It All Comes Out

If people asked him what he was doing, he told them he was truth seeking. The reality was a lot less glorious. His hands would twitch as his thoughts were ravaged by the demons of hypotheticals. As townsfolk shuffled into his shop, the bell of above the door signifying their arrival, the squeak of their rain boots and the stolen glances could not succeed in distracting him from the concentration on his analysis of those “maybes” that looped through his head. Mothers who strolled between the appliance aisles pressed their brows together as they peered over the shoulder height shelves, their concerned eyes landing on him in the same pilly sweater weathered from being worn every day. He hunched over the layers of messy papers filled with images, stained with tears, and scribbled with hurried scratch. Next to the metallic cash register sat a laptop with a cracked screen, heavy because of its dated creation and worn from nights of victimization at the hands of the store owners' rage. Long ago, when time had been kind, the bags under his eyes weren’t so puffy or ingrained in his skin, but now as customers entered, those haunted eyes often stuck with them. The mothers looked, the children wondered, his friends checked in, but no one said anything. Not anymore. They all knew the answer. His hypotheticals, the root of his torment, the conductor of his nightmares, the truth that might be or never was, were all he had left.

           Unanswered questions pounded against his skull. The sun was already setting, telling him that it was time to close up, that he had once again forgotten about the things he used to care about like the hours in a day. When there was no one to go home to, it didn’t matter how late you stayed at work. He was still perched on his metallic stool, eyes stinging as he forced them to stay focused on his papers even after the edges of his vision started to blur. During the day, he kept having to undergo a fit of blinking every time someone came to check out. If the sight of his haggard beard and drawn out eyes unnerved his customers, he couldn’t tell. Not that he would care anyway. According to him, everyone was a suspect, a pawn in his mental game of truth that he had yet to win.

 All except one, he did not dare trust.

Joshua came in with his eyebrows already raised, years of that same open expression having worn creases in his forehead.

 He always had the same excuse, “Hey, was just on my way home from the office, figured I’d stop by.” And stop by he did, every day on his way back from the dental office which he owned. The only one in town. Tonight, his cheeks were flushed from the stinging breeze of the winter chill falling onto the town like a curtain. He set the black coffee he had bought down beside the mass of papers, knowing his brother was not one for relishing the taste. The gesture resulted in, for the first time all day, the store owner looking into the eyes of the person across the table.

           “I owe you, Joshua” He grumbled, his voice raspy, sharp around the edges from having spent the majority of his time murmuring responses only when absolutely necessary.

           “Nah, Mitch, don’t worry about it. It all comes out in the end,” His brother responded, his eyes briefly turning down towards the sea of scribbles, to the object of his brother’s obsession. The papers were yellowed. Laid out before Mitch was a mass of newspaper clippings of the reports, notes of observations, interviews with people in town, insights that were bribed off of police officers and, peeking out beneath them with bright brown eyes, was Jenna. Mitch followed the pensive gaze of his brother and landed on the uncovered image of his daughter. His lost daughter. His stolen daughter. His hypotheticals went quiet at the sight of her, too quiet to do their job and block the flood, his dam of distraction insufficient in forging a barrier against the sharpness of an unrelenting pain.

“So independent,” Joshua said, almost to himself, “She was always in a hurry, going on her own path. Man, even as her Uncle I was always playing catch up.” Joshua chuckled, the somber kind of laugh one finds themselves doing when there is nothing else to do in the presence of insurmountable tragedy. The bottom of Mitch’s lip trembled, but his top teeth caught it and with a sharp intake of breath, he told his brother to wait while he took care of his desk work and closed up. Joshua silently obliged.

           The way home was silent. The two often found that when words couldn’t heal, it was best not to waste one’s breath. Mitch threw on his wool jacket, the collar popped up to block out the cold, his brother beside him. Though related, in that moment they could not have looked any less; Mitch the pinnacle of haggard and Joshua with his pressed trousers and hair parted and styled with the latest men’s product. Two sides of an opposing spectrum. The brothers had done this walk many nights since Mitch had gotten out of bed and back to work. Part of the reason he even did so was because Joshua half dragged him. Each night, Mitch would relish in how the silence settled over them, a comfortability only found within family. Joshua knew Mitch, knew that on their walks home not to press too hard, or to come on too strong. He sat and waited, his silence coaxing the inwards of his brother out.

