Neil Clifford walked towards the Silver Springs Public Library with a voice recorder, a pad of legal paper, a 94% success rate, and an unshakable confidence.
Neil had been a special victims detective in Colorado for almost 20 years, and that meant it had been close to 20 years since Alice died. He had stayed with her through all of it. Every time she got high, every time she promised to get clean before getting high again. He remembered the first time he saw her shoot heroin, the way her face lit up like a kid in a candy store. The third time Alice promised to get clean, Neil cried. He cried salty and bitter tears that stuck to his cheeks, and she carried two leather suitcases, wedding presents to the happy couple, when she left. He waited for her, and even when she relapsed, he stayed. Alice died on an unusually cold day in September. It was the death that Neil had seen coming from miles away, but hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge. He bought her a blue velvet dress with long sleeves for the funeral, so that her mother wouldn’t have to look at the track marks. A week after that, he transferred to Colorado.
The police chief personally chose Neil to lead this missing persons case, because it was so complicated, and because Neil would see it through, like he always had.
Neil opened the door to the library and was greeted by the powerful smell of mildew and murmurs coming from an elderly knitting club meeting. The librarian was deeply engaged in a conversation with what appeared to be a broken printer.
“Excuse me,” Neil said loudly. He was not fond of the elderly.
“Why hello there!” the librarian greeted him, her silver glasses glinting in the afternoon sunlight. Neil smiled tightly without saying hello back before speaking.
“My name is Detective Neil Clifford and I need to know if a boy named Charlie was here on April 15th.”
“Charlie Brinker? Yes he was,” she said, scrolling through her computer screen, “He was here for about a half an hour until 3 o'clock reading a book on the Civil War.”
“Can you tell me if you saw anything or anyone suspicious during that time?” asked Neil, his voice becoming less cold.
“Why, I did see a man I didn’t know in here, but he never told me his name. He left a little while after Charlie, actually. It did seem a little strange. I never got a good look at his face, but I do know he was wearing a black pea coat.”
“Could you come with me to the station and describe him to a sketch artist?” Neil asked, furiously writing on his legal pad.
“I suppose,” she said, “Let me just lock up first.” Nobody in town had locked their doors before Charlie went missing.
After Neil escorted the librarian to the police station and picked up a copy of the sketch, he began driving back towards town to interview other locals. Neil drove back with a newfound urgency to Charlie’s case, and vivid images of other abducted children he had found over the years. He worried that four days in, he may already be too late.

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Neil wiped away dust before leaning over the desk in the convenience store across the street.
“Can I help you?” asked the bald store clerk when he finished stacking newspapers.
“Yes, I’m looking to know if you saw Charlie Brinker here on April 15th,” Neil stated.
“No, but I know Charlie. He comes in on Thursdays with his allowance to buy licorice. The 15th was a Tuesday.”
“Did you by any chance see this man in your store? Maybe sometime around 3?” Neil asked, holding up the sketch.
“Yes, yes I think so. I had never seen him before. He bought a pack of gum and a magazine,,” the clerk responded.
“ Do you have his name? His credit card information?” Neil asked, hopes rising up in his chest like a hot air balloon.
“Yes,” the clerk said, turning the computer screen to face Neil, “His name is Declan Masterson.”

“Police, open up!” Neil shouted, pounding on the hotel room door belonging to Declan.
“Hello?” a man said opening the door. He was dressed in checkered boxers and a grey t-shirt, squinting in the bright afternoon light and wiping sleep out of his eyes.
“My name is Detective Neil Clifford,” Neil said, holding up his badge, “Are you Declan Masterson?”
“Yeah, what do you want? Did I do something?”
“You’re not under arrest, but I have some questions for you. Why don’t we take a little trip to the police station?” Neil said, doing a rather remarkable job of keeping a poker face. He liked to keep his suspects in the dark; it always made them more truthful during questioning.
Once in the station, Neil began his interrogation.
“Why are you here?” Neil questioned.
“You mean at a police department? I have no clue? Say, why am I here?” Declan asked.
