there was temporary. Somehow, she managed to wrench a piece of her former self out of the ground. She tells me that the other, miserable half, the chipped-off, castoff half, still follows at a respectful distance, ready to take over the second she stumbles.
Only through sheer strength of will does she manage to never stumble.
When your mother told me she was marrying another man, she said, “I can’t sacrifice the two daughters I have left for the one that I’ll never see again.”
She didn’t say that she loved this man. She didn’t say that he moved her, or that she needed him. She said that she needed the things that he could offer: stability, companionship, a glass of wine at night without the drowning sense of sorrow.
I do not resent this other man for taking my place. I do not hate him because I do not want your sisters to hate him. It is remarkably easy for a divorced parent to make remarriage a smooth transition for his or her children. You just keep your mouth shut and let them know that everything is going to be all right.
And I really feel that it will be—at least for the remaining part of my family.
Your mother has always been a good judge of character. This man she chose is kind to your sisters. He goes to Pepper’s riotous, perplexing concerts and pays attention to Claire. I cannot begrudge him attending PTA meetings and carving pumpkins and putting up Christmas trees. They visit your sisters once a month in Auburn (I know, sweetheart, but they couldn’t go to UGA because it reminded them too much of you). I cannot blame your mother for moving on while I stayed rooted in the past. I have widowed her. I would just as soon ask her to stay with me as I would ask her to lay with me in my grave.
I suppose the sheriff called her to bail me out because left to my own devices, I would’ve stayed in the cell until he was forced to either arraign me or let me go. I was trying to make a point. Your mother agreed, if I meant that the point I was making was that I am a stubborn asshole.
You of all people will know that this exchange means that she still loves me.
But she has also made it clear that this is it for her. She no longer wants to hear about my wild goose chases or my crazy searches or my meeting strangers in dark corners and interrogating young women who knew you back then but are now married and gainfully employed and trying to start families of their own.
Should I fault her for this? Should I blame her for giving up on my windmills?
Here is why I was arrested:
There is a man who works at the Taco Stand. He’s the manager now, but he was bussing tables the day you disappeared. The sheriff’s men cleared his alibi, but one of your friends, Kerry Lascala, told me that she’d overheard this man at a party talking about how he saw you on the street the night of March 4, 1991.
Any father would seek out this man. Any father would follow him down the street, let him know what it felt like to have someone behind you who was stronger and angrier and had an agenda that involved taking you somewhere more private.
Which sounds like harassment, but feels like investigating a crime.
Your mother pointed out that the Taco man could hire a lawyer. That the next time the huckleberries come, it could be with a warrant.
Huckleberries.
This was one of your mother’s words. She gave Sheriff Carl Huckabee the nickname during the third week of the investigation, and by the third month, she had extrapolated it to everyone in uniform. You might remember the sheriff from that day at the carnival. He is a clumsy Barney Fife type with a stiff mustache he keeps trimmed in a straight line and sideburns he grooms so often you can see the furrows left by the teeth of his comb.
This is what Huckleberry believes: The Taco man was with his grandmother at her nursing home the night you went missing.
There was no sign-in sheet at the front desk. No log. No cameras. No other witnesses but his grandmother and a nurse who checked the old woman’s catheter around eleven that evening.
You were last seen at 10:38 p.m.
The nurse claims that the Taco man was asleep in the