Dear Madeleine

Some time back, you gave away your name in a letter. It was a joke you made about when you broke your ankle, I think, and someone saying to you: ‘Oh, Madeleine . . .’.

It’s pretty, Madeleine, I like it.

I kept on using M.T. out of respect, though, cause I thought that’s what you wanted.

Ah, that’s not true. I was using M.T. to make fun of you, I guess.

Because it kind of sounds like ‘empty’.

That was wrong of me. Just like it was wrong of me to say ‘suit yourself’ when you said you were going to a place to wait for me.

You might have taken that to mean I’d be there, and I hope you didn’t.

I was mad at you, Madeleine, and I guess I should explain why.

There’s something I never told you about me. It’s school vacation at the moment, so I guess I’ve got some time and I can tell you.

Almost a year and a half ago, my father went missing, and so did a high-school teacher.

The night they disappeared, I found my Uncle Jon dead by the side of the road.

The thing about my dad being gone.

I never knew what it might be like to have somebody missing. Before it happened, I remember thinking that’d be tough—but turns out, the distance between how you think something might feel and how it actually feels, well, the Kingdoms and Empires combined couldn’t measure that.

One time, years ago, I was playing in a junior deftball game. This was when my cousin Corrie-Lynn was just a baby. Uncle Jon and Auntie Alanna were there with Corrie-Lynn on the sidelines, watching. And a ball went astray.

It was flying—speeding—fast and hard through the air, and everyone could see it was heading for Corrie-Lynn in her baby carriage.

Jon and Alanna were a little way away from her, chatting with my parents. Corrie-Lynn was sitting straight and solemn in that way she’s always had, and the ball was shooting right for her face.

I was on the other side of the field.

I could see it flying. I could see exactly where it was going to hit. And there wasn’t a thing I could do.

In the end, my mother caught it. She turned just in time and threw herself into the air, grabbing the ball and landing on her stomach in the dirt. The palm of her hand was bruised from the catch, so I don’t want to think what might have happened to little Corrie-Lynn if it had hit.

The point is, that feeling you get in your stomach and your throat—in your whole body—as you watch a ball spin towards a baby. The terror of that, the suspense—well, that’s how it feels to have my father missing.

The difference is, in real life, someone either catches the ball or it hits and you deal with the consequences.

When someone’s missing, the ball is always flying.

Even on my best days, days when I’m distracted by friends, having fun, even then it’s like I’ve left something baking in an oven somewhere. A part of my mind can sense burning every moment of the day.

It’s exhausting too, because I can shift facts and possibilities around in my mind forever. A third-level Purple killed Jon and we thought it must’ve taken my dad and Mischka Tegan too. But their bodies never showed up. So maybe the Purple had taken them to its cavern and was keeping them alive?

Or maybe my dad had run away with Mischka? Run off on my mother and me as if we never existed. Maybe Dad had killed Jon before he left? Or asked him to drive the truck home?

I’ve spent the last year wanting to believe a Purple had my dad in its cavern, because it sort of fit the facts, and it meant I could go out there and rescue him.

But there were other facts too—like my dad and Mischka drinking together; my dad’s reputation—and they kept leaking in.

It was like, inside my mind, I’d built myself a pyramid of pumpkins but every time I turned my back, its balance would shift—crates start tipping, dirt spilling, rain seeping in between the cracks. So I’d clean up, reconstruct—and turn my back again.

Anyhow, with all this going on, I’m also getting letters from you that say I don’t exist, and that family who disappear don’t want to be found, and if they do disappear, it’s most likely because of me. At the same time as going on and on, like a combine harvester, about Colours.

It’s not your fault, but you sure can say the wrong thing.

Anyhow, lately, that pyramid in my mind has come crashing down, and this time I’m not going to rebuild.

I cheated on my girlfriend—on Kala—the day she left town, you know, and right away it came to me: if I can do that, maybe my dad did cheat on us. Maybe he and I are the same.

I already knew he had his magnifying glass; then it turns out she’d taken her teddy bear, and they had a bracelet to make them a pile of cash.

My dad ran away with that teacher; he’s not in a Purple Cavern at all.

I looked into the sun I guess, like you told me, and it hurts but at least it’s the truth.

Or, to put it another way, the ball hit, but at least it’s not that high-pitched suspense any more.

And he’s not dead—it’s not like they found his body torn to pieces like my uncle Jon’s, which would be a different kind of hit, more savage and brutal, its own kind of hell—but simpler somehow and more honourable. Not so ugly, complicated and personal.

And one of these days I can track him down, give him hell and walk out on him.

Ah, even sitting here on my front porch, looking out over the fields, there’s a part of me aches to see him walking. To conjure him out of the sunlight in the distance. The shape of my dad, I can almost see it, crossing the field towards me. Come to put his arm around me, reach out an arm to my mother as well, and I’d close my eyes and just breathe.

Take care,

Elliot