away from law enforcement, that it would be dangerous.”

“It’s Paul. If I explain the situation to him, he won’t tell a soul,” he says.

“But what if the FBI tracks what he’s doing?” I ask.

“He knows how to cover his tracks,” he says.

I quickly mull it over. What other choice do I have?

“Call him,” I say.

Eddie left Paul a phone message and then went home for a Zoom work meeting.

I have an hour and a half before my first afternoon session starts, and something’s gnawing at me. If Mom’s truly still alive, she couldn’t have staged her disappearance alone. We buried her casket—doesn’t that mean there was a body involved?

I argued with Dad at the time, saying I didn’t care if her body was in bad shape. I still wanted to see her one last time. But he was adamant that I couldn’t.

“I’m your parent, and it’s my responsibility to keep you safe,” he told me. “Seeing your mom’s disfigured body could traumatize you for the rest of your life. I won’t allow it, Beans.” So that was that.

Now I’m wondering if maybe he didn’t want me to see it because there wasn’t a body at all. That’s why I’m parked in front of Frank Esposito’s funeral home, where we held Mom’s memorial service and where I also held Dad’s service a decade later.

Frank is the undertaker and was the husband of one of Mom’s colleagues, who has since passed away. He presumably would’ve seen Mom’s body.

I remember how at her service, he came up to me and said, “Just because people are gone, doesn’t mean they leave us.” When I returned a decade later to bury Dad, he repeated it. I haven’t seen him since Dad died, but I still get a yearly holiday card from the Esposito family.

When I step inside the funeral home, a dark wooden casket is prominently displayed in the entryway. Datedred-and-white flower arrangements are everywhere, like a sad Christmas.

“Hello?” I call out since nobody’s around.

Frank walks out from the back, older than I remembered him. “Beatrice?” he asks. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Everything okay?” he asks, which is understandable considering the last two times I was here was to bury my parents.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I have a question for you.”

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