“No, I mean why are you in Silver Springs? Your driver’s license says you’re from Chicago.”
I’m visiting my mother,” Declan responded, he was starting to sound defensive.
“Tell me about April 15th.”
“What about it? I had just gotten here. I went to the library, I bought a magazine, I checked into my hotel room. This town has practically nothing to do, you know,” Declan said. 
“So tell me,” Neil said, getting direct, “Where’s Charlie?”
“What the hell are you talking about, and who’s Charlie? Wait, do you think I kidnapped someone? Are you crazy?” Declan shouted.
“Fine. I’ll play along. You didn’t check into the hotel until 4, what happened during the time between the convenience store and the hotel? You give me the proof I want, and you’re free.”
Declan sighed, “Ok. I’m not here to see my mother, I mean she does live here, but that’s not my reason. I’m here to see my girlfriend. Ask her, I was with her that afternoon. You can call her right now, just please don’t tell my wife.”
Neil left Declan in holding and went to talk to the girlfriend. Within a few hours, it was clear to Neil that Declan’s alibi held up. But if Declan hadn’t taken Charlie, who had?                                                 
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Neil decided to walk back into town and get some coffee and lunch at the local bakery. It was a sunny day, so he cut through Culver Creek Park. As he walked, he spotted a shiny red wrapper near the edge of the woods. He went closer and bent down. It was a licorice wrapper. The police had combed through the park the day after Charlie went missing. Carefully picking up the wrapper with his glove, Neil sent it to be DNA tested at the crime lab. Charlie had been here recently.

Maybe Evelyn’s body had stopped being able to produce tears, or maybe she was so far past hope that she saw no point in crying, but, never the less, her eyes were dry for the first time in almost a week. Now she just walked around the house from room to room in a way that reminded Roger of the last time they had seen his mother, who had had severe dementia. Neither Evelyn nor Roger had set foot into the room that had once belonged to Charlie. The police had come in and searched it for evidence. Ripping Charlie’s hand written poems on the blue striped wallpaper and covering the room with white cards marked with numbers, the room no longer resembled the bedroom of a 12-year-old boy.  It looked sterile and dead, fingerprint dustings covering various surfaces. Charlie’s bedroom lamp, hastily knocked over by a policeman, lay in broken shards of green tinted glass on the beige carpet.
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Everywhere Roger went he was reminded of Charlie’s absence. Watching Will, who used to ride bikes with Charlie on their street, walking alone with his head down to school and a heavy backpack weighing on his shoulders. Seeing a group of seventh graders buying candy in the convenience store. Looking out at the swing set he had built for Charlie oh so many years ago. Coming home from work one evening and passing by a baseball game, Roger stopped to watch. He somehow hoped that one of the boys on the field was Charlie.
He got back from the baseball game and parked in the garage just as the sun was beginning to set.  Roger felt a twinge in his gut. He could sense that something was wrong. He walked into the kitchen and saw Evelyn on her knees scrubbing the floor where she had dropped a bowl from the dishwasher. Her hands were bleeding from the sharp and punishing pieces of ceramic. Like the bowl, Charlie had left his family to pick up the broken pieces of his life.
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Charlie’s seventh grade teacher, Ms. Olivia Reilly, sat at her desk grading a pile of papers. She tapped her heel against the interior of her metal desk. She ran a hand through her recently dyed blonde hair. Someone knocked at the classroom door.
  “Door’s open!” Olivia shouted. She expected to see one of her students, probably stuck on homework again.
“You Olivia Reilly?” Neil asked, “I’m the detective on a case involving one of your students.” His presence was intimidating and it caused Olivia to snap her head up.
“Right, of course. Charlie Brinker,” Olivia said, her voice overflowing with superiority, “I have a whole file on him, he’s one of the troublemakers.”
“I have a file on him, too,” Neil said, he often enjoyed correcting people through shame. Olivia narrowed her eyes.
“Fine, What do you want to know? I think he liked soccer or something? What do you want from me?” Like Neil, Olivia didn’t like to back down.
“I want you to tell me about the day he went missing.”
