There comes a point when you feel you’ve lived too long, and for me that was thirty-seven years ago. But this isn’t a story about me, not at all. This is about the empty casket I lowered for the woman who never died. You can choose to believe me or throw me back in the nursing home, but the fact remains that, to this day, nobody has solved the disappearance of Kate Monroe.

Kate was born in 1960 with nonverbal autism, but it wasn’t quite so straightforward back then. If it were today, she might have been diagnosed at three instead of four years old and we might have been told about her enlarged amygdala impairing her social functions. In ’64 we were parading her to every doctor on the East Coast like a damn world tour looking for answers and getting nothing but blank stares and accusations. Some of the doctors acted like she was the first of her kind, like we could name her ailment ‘Monroe’s psychosis’. One doctor said she was just shy and would grow out of it. More than a few accused my wife, Tara, of being something they called a “refrigerator mother”, which meant Kate’s social dysfunctions were due to my wife being a cold and distant mother. And the visits where that term snuck up all ended the same way: with me giving the whole office the hairdryer treatment and storming right out. Refrigerator mother? Couldn’t have been further from the truth. Tara loved everyone she met with all her heart and somehow she still loved Kate a hundred times more than that. But that’s the point in a way, the reason why she disappeared. Kate lived in a world that wasn’t ready for people like her.

After a painful five months of doctors’ visits, the diagnosis we settled on was a blend of childhood schizophrenia and something called “conversion reaction anxiety” to account for her nonverbal behavior. Sometimes we’d get the occasional noise, stray sound. They were probably accidental, but every murmur would give us a scrap of hope that she’d turned a corner. The doctors said she’d likely never speak, but as a parent you always think your kid’s got the statistics beat.

Even though Kate never spoke, Tara and I always would always say she could talk with her eyes. With a few flinches, flicks, and blinks we’d know exactly what was on her mind. Hungry? That’s up, down, diagonally left, and a blink. Tired? That’s blink, down, down, blink. Annoyed? Well, she sure had a sign for that too. And the time I’d seen her expressive little eyes shine the brightest was when we watched those meteor showers Tara and her loved.

My wife was always fascinated with outer space and got us hooked on it. I’d tell her, “There’s more important things going on down here,” but she just couldn’t keep her head out of the cosmos. I was always too practical, too stubborn, but Tara was half here and half out there. In another life, she said she would have been an astronaut. The three of us would watch the meteor showers together whenever we could, and in Kentucky that was more often than you’d think. I’m no scientist, but for whatever reason, we were often right in the sweet spot of the showers’ peaks.

By July of ’77, Kate was seventeen it’d been two years since we’d lost Tara, but we still watched those meteor showers. Every time we did, I wondered if Tara was still watching alongside us or if she was up there making the meteors a little brighter so we could see them like we were in the front row. We sat out in our usual field that night, the one about a half-mile from the farmstead. It was a spot where nobody had ever lived and you could tell. The trees there looked healthier, bigger, older. The grass grew taller and the flowers blossomed like they didn’t know how big they were supposed to grow. Kate pointed at one of the biggest flowers I’d ever seen. “So pretty,” her eyes said.

“Yep, it really is,” I said. “Looks just as blue as your eyes.”

Her eyes shot away, but they weren’t saying anything this time. Her gaze was always moving this way and that, zooming around like she saw things I couldn’t. I’d have asked the doctors back then, but in 1977 most of them and I weren’t exactly on talking terms. By then, doctors were starting to realize that Kate’s ailment was separate from schizophrenia and that it was based on genetics, not my wife being a human-refrigerator, but they’d never have admitted that to me. The science is “evolving” after all. They were even starting to let kids like Kate go to school, but it was too late for her. It always seemed that way: just a little too late.

Kate ripped a petal off the flower and looked at it so close it almost touched her eye.

“Be careful, kiddo.”

She ignored me, licked her lip and examined it, bedazzled. I watched her, admired her amusement with such a simple thing.