           “I’m so close, I can feel it, Joshy,” Mitch spoke to the air in front of him, “I keep having these dreams. Every night the same thing. I see him-the bastard- and he knows he’s caught but I get him, I get him between my hands.” Mitch paused, looked up to the star lit sky before continuing, “I can hear her crying too. Every night, I hear her. Tell her I’m comin’, but she doesn’t hear.” Mitch's voice faded as the memory clawed at his senses, a force into his consciousness like a tsunami striking a flower.

           “What does he look like,” asked Joshua, “In your dream?”

           Mitch looked at his brother, saw the way his lips were pursed, and his brows were furrowed. The only one who showed no pity, only a curiosity and care. Recently, he had become his rock.

           “That’s just it, I can’t make out his face, yet. But I’m close. I’m so close.”

           Joshua said nothing but nodded once, turning back to the frosty night air, the serenity of the town square shops’ dimmed lights contrasting the violent waves of chaos in the minds of the two men. Their matching blood pumped through their veins.

--

           He woke from the dream with sweat soaking his entire shirt, coming to rest at a point by his navel. His breath ragged, he held a hand to his chest. The dream, again. The dream woke him. Automatically, Mitch blindly reached for the bottle of Aspirin that sat on his nightstand, half expecting it to already be empty. Instead, his hand hit his worn Bible, a purchase he made after his daughter’s disappearance, which he had meticulously combed through as a means of finding answers. Mitch froze, his spastic breath suddenly quieted by the hypotheticals already tugging at his conscious nerves. Instead of doing his usual, feigning sleep as he fought off his plaguing obsession, Mitch threw off his covers, put on the robe from his long absent wife, and padded determinedly into the kitchen. The moonlight was dim, rendering him to feel around the wall for the switch to the one overhead that beamed over his quaint granite top. Once on, the light illuminated the conglomeration of Mitch’s papers at magnitude far greater than the one his customers witnessed in the store. Mitch threw on a pot of coffee but already had an analyzing stare on his work. The coffee boiled, making the night warm with familiarity. For a moment, Mitch palmed the edge of the granite top and leaned forward. He inhaled slowly, letting the smell of the coffee in his kitchen remind him of bright mornings filled with laughter, ballet tutus, and pancakes. When he opened his eyes, his eyes had adjusted to the night’s somber darkness.

It was time to end this.

Two and a half hours later, a tear ran down his face. Not from grief, though he had plenty, but from the intensity of his eye strain. He had leaned so close to his notes that he had to hold himself up by putting his forearms over his splatter of work. Everything Mitch read started to blur. Jenna was at dance lessons, they ended. Mitch was running late at the store. Mitch called Lynda to pick her up. No answer. He called his neighbor, she couldn’t, so he called his brother. By the time his brother got there, Jenna was gone. The teacher hadn’t seen where she went. Like vapor, she seemed to have gone into the air.

           Mitch squeezed his hands shut around the papers on the edges of the table, unleashing a grunt of anguish as every piece or clue he had found had some way of falsifying or contradicting itself. He couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t peel over every layer until there was nothing of himself left. His heart was barren, the only thing he had left to live for a seemingly fruitless mission. Mitch squeezed his eyes shut to block the pain, a way to cope. Shut his eyes so he didn’t have to see. Let it disappear.

When a tear fell from his eyes this time, its origins were not of eye strain. His heart felt like it was beating too fast, but the blood was pumping too slow. Always one step behind, the image in his nightmares destined to be forever indiscernible. The words he muttered next were to no one in particular. Perhaps he envisioned the nightmare, the tugging of his body towards much needed sleep, or the officers who had told him there were no leads. Whoever he had intended these words for, only the walls of his boxy kitchen heard.

           “Fine. You win.”

