A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

Dad tells her, “I should have called and told you you didn’t need to
come. But we just found her a couple minutes ago. There wasn’t
time.” I silently call bullshit. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since
Dad sent you upstairs. Plenty of time to call the lady cop off.
“No, it’s fine. You know I’m always here for you whenever you
need me, Josh.”
She’s staring at him. Their hands are still touching. Inside I gag. I
don’t announce that I’m going to bed. I just leave, though there’s no
chance I’m going to sleep.
I don’t go into my room. I take a seat at the top of the stairs
instead. I listen to what they say. One thing I’ve figured out about the
lady cop is that she has two voices. She has her cop voice, in which
she thinks she’s pretty badass. That’s the one I always hear at the
police station. And then there’s her lady voice, which is the exact
opposite of this. It’s eager to please. Tonight her lady voice showed
up.
“So tell me. How’s it been going having Delilah home?”
Their voices are hushed from the distance. Dad’s chilled out some
from his near heart attack upstairs, but I can tell that his nerves are
still frayed. After he got you back upstairs, he cracked open a cold
one and finished it in two minutes flat. “I’d be lying if I said everything
was perfect. It’s far from perfect. She’s not right, Carmen.”
“Of course she’s not.”
“She’s suffered greatly.”
“She has. And you have, too.”
No one mentions me and my suffering.
“It’s been over a decade that she’s been gone. She’s not my little
girl anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I’m ecstatic to have her home.
Relieved and overjoyed. I keep having to remind myself that this is
real, that Delilah is actually home. That this isn’t just another dream
I’ll wake up from in the morning, as I have hundreds of times since
she disappeared. She’s here, and no one’s ever going to take her
away from me again. We’ll get there,” he says. “We’ll get to a place
where things feel normal.”
“A new normal. Things may never be how they used to be.”
“You did this, you know?”
“Did what?”