By Thomas O’Connell

We are a family where a child went missing. No matter what achievements we may accomplish – art show awards, track and field ribbons – there will always be people who, when seeing us in the supermarket or at the public skate at the local rink, first think of the absence. Perhaps we do too.

We are a family where a child went missing, disappeared years ago. Ran away? Wandered off? Abducted by aliens or a serial killer? I wish I could tell you, I wish that sort of omniscience was something that I could offer you, but I cannot and so you will have to be content with the unknowing. Welcome to our world.

Today is moving day for mother. She is finally leaving the family house. When father died, she pleaded to stay for another cycle of holidays. It was the house that they would never move from, though couldn’t really afford to keep up, and so they missed the real estate spike a few years ago that would’ve rewarded them handsomely. In time, it became a burden to us children, one more child around to pitch in sure would have helped. But they were not there to contribute or persuade or field phone calls at one in the morning about squirrels in the walls. If they had still been around, mother and father likely would have moved years ago. But they had to remain in the house just in case the child came home and they insisted on keeping their landline (since the number was the one that the child knew) even when we convinced them to get a cell phone. The children kept paying for both phones.

Moving the furniture out to the rental truck, the very last thing – the very last – that is moved is the black rotary telephone, unplugging it from the wall at the bottom of the stairs in the living room. I sit on the bottom stair and pick up the receiver, listening one last time. No voice speaks to me. I can barely remember the voice and it must have changed by now anyway. No dial tone either, just space – the unknowing.

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A librarian living in eastern Massachusetts, Thomas O’Connell’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Paragraph Planet, Hobart, and The Los Angeles Review. He is a former poet laureate of Beacon, NY, who has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, as well as having a miniature story appear in Best Microfiction 2024.