When your child goes missing, how vast does the earth become? Who can truly help, and where is comfort? And when you deliberately go into a place you never intended, what will they say? An excerpt from the book: Chapter 12 The sun sets colorless beneath the long and stretched out rainclouds as they...
When your child goes missing, how vast does the earth become? Who can truly help, and where is comfort? And when you deliberately go into a place you never intended, what will they say? An excerpt from the book: Chapter 12 The sun sets colorless beneath the long and stretched out rainclouds as they blacken in darker shades with the disappearance of the day, the sunset unseen but for vestiges of bruised purple along the end of horizon. From the whicker seat, Jeremiah stares out from the front porch. He looks over the familiar houses of neighbors before him. He can see glimpses of the neighborhood beyond. All of creation has been tainted before his bloodshot eyes, sleepless and tortured. Every shadow hides his son. Every door. Afar off past the trees, his mind’s eye carries Jeremiah over an expanse of earth that has opened its mouth and swallowed his son, an abduction. A vanishing. With a sickness in his gut, Jeremiah feels like a strung up prisoner isolated away in a concrete tower, able only to watch the sun come and go while the rest of the world moves about in their freedoms. Jeremiah asks of the air, “Where would I hide a child?” The answer is there, behind his ears, but saying it out loud instills a seed of hopelessness inside bound to grow and bloom. A voice answers. His own. “I’d hide him in my home.” The uttered confession disturbs a panic within Jeremiah’s chest, tightening it with an asphyxiation, like an infant with a blanket tossed over their face, being unable to remove it while they flail within their crib. Jeremiah stands and goes inside.