We were sitting out back; you were having a craft beer from some local brewery, and I, a dram of bourbon. We were sharing a bowl of small, round, imperfectly perfect sweet red cherry tomatoes you’d harvested from your small garden earlier that afternoon. The green stems were still attached; we plucked them off before popping the tomatoes in our mouths. Our area was experiencing a heatwave, and dusk didn’t bring much relief. Between the warm glow from the drinks—and the lights you’d strung around the perimeter of your deck—the cicada’s song and the dampness of the air, the evening was ripe for conversation that extended beyond surface pleasantries.

You leaned back in your chair, raising the front two legs off the ground just a bit, and you said, “I never knew my daddy.”

You said, “I know his name, and I know where he is, but don’t know who he is.” You said, “I don’t know if I laugh like him, if he is allergic to peanuts too, if he prefers tomato-based barbecue sauce to vinegar-based.” You said, “I think I’d like to find him.”         

You shared the puzzle pieces you’d gathered. I listened and sipped and marveled at the tiny, delicious explosions the cherry tomatoes made when I bit down on them. We talked about the mechanics of this quest and turned over the possibilities. You talked about this hole in your history, and how it still impacts your present.

I listened. Over the cicadas, I heard you whisper what you did not say: that you’ve always carried this hole. That it sits in the center of your chest. That at points in your life, people you’ve encountered have shared information about him, dumping small shovelfuls of satisfaction into your hole, but never enough to make it any smaller, any shallower. I heard you whisper that what you’d never known was still missed, still longed for, still needed. I was astonished by how you could so deeply miss what you’d never had. The depth of the hole and the ache it caused took me by surprise. I considered asking you to tell me more, but did not.

Instead, the conversation twisted and turned as late-night conversations tend to do, and we found ourselves talking about our children and their paths. Present mommies and daddies, not missing ones. One of us glanced at a phone, the clock on it telling us that it was late, and time for me to go.

Just as surprising as those cherry tomatoes, and just as satisfying and sweet, that conversation served as the preamble to a litany of others like it, all full of depth and honesty. They were steady and consistent, without feeling overwhelming, and I was grateful for the friendship and appreciative of your presence in my life. We talked on back porches and over bottles of wine, through text messages and the occasional telephone call; the exchanges were frequent, but never taken for granted. And though we never again revisited that first conversation or the hole you carried in the same detail, I knew that you still carried it with you, along with the dull ache that type of longing brings.

You can imagine, then, the hole that you left in me when you chose to disappear. You can imagine, then, my longing when my calls went unanswered and there was no reply to my texts. I tried to fill the hole through excuses for you: perhaps you were just busy, perhaps you needed to focus on your family and had no time for these conversations, perhaps you were ill, perhaps your fingers fell off and your tongue fell out and you simply had no way to communicate despite your strong desire to do so.

Perhaps.

Perhaps you were initially just really busy and as time went by, you didn’t know how to reengage, so you simply did not.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

Perhaps I offended you and something said or unsaid silenced you and cut the string that I thought so tightly connected us.

Per. Haps.

I checked social media and casually mentioned you to in-common friends to make sure you had indeed not lost the use of your fingers or tongue. That you were not dead. You have not lost the use of your fingers or tongue. You are not dead. So, you’re a ghost. And like one who lives among ghosts, I look for you when I enter rooms. The shadow of the you that used to be there. From time to time, when I see something that makes me think of you, I send you a text to tell you so, never expecting a reply (but still hopeful for one.) I send you these texts for the satisfaction of knowing that even if you walked out on our friendship, I did not. I sit with your ghost, your shadow, and I wonder about the hole you carry. I wonder if you’re still trying to fill it—how someone with such a hole can create one in someone else. I wonder if our holes can be filled, and what will happen to my hole if, one day, you answer me or reach out. I wonder how many shovelfuls it will take to fill it. 

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