Excerpt
“I can’t stand this waiting," Caleb said. He stood at Melissa and Joe’s large front window watching a small contingency of officers canvass the neighborhood. On a front stoop across the street, a detective interviewed an elderly couple. Wet sunlight warped penumbral, an aura above every surface.
No one acknowledged Caleb’s complaint. Even a pause to catch one’s breath felt too expensive. The truth was, until but a few moments earlier, the family had been sorting through photographs, finding those most recent, most accurate to Joshua’s present likeness. Hans and Karley had arrived in the middle of this treasure hunt, and now the coffee table was an after-storm of scattered images, toppled piles and cast-off stragglers, two open laptops and a tablet playing Joshua. His face was everywhere.
Armed with a thumb drive, Jared had left to make copies.
In the kitchen a detective named Craig interviewed Joe. Melissa lay on the sofa, curled fetal, her head in Karley’s lap. Karley stroked her sister’s hair and watched Hans pace. Slumped in the loveseat, Curt and Margaret held one another, while outside on the front porch the advocate, Sally Frye, cast animate shadows through the storm door as she conversed on her cell phone.
Hans squatted next to Melissa. "We’re going to find him," he promised.
Melissa said nothing, did not even look at him. Tearless and wild-eyed, she stared at some far-off horizon, incapable of any demand, and Hans was struck by the contrast, the dissolution of such a stalwart soul. By the measure of his own fear, he understood her undoing, but it frightened him nonetheless, and not only for her but for Joshua, who more than any of them needed her present and functional. Hans squeezed her hand then stood and resumed his pacing.
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