“I think I’m almost out of hugs,” Taylor is saying.
Anna and I both laugh, but she doesn’t look at me like she once would have.
“We’ve just missed you so much,” I say. “Sorry if we’re making you sore from all the hugs.”
“It’s okay. I missed y’all too.”
The three of us are in a booth inside the Donut Hole on 98.
We’re actually on the same side of the booth. Though the other side of the booth is empty, neither of us wants to be that far from her just now.
In addition to over-hugging her, we’re allowing Taylor to have as many doughnuts and as much ice cream as she wants.
“Did you find Mr. Keith and Mr. Christopher’s little girl?” she asks.
“We did,” I say.
“That’s good,” she says. “Makes it worth it then I guess.”
I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t. Sorry, but it just doesn’t. I missed you way, way too much. I don’t ever want to be apart again, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
So far we haven’t gotten into the real reason she was kept away from us for two weeks. It is only one of so many things that are still open and unresolved, like wounds that have yet to heal.
But in the light of having her alive, having her safely back, not much else seems to matter.
Like me, most of Anna’s attention has been directed toward Taylor. I have no idea what she’s thinking or how she’s feeling—especially about us and our future. She certainly hasn’t given me any indication that getting Taylor back makes her want to get back with me. But even that—as much as that matters, as vital that is—even it dims in the brilliant light of having our daughter back and our need to celebrate her return.
For this my daughter was dead, and is alive again; she was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.
I think about how many cases I’ve worked over the years where children weren’t found alive, didn’t get to come home, weren’t able to be hugged too much and have doughnuts and ice cream. Even as I grieve for Martin Fisher, Nicole Caldwell, Mariah Evers, Magdalene Dacosta, and the one who haunts me the most, Derek Burrell, I rejoice all the more that Taylor isn’t among them, that for once the disappeared has reappeared, that the lost has been found, that my daughter who was dead is alive again.