           It was then when Mitch opened his eyes, still leaning over the table, that he spotted where his tears had fallen. Upon a small collage of post-it notes, barely peeking through the mass of papers, neighboring the picture of his daughter were the words, she wouldn’t have left with a stranger. Over and over again, Mitch had written them, often in phases of blinded misery that tipped into a mad frenzy. She wouldn’t have gone with a stranger. The police told him they understood, but that every parent thinks that way. He didn’t think, he knew. He had taught her, practiced with her. Stranger danger was not an anomaly under his roof. It was his mission to protect her. She knew better. He felt her then. Jenna was there, sitting across from him and telling him to think. The father nodded and recalled the day’s timeline once again. The reports said no one heard or saw anything. Surely, if a stranger had come Jenna would have retaliated. She would have screamed, and someone would have witnessed a struggle. All those afternoons in the backyard playing football together spoke to his daughter’s aptitude towards grittiness.

She knew better.

She knew.

Who did she know?

Mitch cranked his reel back to the beginning of the day once again. School drop off. Dance carpool after school with Lynda and Susie. They were dropped off at dance class. The girls turned around, waved goodbye to Lynda, and ran inside together holding hands. Mitch had said Lynda didn’t have to wait for Jenna, he would be there after class. He would be there; except this time he wasn’t. He got held up. After class, no one saw where Jenna went. Mitch called his neighbor, called Lynda but at that point she was driving and didn’t see her phone. He called Joshua, desperate, and Joshua went. By the time Joshua got there, she was gone. He told Mitch and the police she was nowhere to be found.

It was a matter of trusting his word. His brother, the one who dragged him out of bed and checked on him every day. Who had always been a loner, a shadow of his older brother. The one who tried so hard to fit in and prove to the world that he was like them that he went to school with a quiet bitterness only Mitch had ever seemed to notice. The one who people sometimes whispered about, every once in a while, catching a brush of darkness on him.

She wouldn’t go with a stranger.

So independent.

She was always in a hurry, going on her own path.

Like the time his daughter stuck her shoulder into his soft stomach, knocking him over during their first backyard football game, the truth-mightier than any hypothetical- barreled down. This time, there was no Jenna giggling in the grass, the football like a pillow for her chin as wisps of hair danced around her toothless face. This moment was nothing like that, though Mitch was sure she was with him, leading him to the answer. He couldn’t breathe because of it. Suddenly, everything his brother had said and done came back to haunt him. What does he look like, in your dream? Mitch had thought he was being kind, trying to help him. Now all he could see was fear, the pursed lips and etched lines of his forehead taking on a new meaning. Like a beast covering his tracks. All the coffee days that never happened when Jenna was around, always taking a minute or more to peer at Mitch’s papers, his eyes avoiding Mitch’s when he got caught. Mitch mistook it for morbid curiosity, for concern about him. The truth became too heavy and Mitch’s knees buckled under the weight. He collapsed, letting out an anguished scream as his back hit the cabinets behind him. It was too late to stop it, his constant analyzing the crime had become so intrinsic to his every thought that there was no way to halt it now.

           He saw her behind his closed eyes. He shoved his palms into them, but it was no use. He saw Jenna leaving the bathroom after class with her father nowhere to be found. Always so independent. The images were so clear, like she was showing him a film. He saw her look around, saw that her teacher had already begun to welcome the next class, and decided to take matters in her own hands. She started walking home alone. Joshua found her as he was driving. Joshua, the dentist who works with children every day. He pulled up, and she got into the car with her uncle. 

           Mitch wept. He unraveled. He thought he wanted to know, but to know is to suffocate. To know is to burn from the inside out. There was a demon in his blood, the same blood of his brother. The demon twisted in their veins and smiled with pointed teeth. It got to Joshua, but tormented Mitch. It almost killed him, on his cold tile floor. Mitch’s body wretched, fell to the ground. He burned. But a burn is a sign of a flame, and a flame could only lead to a fire. The fire within the aching father burned bright that night, the fruition of his obsession like hundreds of gallons of gasoline being dumped in the belly of the fiery beast.

It all comes out in the end. His brother had said.

Mitch flared his nostrils as he pushed his body off the floor.

Yes, Joshua. He thought, it really does.