The Day Joshua Came Home
The skin on her fingertips was starting to peel. Both the cold and the adhesive were to blame. This was flyer number 1,273. “BOY GONE MISSING (8 YEARS OLD),” it read at the top. That was a lie. It had been two years. If Joshua was still alive, he was now 10 years, 5 weeks, and 3 days old. But Kate refused to acknowledge that fact. Acknowledging any of it meant admitting there was a chance her son would never come back. And despite plastering every telephone pole in Chicago three times over, Kate was not ready to do that just yet. But she was ready to call it a night. Just then, a phone call. The police station near the docks. A blonde boy dressed in nothing but a pair of soccer shorts and a torn blanket had just walked in — and he claimed his name was Joshua.
Sometimes, Kate looked at Joshua and tried to imagine what he looked like when he was nine. She had never seen him at that age, and she could never quite get the picture to de-pixelate. That’s what many of their interactions now felt like. She reached into a place, but there was no other hand to hold. The version of Joshua she longed to access was no longer there. That’s what the kidnappers had really taken. Not her boy, but a part of his soul. And unlike his body, that part might truly not return. It wasn’t that Joshua was mean, angry, or violent. On the surface, he seemed to be the same old Joshie, just more silent, more withdrawn, and that…