Suddenly the petal looked brighter, glowing in a green flash. So did the grass and the leaves and the whole damn sky. “Kate!” I yelled. “Look!”

She looked up and held that blue petal so tight that it started to split in three. And under those streaking meteors I saw Tara come alive in Kate, the way she smiled wide and her lips hung open. Her eyes flicked back and forth, watching the meteors like she hadn’t seen three showers that year alone.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Kate darling? Say hi to Mommy, won’t you?”

Kate’s tongue stuck out ever so slightly and her lips moved as if she were chewing on it. She blinked three times quick, then once more: Kate’s way of saying “I love you”.

I bit hard. If I spoke, I would have cried. I loved Kate so much and I still do. If all the stars from the heavens fell at once, I would only wish to see them in the glimmer of Kate’s eye.

But in the days following that meteor shower, something had changed and I felt it quick. One morning, two days later, I woke up at 5am sharp like I usually did. I headed downstairs to brew a pot of coffee, fetch the paper, and whip up a good breakfast for us. Usually it took more work than my actual job to get Kate out of bed, but that morning when I came down, Kate was already there. She was standing in the living room beside the record player and shelf of family photos, staring at the blank wall, the one where I’d taken down a picture of Tara’s parents holding baby Kate a couple months ago. “Kate?” I said. “Everything okay?”

To that point, I could only see her from the back. She was slouched forwards and her fingers were flinching rapidly without pattern. She was huffing, grunting, shivering, but otherwise still as a tree.

“Kate?” I approached her slowly as to not startle her more. “Kate?” I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, but for God’s sake she was staring at a wall and even for my little girl, that wasn’t normal. “Kate darling, what’s going on?” Then, when I got beside her, I saw her terror: her wide eyes, her petrified cheeks, her bobbing head, her shallow breathing, all of it. I touched her shoulder, gentler than a feather. This time I whispered. “Kate?”

She took a deep breath in, her face contorted, and then…she spoke.

**************************

Dr. Kahn leaned against a poster of a skeleton and its labeled anatomy, reading over his clipboard and mumbling to himself as I’d gotten too used to. He was a lanky man with big round glasses and skin whiter than his teeth. He was a smart guy for his time, but I didn’t much like him. We only went to him because he was still in my good graces, partially on account of him never calling my wife a refrigerator. “Mhm…yes…hmm,” he said as if he were reading an exciting novel. “Mhmm…”

I couldn’t stand it. “So? What is it?”

“Well…” he trailed off into his murmurs again.

“Doc?”

“Oh, sorry. Yes. Well, there aren’t many cases like your daughter’s, but it’s not unheard of for a child to outgrow her disability. Children’s brains are always changing, they grow out of all sorts of adolescent impairments all the time.”

“Grow out of it?” I said. “It’s not like she finally said ‘Daddy’ for the first time. She was speaking tongues! Japanese or something.”

“Mr. Monroe, be reasonable. Was your brain firing properly at seventeen? I’m sure you made quite a few decisions in your day that could have at least landed you an inadequate personality disorder diagnosis. But you develop, grow up, grow out of it.”

“It’s not like that at all. She spoke a full sentence or two and it wasn’t English.”

“And you still haven’t told me what she said.”

“I told you I don’t speak no foreign language and she doesn’t either!” I annunciated so he heard me clear. “But whatever she said, it was damn well coherent. It had structure, it was complete, confident.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I know what I heard and what I heard wasn’t English.”

Dr. Kahn shrugged. “That’s where my area of expertise ends, Mr. Monroe. You could try consulting your priest, have you thought of that? Perhaps she could use the old-fashioned treatment.”

“An exorcism?”

“Why not?”

Once again, I found myself baffled by these doctors. “Christ, I can’t tell who’s more an imbecile, you or Kate. Might as well sign her up for a lobotomy while I’m at it.”

“I beg your pardon,” Dr. Kahn said. “That kind of language won’t be welcome here anymore.”

“Lobotomy?”

“No. We use the term ‘retarded’ now for patients like your daughter.”

