One Year Gone

by Avery Bishop

Nobody just disappears. Not like in movies. Or on TV. Or in books. People can’t just one day up and vanish. Life isn’t an elaborate magic trick. There is no magician standing in the wings whose fingertips are so powerful they can make a person disappear with one simple snap.

and there are times when the two of you laugh and times when you argue and times when you don’t talk to each other for days, but she is your daughter and you would do anything for her, anything at all, because there is nobody else in the world you care for more than you care for her.

I never really felt like I belonged, like a puzzle piece that just won’t click into place no matter how many ways you twist it around.

But the problem with brave faces is that they don’t last forever; eventually they fade, and the pain and fear beneath peek through.

I remember some nights she would sit at the kitchen table grading papers for hours. It didn’t look fun to me at all, but my mom never complained. In fact, I think she loved it. No—I know she loved it. But . . . she loved me even more. No matter how many papers she had to grade, she always put me first.

I suppose all of us are broken in our own way. Some of us are just more broken than others.”