"Do you have something profound to say?" she asked Doug.
He walked over, sat down, leaning forward with his hands dangling between his knees.
His gaze was sharp on her face. "All my life, as long as I can remember, you've been the ghost
in the house. Doesn't matter which house, you were always there, just by not being there.
Every holiday, every event, even ordinary days, the shadow of you darkened the edges. There were times, plenty of times, I hated you for that."
"Pretty inconsiderate of me to get myself snatched that way."
"If it weren't for you, everything would've been normal. My parents would still be together."
"Oh Christ." She said it on a sigh.
"If it weren't for you, everything I did growing up
wouldn't have had that shadow at the edges. I wouldn't have seen the panic in my mother's
eyes every time I was five minutes late getting home. I wouldn't have heard her
crying at night, or wandering around the house like she was looking for
something that wasn't there."
Birthright
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By Sheba_Also 43,000 photos -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/shebalso/20984381884/, CC BY-SA 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72977824
What it really feels like when a loved one goes missing
The majority of missing people return fairly quickly, but
around 1% don’t. Their cases remain open for a year of more – and some for much
longer. In the meantime, their friends and relatives must live with the
uncertainty and hope of finding what happended to their loved ones, sometimes
for many years.
________________
The fabric of their lives woven over the past twenty-five years had been torn.
Their routines of home and work and family shattered.
Their world became the hospital, the being there,
the going to and from, the constant juggling on snatches of
sleep and rushed meals between. The demands of work, the people
and animals depending on them, the low simmer of worry for Cora.
If Alice’s return created such tears and breakage, Bodine thought,
how much had her careless departure caused so long ago?
Come Sundown