“Sorry, I can’t tell who’s more retarded.”

The doctor put his pen down, scratched his neck. “What do you take me for, Mr. Monroe? I don’t know why your daughter is speaking Japanese or Russian or gorilla for that matter. I’m a psychologist, not a linguist.”

“A what?”

“I said I’m a –”

“No,” I interrupted, suddenly curious. “That other thing, a lin–”

“Linguist.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a relatively new profession,” the doctor replied, “the study of languages and their evolution as I understand it. It’s no Apollo program but I’m sure it’s got its merits.”

That was my last time ever speaking to a doctor on Kate’s behalf, partially due to time, partially due to it being thirteen years after Kate’s diagnosis and they were still calling her a schizophrenic and now it was starting to sound like they were getting a dime every time they said that new ‘retarded’ word. But at least I now knew what a linguist was.

A few weeks later, Kate and I were sitting in the state university office of a woman I’d found on Yellow Pages, Ms. Susana Markley, the only linguist within five hundred miles. The walls in her office were filled with books and pictures of an older couple, maybe her parents. She seemed to know a lot of languages for a woman with not a lot of people to talk to. “This must be Kate,” Ms. Markley said, looking at my little girl. Nobody ever looked at her that way, with that genuine smile.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Little Kate Monroe.”

“Not so little, is she?”

“I suppose not, but you know how it is: she’ll always be my little girl.” I rubbed Kate’s shoulder.

“I see,” Ms. Markley wrote something down. “Your daughter is nonverbal?”

“That’s right. Well, until recently at least.”

“And I’m seeing childhood schizophrenia in her medical history. Is she autistic?”

I remember so well how shocked I was to hear that. Autistic. I expected Miss Markley to be like all the rest: call her a schizophrenic, claim it was my wife’s fault. Autistic. It was about damn time. I said, “Yes. Yes, she is. How did you –”

“I’m autistic myself,” Ms. Markley said, “just not so severe.” The linguist cleared her throat. “You said ‘until recently’. That was Kate speaking on that tape you sent over, correct?”

“That’s right. Did you figure out what she was saying? Japanese, wasn’t it?”

Ms. Markley frowned. “No, not quite. I was actually wondering if Kate could replicate her speech here for us.”

Kate’s gaze was roaming around the room, fixating on one thing then moving on to another.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “She doesn’t speak all the time.”

“I figured, just a shot in the dark. Perhaps she speaks when she’s comfortable. I operate best when I’m in my work.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.”

The linguist was perplexed. “How do you figure?”

“This only started very recently. I’d think if it was only when she was comfortable, she would have been talking to me for years.”

“If she’s truly comfortable around you.”

I chuckled. “She still hasn’t actually spoken to me, but she does it right in front of me. And this has only been over the last few weeks.”

“Like your letter said. And you’re sure she doesn’t know any languages? Hasn’t been practicing in her spare time?”

“No. She reads a bit, but I don’t know if she understands it much.”

Ms. Markley nodded, wrote something else down. She then fumbled underneath her desk until she pulled out a cassette player. She placed it on top of the book in front of her. It already had the tape I’d sent over inside, rewound and everything. She was prepared. “Shall we listen together?”

I nodded, uneasily. I didn’t know how I’d feel listening to my daughter speak her tongues alongside someone else. “Sure.”

Ms. Markley pressed one of the large buttons on the cassette player and a rustling came over the recording. Her and I leaned in towards the speaker and even Kate looked like she was listening. “Kate?” my concerned voice said in the recording. More rustling, louder this time as I’d moved closer to her. “Kate, what’s going on?”

Then came Kate. “Enkirunde vantīrkal?” I shuddered. As I saw the linguist’s face go stiff at Kate’s voice, everything suddenly felt more real. Ms. Markley edged even closer to the cassette player, dipped her ear to it.

“I think she said, ‘Where do you come from?’” Ms. Markley interpreted.

“Kate? What was that? What did you say?” came my voice.

