Where Is My Daughter?

Radio Silence

This wasn't going to be an easy question to answer.

It wasn't even an easy question to ask.

Why me?

It wasn't an obvious answer.

I searched my brain day and night, frustrated at my drunk decision-making skills. I revisited my memories so many times they began to feel like watching old movies. Eventually, they became more dreams than reality. I could no longer tell what was memory and what was wishful thinking. What had he told me versus what I wish I knew. Was his name Michael? Or did he say Chris? Maybe it was Richard...

When I closed my eyes at night, all I could see was his face staring back at me. I had dreams of chasing him through crowded city blocks, dark jungles, and exotic deserts. In my sleep, I chased him until the ends of the earth, but never quite caught him. It didn't take a psychic to figure out the source of these stress-induced nightmares. I was a mental health mess, with a newfound obsession with a man I had only met once in my life.

My mood wasn't improved by Dorian's radio silence. He had agreed to call the second he had more information, but that conversation we had was over felt as if it had been eons ago. I knew gears moved slowly in government proceedings, but this was one thing I desperately wanted to move briskly. I checked my phone constantly. I answered every phone number that called, hoping that "potential spam" might be code for "your local friendly CCS agent."

I had no desire to call him myself. I knew Dorian was being honest and really was going to call the moment he had answers. He never had done otherwise before, knowing just how agonizing waiting could be for me. I was always his first call. But the possibility still weighed on me. I was desperate for answers I knew he didn't have.

I tried to give the private investigator I hired the same courtesy, but it was soul-crushing to sit around and wait. I needed someone to call. After the third phone call of the day, I was politely offered to take a mental health day and drop it, for at least a few days. Otherwise, they may decide my case wasn't worth their trouble anymore.

Days turned to weeks and with nothing but my job to break up my mundane schedule, I lost track of time. How long had it been since that coffee shop meetup? It felt like too far away. I broke down and tried calling to get an update. But Dorian wasn't answering any of my phone calls, and I was growing increasingly suspicious. A subtle, deeper, ache nestled into the hollows of my chest as I watched the day rapidly approaching. The day my daughter would turn 6 years old.

I stopped visiting my daughter at school daily. I wasn't getting nearly enough sleep to drive safely. I wasn't even sure how I was transporting myself to work every day, going through life as if in a constant state of auto pilot. My mind was too preoccupied thinking of my daughter, all other tasks got placed on the back burner. Seeing her set a fire inside of me that I could not bear to feel any more. So my life molded into something that could only be called a "life" in the best of lights.

My evenings were spent pacing back and forth in my apartment. I researched extensively, reviewed files, hunted for names, connections, anything. Anything that could give me an answer that would save my family. I drew graphs, printed out articles, stock photos, and various documents I thought might be connected. My house slowly became a graveyard of paperwork, some crumpled, others thrown about my small apartment. There was not a single surface that did not contain paper of some kind.

I wasn't saving the trees and I surely wasn't saving my daughter either. I had not gotten any closer to finding information about the father and, judging on the cold shoulder from my investigative company, nobody else was making progress in this area either. Time was rapidly coming to an end. I needed to know more. I couldn't waste another month waiting.