The Man Who Wasn't Missing

The first time I saw my missing brother, he was buying a gallon of milk.

I was sitting in my car outside a grocery store in New Hampshire, eating a sandwich that had cost eleven dollars and tasted like wet cardboard.

He walked past my windshield carrying a plastic shopping basket.

I stopped chewing.

There was no mistaking him.

Same crooked nose. Same ridiculous posture. Same habit of scratching the back of his neck whenever he was thinking about something.

My brother had been missing for seven years.

I dropped the sandwich and got out of the car.

"Andrew!"

He stopped.

For half a second, he looked directly at me.

Then he turned and walked faster.

"Andrew!"

I started running.

He abandoned his basket beside a shopping cart and disappeared around the corner of the building.

By the time I reached the parking lot behind the store, he was gone.

I stood there breathing heavily, looking at a row of parked cars.

A woman loading groceries into her trunk stared at me.

"Did you see a guy run through here?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Sorry."

I returned to my car and called my mother.

She answered on the fourth ring.

"Hi, sweetheart."

"Mom, I saw Andrew."

There was silence.

"What?"

"I saw him. Just now. Outside a grocery store."

Another pause.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Daniel."

"Mom, I know what my own brother looks like."

She didn't respond.

I could hear the television in the background.

Finally, she said, "Where are you?"

"Concord."

"Come home."

"Mom."

"Please."

I looked toward the grocery store.

"I think he's living here."

"Daniel, come home."

I hung up.

Andrew disappeared when he was twenty-six.

He left his apartment on a Thursday morning and never returned.

His wallet was found in his bedroom. His car was parked outside. His phone had been turned off.

There was no note.

The police investigated for months.

They interviewed friends, coworkers, former girlfriends, and anyone else who might have known something.

Nothing.

My mother spent the next several years convinced he had been murdered.

My father believed he'd killed himself.

I never knew what to believe.

Andrew had always been difficult to understand.

He could be funny and generous one day, then completely withdrawn the next. Sometimes he disappeared for a weekend without telling anyone where he was going.

But he always came back.

Until he didn't.

After the first year, people gradually stopped asking about him.

After the third, his birthday became something we acknowledged quietly.

After the fifth, my father stopped setting a place for him at Christmas.

My mother never did.

I spent the next two hours driving around Concord.

It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have a better one.

I checked parking lots, gas stations, and the streets surrounding the grocery store.

Eventually, I returned to the store and asked the cashier whether she recognized the man I described.

"Maybe," she said.

"He's about six feet tall. Dark hair. Thirty-three years old."

"That describes half the people who come in here."

"Right."

She looked at me sympathetically.

"Is he in trouble?"

I hesitated.

"I don't know."

I bought a coffee and sat in my car.

At six o'clock, I noticed a man standing near the entrance.

He was wearing a green jacket and carrying a backpack.

Andrew.

I jumped out.

This time, I didn't shout.

I walked toward him slowly.

He saw me when I was about twenty feet away.

His expression changed.

"Don't run," I said.

He looked exhausted.

"Daniel."

I stopped.

Hearing him say my name was almost worse than seeing him.

For seven years, I'd imagined his voice so many times that I'd forgotten what it actually sounded like.

"Where the hell have you been?"

He glanced toward the store.

"Can we not do this here?"

I laughed.

"Are you serious?"

"Please."

I stared at him.

He looked older, obviously. There were lines around his eyes, and his hair was beginning to thin.

But he was alive.

He was standing right in front of me.

"Mom thinks you're dead."

He looked down.

"I know."

That made me angrier than anything else he could have said.

"You know?"

"Daniel."

"She buried an empty coffin, Andrew."

He closed his eyes.

"I know."

"Then what the fuck is wrong with you?"

He didn't answer.

I stepped closer.

"Did somebody hurt you? Were you in trouble?"

"No."

"Then what happened?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"I left."

I waited for him to continue.

He didn't.

"You left?"

"Yeah."

"For seven years?"

He nodded.

I wanted to hit him.

I wanted to hug him.

Mostly, I wanted him to say something that would make any of this understandable.

Instead, he asked whether I wanted to get coffee.

We sat in a diner ten minutes away.

Andrew ordered tea.

I ordered nothing.

He told me he worked at a printing company. He rented a small apartment. He had a girlfriend named Rachel.

He had been living in New Hampshire for almost six years.

I listened in disbelief.

"You have a girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"Does she know?"

He looked uncomfortable.

"Some of it."

"Some of what?"

"That I don't speak to my family."

I leaned back.

"That's one way to describe it."