“It was a Tuesday. We were taking notes in class that day. Midway through, I caught a glimpse of Charlie drawing an offensive cartoon of me and I sent him to the office. Charlie doesn’t like me. None of them do, but then again, it’s not my job for them to like me,” Olivia said, a small smirk appearing on her face.
“Let’s talk about the afternoon. Did Charlie take the bus?” Neil asked, ignoring her comments. He had once been the troublemaker in school, he had once had teachers like Olivia, and what she said didn’t phase Neil very much.
“No, he always walks home with that Will Songfreid kid. Look, I want to go home. Here’s the file. I’ve said everything I know,” Olivia said, ending their interview abruptly.
“We’ll be in touch,” Neil said, picking up the file. As he walked to the door, he could see Olivia behind him, picking at a thread on her sweater, trying to cover up the look of fear that clouded her face. 
Later, in his poorly lit hotel room, Neil would leaf through the file. It would be sparse, a few pink detention slips, some report cards, nothing unusual for a middle school boy.
Across town, Olivia Reilly sat at her kitchen counter, biting her nail. Neil had gotten far too close.

The next morning, Melissa Songfreid decided to pay a visit to Evelyn. With macaroni casserole in hand, she walked up the porch steps with a mission. Melissa was the kind of stay-at-home parent who, arguably, had a little too much free time on her hands. And, in that free time, Melissa went to great lengths to uncover, or, in desperate cases, make up gossip to share at morning carpool. She seemed to live off of three things: pride in her son Will’s life achievements, her various pasta dishes, and the dirt she got on other people. Putting her curly ginger hair up in a ponytail, Melissa knocked at the door. Evelyn opened it, her nose and cheeks red from crying, her eyes glancing up then resting back to the floor, her shoulders down.
“Come in, Melissa,” Evelyn said, her voice barely audible.
“Hi Doll, I just want to make sure you’re ok. I brought casserole,” said Melissa, holding up the casserole dish.  Melissa’s tupperware clad dishes were powerful mechanisms for her to hear all the details of the newest excitement in town. She usually only brought out casserole if she could hear the news before the other neighborhood mothers.
As the women talked in the living room, a look similar to one of a cat that had just eaten a mouse spread across Melissa’s face. Though she loved her son, Will, and was agitated to see him upset, she had little compassion for Charlie or his parents. The conversation with Evelyn was nothing but business to Melissa.
“Wow,” Said Melissa when Evelyn finished her story, “So even though the detective found Charlie’s licorice wrapper with his DNA on it, they still don’t know where Charlie is? It’s so sad to think that this all happened because you felt the need crowd your life with a job. I guess it’s true that you can’t have it all. It’s such a shame—“
“Get the hell out of my house!” screamed Evelyn, finding strength within herself. She was proud to be a working mother, proud to have some independence. She was a strong woman who had built her life and raised her son on the idea that anything is possible with hard work, and here was Melissa picking away at her family.
Melissa left quietly. She pushed down her feelings of guilt and instead focused on what the reactions of the other mothers would be when she told them her juicy tidbits.
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Olivia couldn’t sleep. Standing by the window, she looked out at the blackening sky outside before whispering two silent words up at the stars: “I’m sorry.”
Olivia had been a teacher for 11 years. Growing up in New York, she had wanted to be a musician. From a young age she was told that she had a gift, but she made bad choices and ended up broke and pregnant. After giving the baby up for adoption, Olivia decided to change her life, enrolled in night school, and got her teaching degree. Running away from bad decisions, she thought that Silver Springs would be the perfect place to start over. And it was until last autumn, when her past caught up with her. Secrets are a funny thing that way, they always show up in the least likely places at the least likely times.
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Neil hadn’t slept for two days. He had always been a dedicated detective and felt a responsibility to the Brinker family to find Charlie. It had been almost a week since Charlie had gone missing. Neil could see now that there were two possible answers: either the person who had taken Charlie had planned meticulously to leave no trace, or Charlie had planned to run away telling no one and leaving no clues. In either case, there was little information to work with. The entire Silver Springs police force was working double time following trails that all seemed to lead to dead ends. Neil could feel himself waiting to hear a call from someone saying that they had found Charlie’s dead body in a shallow grave somewhere. He tried to think of some of his other cases. What had he done differently that had led him to those children? Neil couldn’t help but question; was he missing some crucial piece of information?