“Quappati,” Kate said, paused. Then again, “Quappati? Etiam, nāṉ vara virumpukiṟēṉ. Nāṉ vara vēṇire.”

“And that?” I asked.

The linguist’s nose scrunched like she’d smelled something awful. She didn’t answer.

“Tecum va! Tecum va!” The cassette player then clicked and the tape stopped spinning. Kate’s mouth was moving, but nothing came out. She then looked down and watched her own wiggling toes.

“What about that?” I said.

Ms. Markley dodged the question again. “And you said she’s typically facing a wall when she does this?”

“Yes. In the living room.”

“Interesting. And there’s nothing on that wall? A picture of her mother?”

“Nothing at all. Not anymore at least.”

“Interesting.”

“So? What do you think? What is it?”

“Well, it’s certainly strange, Mr. Monroe. I’ll say that. Very strange. The syntax and verbiage I recognized seems to be a culmination of three different languages, all happening to be some the oldest we know of. I think there’s something else in there too, but I can’t identify it. You’re sure your daughter doesn’t know a little Latin?”

I shook my head. “They don’t admit girls like her in school.”

“Yeah,” the linguist shook her head, huffed. “Never make accommodations for someone who doesn’t fit the cookie cutter, especially not a girl. I just learned to fake it enough. Guess I got lucky.” She paused, took a long stare at Kate. “But apparently somebody doesn’t think Kate is a lost cause. Linguistically speaking, I mean. She learned this from somewhere, didn’t she?”

“Not from me. What is it, Latin and Chinese, Japanese?”

“No basis in modern Asian languages, and much older,” the linguist replied. “Mr. Monroe…I need you to listen carefully and take my words at their value, that is from the perspective of a linguist.”

“Alright.”

She held up three fingers. “Nothing Kate said was a complete language that I know of, but it was a mixture of three: Latin, Tamil, and Sumerian. Let me reiterate, these are some of the oldest languages we know of. Haven’t been spoken anywhere for thousands of years. So I need you to think long and hard, Mr. Monroe. Do you have any idea where she would have learned these? You said she doesn’t read much, but maybe television? A studious neighbor?”

“Not a clue.”

The linguist cleared her throat again. “Well…as an academic there’s not typically room for superstitions, but…”

“But what? What is it?”

“I’m sure there are certain things we still don’t know. And if I believed in the sort of thing, I’d say your daughter is talking to someone. Or something.”

“Like w-what?” I stammered. “A ghost?”

“I can’t be sure, but she’s taking a liking to whoever it is.”

“How do you mean?”

Ms. Markley bit her lip. “She said…she said she wants to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

The linguist stood and faced the window. She lifted the curtain with a finger and looked out through the narrow opening. “With them.”

**************************

I didn’t make a peep the whole ride home from the university, didn’t even play the radio. I didn’t look at Kate much either, but whenever I did, she was either staring at her wiggling toes or tracking the raindrop race on the window. I wanted to scream at her. Who was she talking to? Was there a ghost in my house? Was it Tara? I didn’t believe in those sorts of things, but my daughter was speaking languages nobody had spoken for thousands of years. Nothing was as it seemed.

I parked the car in the driveway and sat there with Kate. I didn’t want to go back in, not yet. The curtains were drawn in most of the windows, the living room included. I watched the windows and hoped for a shadow to zip by, to give me some kind of clue. Nothing. I eventually gave up, sighed, and tugged the keys out of the ignition.

Kate grabbed the door handle and pulled, but as the door started to open, emotion took over. I lunged across her and pulled the door and slammed it shut. “Damn it, Kate, tell me!” I yelled.

She let go of the door and turned, her eyes searching me. This time, I couldn’t read her.

“Where are you going? Who are they? Come on, Kate, please! Tell me something. Tell Daddy who you’re talking to.”

She blinked, rubbed her cheek with an index finger, dropped her hand back to her lap. This meant nothing.

“Who are they, Kate? Who are they?”