He rubbed his forehead.

"I know how this looks."

I laughed.

"No, I don't think you do."

He stared into his tea.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then he said, "I wasn't doing well before I left."

I looked at him.

"I know."

"No, you don't."

He said it quietly, without anger.

I waited.

"I hated my job. I was drinking too much. I owed money to people. Every morning, I woke up feeling like I'd already ruined my life."

"Then why didn't you tell us?"

"I tried."

I opened my mouth.

He continued before I could speak.

"Remember when I told Dad I wanted to quit my job?"

"Yeah."

"He told me to grow up."

I remembered that conversation.

Our father had said Andrew needed to stop making excuses.

At the time, I'd agreed.

"That doesn't explain disappearing," I said.

"I know."

"People have problems, Andrew. They don't just abandon their families."

He nodded.

"You're right."

I was beginning to hate how readily he agreed with me.

"Then why?"

He looked out the window.

"At first, I only planned to leave for a few days."

He explained that he'd taken a bus north with a little cash he'd hidden in his apartment.

He found temporary work cleaning motel rooms.

For the first time in years, nobody knew who he was.

Nobody asked about his career or his plans.

Nobody expected anything.

He stayed another week.

Then another.

"After a month, I thought about calling," he said.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I knew what I'd done."

He looked at me.

"And the longer I waited, the harder it became."

I stared at him.

"So you just decided we weren't worth the trouble?"

"No."

"Then what?"

He swallowed.

"I decided I couldn't face you."

I called my mother from the diner parking lot.

Andrew was still inside.

She answered immediately.

"Daniel?"

"I found him."

I heard her inhale.

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah."

"Where is he?"

"He's here. He's alive."

She started crying.

I closed my eyes.

"Can I talk to him?" she asked.

I looked through the window.

Andrew was sitting alone, staring at his hands.

"I'll ask."

I went back inside.

"Mom wants to talk to you."

He looked frightened.

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

He stared at the phone.

I held it out.

For a moment, I thought he was going to refuse.

Then he took it.

"Hi, Mom."

He listened.

His face changed.

"I'm sorry."

He listened again.

"I know."

Then he began to cry.

I'd seen Andrew cry exactly once before, when our childhood dog died.

Now he was sitting in a diner, thirty-three years old, crying into a phone while a waitress pretended not to notice.

I walked outside.

An hour later, Andrew returned my phone.

"She's coming tomorrow," he said.

"Good."

He looked uncertain.

"Are you staying?"

I considered telling him no.

Part of me wanted to leave him there and let him experience a fraction of what he'd put us through.

Instead, I sat down.

"Yeah."

He nodded.

We ordered dinner.

For the first twenty minutes, we barely spoke.

Then he asked about my daughter.

"She's four now, right?"

I looked at him.

"Five."

He nodded.

"Five."

I pulled out my phone and showed him a picture.

He smiled.

"She looks like you."

"Poor kid."

He laughed.

It was the same laugh I remembered from childhood.

For a moment, I felt something loosen inside me.

Then I remembered my father.

"Does Dad know you're alive?" I asked.

Andrew's smile disappeared.

"Mom said he passed."

I nodded.

"Two years ago."

He looked down.

"I saw the obituary."

I stared at him.

"You saw it?"

"Yeah."

"Did you come to the funeral?"

He shook his head.

I waited.

"No," he said.

I stood up.

"Daniel."

I grabbed my jacket.

"Seven years, Andrew. You had seven years."

He didn't try to stop me.

Outside, I sat in my car with the engine off.

I wanted to drive home.

I wanted to tell my mother that finding him had been a mistake.

Then I saw Andrew through the diner window.

He was sitting exactly where I'd left him, staring at the empty seat across from him.

I thought about my father, who had died believing his son was gone forever.

Nothing Andrew said would change that.

I thought about my mother, who would be here tomorrow.

And I thought about how easily I could spend the next seven years refusing to speak to my brother because I couldn't forgive him for refusing to speak to us.

I went back inside.

Andrew looked up.

"I don't forgive you," I said.

He nodded.

"I know."

"And I don't understand."

"I know."

I sat down.

"But I'm not disappearing."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he reached for the menu.

"Do you still hate mushrooms?" he asked.

I almost laughed.

"Yeah."

"Good. We can split a pizza."

I looked at him.

He looked back.

For the first time all evening, he seemed unsure whether he was allowed to smile.

"Fine," I said. "But you're paying."

He nodded.

"Fair enough."

We ordered a large pepperoni pizza.

It wasn't forgiveness.

But it was dinner.