A couple of times a year, just when I’m beginning to think the pain is subsiding from suffocating to tolerable, I get a phone call that goes like this.
“Joe?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Hey Mike.”
Mike Lorenzo is a cop, was my mentor and we have known each other now for a dozen years. I would recognize his voice if it was one in a thousand.
“Got a call,” Mike says.
The familiar fluttering begins in my stomach. I would use every ounce of my strength to crush it, but it is Pavlovian now and there is nothing I can do to quell it.
“Oh yeah?” I say.
“Similar description,” Mike says. “Enough for me to take a look.”
Sometimes it’s a description, sometimes it’s an unidentified victim, sometimes it’s something else.
“Okay,” I say, even though it is anything but.
“Just wanted you to know,” Mike says. “Didn’t want you to catch wind of it elsewhere.”
“Appreciate that, Mike.”
“I’ll let you know.” Mike will pause. “You doin’ alright?”
He never asks where I am, what I’m doing, what my plans are. Just if I’m alright.
“Yeah,” I lie. “I’m okay.”
“Good to hear,” Mike says. “I’ll be in touch if it’s anything.”
We hang up and I know he won’t be in touch because it won’t be anything. It never is. Not once in eight years has it ever been anything. The only time he will call will be the next time he gets something that tells him to take a look. The fluttering will stick around for a day and then slowly die off until the next time it’s summoned.
She would be sixteen now, my daughter. A junior in high school, driving, dating boys and spending too much time on the phone. Every high school, every unsteady driver, every surly teenage male and every cell phone reminds me of that.
But she is gone. No matter how many times Mike calls me, I know that she is gone. If I hadn’t accepted that, I would be dead, gone in a much different way than Elizabeth.
So I can’t look for her anymore. I let Mike do that.
Instead, I look for other people’s children. I try to help them. Because I know what they are going through, how excruciating it is, to experience the disappearance of a child. I know how to do it now and looking keeps me occupied.
Because I know Elizabeth’s not coming back, won’t ever call me on the phone and say “Dad. I’m okay. Come get me.”
That call won’t come for me.
But sometimes I can make it happen for others and I pretend that is enough for me right now.
It has to be.
Because I have nothing else.