She looked away, out the window and to the gray clouds. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was trying to tell me something.

While I sat there with nothing but the sound of my own voice and that silent blank stare, I missed Tara deeply. I needed her more than ever and she was gone. I dropped my head in my hands and tried to hold back my tears. Kate was still looking at me. “You can go inside now,” I told her.

Kate opened the door again and left and the moment it shut behind her, I finally let myself cry. I cried hard, harder than I ever did before and ever have since. I hadn’t felt so alone since the day Tara died.

And when I did go back inside, there Kate was, sitting in the living room with her legs crossed and facing the wall. This time she had a sheet of paper and a box of crayons beside her. A few crayons were scattered near the box and she was using one to scribble on the page. Part of me wanted to go over and see what was going on, but I didn’t. I loved her more than anything, but I’d had enough of Kate and whoever she was talking to for the time being.

Later that night, I heated up some TV dinners for us since I wasn’t in the mood to cook. I sat with the radio on, listening to a ball game while my daughter kept mumbling by the wall for hours. “Kate,” I called. My voice sounded so tired, so monotone. “Dinner’s getting cold. Come eat.”

The radio crackled like popcorn with a voice. Bottom of the fourth, Jim Slaton steps up to the mound. Got an impressive record this season, but he takes on Dennis Martinez.

“Kate. Dinner.”

He’s got a 3.76 earned run average this season so far. Incredible. Slaton cranks it…throws…swing from Martinez! Miss. And that’s strike one.

“Kate…please just come for a few minutes.” I said.

Mumbling, scribbling, that crayon scratching incessantly at the paper.

Out of bounds. Strike two.

I smacked the table. “Kate! Now!” I whipped my chair towards the living room to confront her and…she was gone. “Kate?” I threw my fork down and it clattered on the plate. The scattered crayons were still there, one rolling over the sheet of paper she was drawing on, but no Kate. I looked left, right, then to the bottom of the curtains to check if her feet were sticking out. Nothing. “Kate?” Now I was panicking. I called louder.

I turned the radio off and sprung up from the table, ran for the living room. I grabbed the curtain and tugged it aside. The Wilsons were across the street holding little Peter’s arms while he wobbled on his bike, but no Kate. I remembered what the linguist said, a morbid fear overtaking me. “She said she wants to go.”

“Kate!” I screamed so loud my voice cracked. Mr. Wilson turned towards our house and squinted at the window and Peter nearly fell off the bike. I ran upstairs to her room. “Kate?” She wasn’t there either. I checked both bathrooms, my room, the closets, between my dress shirts, sifted through the hangers. Nothing. I ran back downstairs. My chest was pounding. “Kate?”

I stopped short, blinked a few times. There she was: sitting at the kitchen table and eating her dinner. It couldn’t be. I’d looked everywhere. How did I miss her? I’d played our version of hide and seek before with her, but this wasn’t it; she’d have tried to stay hidden longer, giggled when I found her. I’d even checked all her favorite hiding spots when I was looking for her. She’d just disappeared and came back. To this day I don’t know where she went or how she did it, but I sure have a good idea.

I grabbed both her arms and shook. “Kate, where were you?” she dropped her fork and sauce splattered on the table. She looked so confused, scared. “You had me worried sick! Where were you?”

This time, her eyes did move. She flicked them twice to the left. She wanted me to see something.

“Kate, I can’t see your friends. Only you can.”

But again her eyes flicked twice to the left. I looked this time, and just as I suspected, I couldn’t see them.

“What is it Kate? There’s nothing there.”

She flicked twice to the left a third time.

This time I released her and stood. I knew she knew I couldn’t see whoever she was talking to, but she still wanted me to go over there to see something. I approached slowly, and on my way over I realized that I hadn’t stepped foot in the living room for weeks. I’d never have admitted it then, but I’d become terrified of that side of the house. For a minute I eased up, decided there really wasn’t anything there I could see. And then I looked to Kate. She was still staring, flicking her eyes. I knew, whatever it was, I hadn’t found it yet.