Will heard the loud rumble of the school bus before it even rounded the corner. It reminded him of the game he and Charlie had played on those mornings when the sun was just peeking up over the trees and their breath sparkled in the cool morning air. They would each guess how long it would take from when they heard the creak of the bus to the time when it would stop in front of them. Each boy counting slowly, then speeding up when the front of the bus came into view. Charlie had often cheated, claiming that he wanted to change his guess midway through the game. Will never contended. He never cared who won.
Today, Will didn’t count. He felt dishonest playing without Charlie, and it wasn’t much fun to play alone anyway. The school bus screeched to a stop in front of where Will stood. Everyone on the bus watched silently as Will moved through the aisle searching for an empty seat. In class, he sat alone and drew pictures on the cover of his science notebook. At lunch, Will focused on scraping a piece of tape up that was stuck on the table. Charlie had always been the outgoing one in their friendship. He had always been the one to pass notes in class, and he had always been the one to think of new and creative pranks to play on their tolerant and forgiving teacher. Will was, in a way, Charlie’s voice of reason; a responsible, quiet, and gentle voice in Charlie’s head. The two boys had complimented each other so well, that they seemed out of place when they were apart. But now there was no chaos to Will’s calm, and Will faded into the background at school.
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Neil walked up the front steps of the Brinker house, his mind full of questions. Things weren’t lining up and he needed answers. He had been gentle on the Brinkers, but this was a time sensitive case and Neil needed more. 
“I want you to talk to me about Charlie,” Neil said, sitting down in the Brinker’s living room.
“We already told you everything about the day he went missing. You already searched the house,” Roger said, irritation audible in his tone. 
“Roger!” Evelyn said, “Sorry Neil, we are both on edge. All we want is our Charlie back. What do you need?”
“I want to start by saying what I’m sure you’ve already been told: We are doing everything we can. Now, knowing that, I really need you both to tell me any information I may need. I want to know everything. More than what you’ve told me. I need baby pictures, your college friends names, the stores you and Charlie shop in. Everything. Because I can promise you, the one thing you leave out is the one crucial detail I need to crack this case.” Roger looked at Evelyn. She turned her head down, shaking it slightly. He grabbed her hand.
“He has to know,” Roger said to Evelyn. Evelyn took a shuddered breath before speaking.
“We adopted Charlie when he was two months old. We have paperwork and everything, but we never told Charlie. We never told anyone. I don’t want to be seen as a bad mother, or worse, not even as a mother at all.” Neil felt faint suddenly. He felt angry. He suddenly hated these people. They had kept this enormous piece of information from him. They had made Neil spend weeks on fools errands, when this, he was sure, was the key to finding Charlie. Neil couldn’t believe this.
“I need all the paperwork. I need everything about the adoption. I need everything about the agency. Don’t make me ask again,” Neil said, struggling to keep his voice even. Soon, papers in hand, Neil arrived back at the police department.
“I need the entire force in here for a meeting now!” Neil yelled, walking briskly towards the conference room.

“Sir, I have the information on the adoption here,” a young police officer said the next day, approaching Neil, “The Bright Futures agency in New York received a baby boy with Charlie’s Social Security code from a woman matching his DNA named Olivia Reilly when he was just a few days old. All the paperwork is legitimate. The agency said she wanted a closed adoption, so the Brinkers only ever knew very little.”
“Did you just say Olivia Reilly?” Neil asked, only half listening, his mind was already connecting puzzle pieces.
“Yes.”
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No one answered the door when Neil got to Olivia’s house. He could hear music playing loudly inside.
“Open it!” Neil commanded the squad. They pushed open the door, and Neil began looking through rooms. He was sure now that it was Olivia who had taken Charlie, Olivia who had taken what she believed was hers. Reaching the laundry room door, Neil felt his stomach drop at what he saw. Olivia lay on the floor, her face against the cold tiles, a pool of vomit beside her. Pills scattered the floor, creating a rainbow effect as they reflected in the glass of the window. Music blasted from the speakers, a note lay beside her. Neil picked it up.