And that’s when I looked to her drawing. I picked up the paper as if it would bite me. It was silky and sticky in some parts, drooping and saturated in crayon wax more than I knew a piece of paper could handle. She’d been scribbling on that single sheet the whole afternoon, front and back. Usually Kate would make a tear or two when she drew because she always pressed a little too hard, but not this time. What was on that paper looked like a rubbing: one of those drawings where you put a coin or a leaf or something underneath the paper and draw over it to copy the subject onto the paper. Most of the drawing was dark layers of yellows, greens, browns, blacks and grays, uncannily resembling the living room wall she’d been obsessed with for weeks. But when I held it in the light and looked closer, there were outlines of seven identical things in lighter shades. They were stood upright on two feet, rail thin and a hazy gray skin tone. I’d say they were ghosts, but they were significantly taller than anyone I knew. Their heads nearly scraped the ceiling and their feet were webbed, fingers crooked.

With the picture in hand and a creepy ol’ thought on my mind, I turned around. I must have looked petrified. I held the drawing up for her. “Kate…what are these?” Of course she didn’t answer, but most of me already knew. I knew from the start this was all connected to the meteor shower, that’s when things started getting strange. “Kate darlin’, are these people from Earth?”

She pranced over to the window and pointed at the sky, looked back at me.

My throat felt numb. I’d heard of things like these. Back then it was stories of little green men in flying saucers. Abducting people, dissecting cows, running little experiments. Most sane people would write it off, say it’s all the Soviets and their new planes. They’d say it was too coincidental that these sightings all ramped up when communism started spreading and the alien movies started getting better. But now I knew the truth. You can call me crazy, but the seven creatures in that drawing weren’t invisible communists and they sure weren’t ghosts. They weren’t Martians either, but something closer to that. I have no doubt that what Kate drew that day was real and was in that house with us. And even more clearly, I knew they wanted Kate.

I took that drawing of hers to my room and looked at it for hours every night until I fell asleep with it on my chest. And every night that kind linguist’s words rang in my head. She wants to go. She wants to go. I knew looking at it was no good for me, but I did it anyway. It felt like she’d been earmarked, reserved, put on a shelf until the day they wanted to snatch her, and there wasn’t nothing I could do about it. I’d already lost her for a few minutes. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it’d be the next time.

So one night, after Kate was sound asleep, I mustered up the courage to go down to the living room alone and confront the snatchers. I went up to that wall, still not seeing them, but I felt them there. It was cold and a moldy odor overwhelmed the room. If it were a younger me, I would have tried to rip them right out of the wall and fight those invisible things to the death. But instead, for the first time in my life, I got down on my knees and I begged. I folded my hands like I was praying and wept to them. “Don’t take my Kate. Don’t take my little girl. She’s all I got left,” I told them. “Please, please. Leave her be. Take someone else. Leave her alone.” I never felt so hopeless in my life, talking to a wall. In a way it felt like I’d already lost my girl, like I was already alone. All I could do was sit there like a fool on my knees and beg, hope they’d understand and leave us alone. She’s all I had left.

But as the days went on and Kate was talking to them more, drawing more, smiling more, giggling more, I began to understand something I should have all along. I’d sit there in the kitchen with the radio on and watch her play with the invisible things and I’d think of our life together. I thought of all the doctors who wanted to lock her up and lob off chunks of her brain. The ones who wanted to electrocute her, hook her up to wires, run their little tests. All the professionals who called her an imbecile or retarded or whatever they would that day. How they’d call Tara a refrigerator mother, kept Kate out of the schools, told me she’d never speak or grow up and probably die before she turned thirty. Sometimes I’d wish we had a time machine so I could take her to a time that understood her. This world wasn’t ready for her and suddenly she didn’t need a time machine anymore. The solution was right there in my living room.

So I walked on over to her and sat down by her side, stomached that musty smell. “Hey Kate,” I rubbed her shoulder.

She looked at me, still smiling.

“You wanna go?”

She blinked, moved her eyes in a circle. “Where?” she meant.

“With them. With your friends.” I pointed to the wall.

She looked to it, scanned it back and forth. I knew she was eyeing those seven things. She then turned to me, more attentive than I’d ever seen her. She nodded.

I nodded back, my gaze dropping to the floor. I knew she’d say yes, but I still wasn’t ready for it. The tears started up again. “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. But can you promise me one thing? Can we get one last day together first? Just one. Then you can go tomorrow night and I’ll be right there next to you.”

She nodded again, without a second’s hesitation.

I know my choice sounds crazy, but I consider myself lucky. Most parents don’t find a better world for their neurodivergent children, and even fewer people get that last day with the ones they love because you never know when it’s gonna be. I would have given anything to have that kind of time with Tara. So the next day, December 4^th, 1977 was Kate Monroe’s last day. That saying “make the most of every day” never felt so powerful. I took her to the planetarium in the morning, then took a few laps around town walking into each restaurant and store to say hi to all the people she’d known over the years. Then we went down to her favorite ice cream shop and I let her get the biggest size with three different flavors: pineapple, mint chocolate chip, and vanilla she got. Then we went to her favorite diner so she could order those bitter nuggets she loved and pour half the salt shaker on them.

And when that was all done, the last thing we did was give her a bath. She sat there in the tub, looking more absent than ever, like her mind was already on the other side. I squeezed out the sponge on her hair and watched the water trickle over her shoulders, trying to let it out as slow as I could, because when that bath was over, it would be time. I wasn’t ready, but I never would be.

Then we got her dried off and dressed. Once her shirt was straightened out, I was holding onto her arms so tight. Then I pulled her in and squeezed and she hugged back just like I’d taught her. I kissed the top of her damp head and tasted the snot running down the back of my throat. I told her, “Thank you, Kate. Thank you, darling. I could’ve never asked for a better daughter. If I had to start from when you were a baby I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Not one minute of it. Hell, I wish you’d stay, but I understand. You don’t need a time machine no more. It ain’t right to keep you.” Then I let go of her, taking a long look at her face, burning that beautiful image in my head forever. “I’ll miss you, Kate. I’ll miss you so much.”

Four long blinks: “I’ll miss you too.”

“Don’t you ever forget about me, okay? And don’t forget about your mother neither. I love you, Kate. I love you more than anything in this whole wide world. I always will.”

Kate blinked three times quick, then once more. “I love you,” she meant.

Then we walked downstairs together, side by side, holding hands. I stared at that wall, almost regretting it, but I heard Tara’s voice pushing me on. “Let her go,” she’d say.

When we finally stood by that wall together, I felt my heart hit my toes. I turned to Kate and she to me. “I love you,” I said again.

She blinked three times fast, then once. And then she was gone.

**************************

They asked me why I didn’t help look for Kate’s murderer. They asked me what the drawings meant, where I last saw her. Over and over I’d say, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” the detectives would say.

And eventually I told them how it went and, guess what? They didn’t believe me. Told me I was a loon. “Told ya so,” I said. They tried to get me diagnosed with psychosis, institutionalize me, the whole gambit. I know they would have locked me away in the psych wards if they still could. But eventually they let me go, not enough evidence to convict me of murdering my own daughter, all conjecture. I’d like to think at least one of the twelve on that jury knew I wasn’t lying. Kate might have vanished right out of my hand that night, but she isn’t dead. I know she’s not, and in fact, I know exactly where she is. She’s right here with me, right now in December 2023, as I write this out. She always has been. Sometimes a book will fall off the shelf or my wife’s picture will disappear then reappear later. Sometimes she’ll even push my pill bottles a little closer like she’s nagging me to stay on top of it. She always did care about me more than I cared about myself. Just because you can’t see someone anymore doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And after all this time, I can say I’m glad she’s gone. I’m glad she’s somewhere she’s understood, because it wasn’t here then, and it isn’t quite here now.

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