Twelve years ago, I gave my son up for adoption. I knew it was the right thing to do. I wanted him to have the family I never did. I know you will call me crazy, but the minute I saw him I knew he was my son. I never took him, though. I believed he was safe with his family. I believed he was happy. Now he is missing, his new family didn’t protect him. There is nothing that can be done to change that, just like there is nothing to be done about the decision I made twelve years ago. I just can’t do this anymore.
The words rang in Neil’s head. I never took him. I never took him. I never took him. Olivia was gone, taking with her all of Neil’s theories. Charlie was still gone, leaving no clues behind him. A messy timeline, unanswered questions, a licorice wrapper, innocent suspects, broken parents. No paths, no clues, no theories, nothing. Nothing but the stone cold silence, then cars in the distance.

Almost three weeks since Charlie had disappeared, Evelyn Brinker decided that she needed a project, something to try and take her mind off of the endless fears that echoed in her head. She was starting to feel a little too adjusted to this unfamiliar world. She dragged her laptop out of its case and sat gingerly on the sofa.
“Hmm…cooking class? No. An amateur puppeteer class? No, no that’s ridiculous,” Evelyn said, talking to herself as she scrolled through her computer. She drummed her fingers on the coffee table, pausing when she reached the spot Charlie had dented playing soccer inside last year. She decided it might be best to find something to do in the house. Besides, after her exchange with Melissa she didn’t really want to talk to anyone else. As Evelyn sat alone in her family’s modest living room, she thought about how isolating it was to be going through all this when no one around her could understand. She didn’t even think that Roger could even understand. He was back at work this week, leaving Evelyn in their museum of a house. Leaving Evelyn fixed in time, left to be consumed by her own thoughts and fears.
“Does it ever get better?” Evelyn asked no one in particular. She wondered if this was sort of her plea to God, or maybe she really was beginning to look as crazy as she felt. Evelyn watched a red squirrel digging in her marigolds outside. It was so strange to her to see that her world had fallen apart, but everything else just kept going. Evelyn lightly shook her head, as if hoping to shake off her worries.
Evelyn decided to clean out the attic. When the Brinker family had moved to Montgomery Street in August so many years ago, there had been a tornado of unpacking boxes and bags in order to get Charlie into preschool on time that year. Most of their infrequently used items had been haphazardly piled in the attic. Evelyn only allowed herself one glance at Charlie’s old high chair and crib before taking a breath and marching towards the teetering tower of boxes in the corner.

Neil sat at his desk, waiting for Roger and Evelyn to arrive. It had only been a few days since he told them the news, only a few days since Olivia was buried in the ground. A soft rain pattered on the roof of the station. Evelyn and Roger arrived, their hair wet from the storm outside.
“Roger, Evelyn. Thank you for coming in,  I just wanted to say goodbye. My orders came through, and I’m going back to Denver. They’ll have a new detective here in a few days,” Neil said. He reached out to shake the Brinker’s hands. He wanted to tell them more. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to have found Charlie. At the very least, he wanted to be honest with these people. These desperate and lost people. Neil was far too familiar with loss, and the realness of that loss being overlooked. He knew that within a few weeks the case would be classified as cold. It would come to be known as the unsolved mystery of Silver Springs, maybe it would even become a tourist attraction. Eventually, everyone would lose interest. They would all go back to their own messy and complicated lives. The camera crews would pack up, leaving tire tracks and final accusations smeared on newspapers. Charlie’s missing posters would fall down, the staples becoming rusty. Snow would fall on Olivia’s grave, and then spring would come melting the snow into mud. Flowers would bloom, and trees would grow. Eventually, the Brinker’s would bury an empty coffin in the cemetery in honor of their son. Neil knew all of this, he had seen it before. He knew it, but he couldn’t bear to say it. Hope is fragile, life is fragile, and Neil couldn’t be the one to break them. It was too soon.