Donal’s blue eyes, the only similar feature between the two brothers, sparkled up at Jack and he almost expected him to wink. No matter how long and hard he had stared at the photograph, he couldn’t inject any life into it. He couldn’t reach into the print and pull his brother out; he couldn’t smell the aftershave he used to engulf himself in, he couldn’t ruffle his brown hair and ruin his hair-style as he annoyingly had, and he couldn’t hear his voice as he helped their mother around the house. One year on he could still remember the touch and smell of him, though, unlike the rest of his family, to him the memory alone wasn’t enough.
The photo had been taken the Christmas before last, just six months before he went missing. Once a week, Jack would call around to his mother’s house, where Donal lived-the only one of six siblings who remained. Apart from the small talk between Jack and Donal that lasted for no more than two minutes at a time, that Christmas was the last occasion Jack had spoken to Donal properly. Donal had given him the usual present of socks and Jack had given him the box of handkerchiefs his oldest sister had given him the year before. They’d both laughed at the thoughtlessness of their gifts.
That day, Donal had been animated, happy with his new job as a computer technician. He’d begun it in September after graduating from Limerick University; a ceremony at which their mother had almost toppled off her chair, such was the weight of her pride for her baby. Donal had spoken confidently about how he enjoyed the work, and Jack could see how much he had matured and become more comfortable after leaving student life behind.
They had never been particularly close. In the family of six children, Donal was the surprise baby, nobody more surprised than their mother, Frances, who was forty-seven at the time she learned of the pregnancy. Being twelve years older than Donal meant that Jack had moved out of the house by the time Donal was six. He lost out in knowing the secret sides to his brother that only living with someone brought, and so for the past eighteen years they had been brothers, but not friends.
Jack wondered not for the first time whether, if he had known Donal better, he could have solved part of the mystery. Maybe if he’d worked harder at getting to know his little brother or had had more conversations about something rather than nothing, then perhaps he could have been out with him on the night of his birthday. Maybe he could have prevented him from leaving that fast-food restaurant or maybe he could have left with him and shared a taxi.
Or maybe Jack would have found himself in the same place as Donal was right now. Wherever that place was.
8
Jack slugged back his third cup of coffee and looked at his watch. Ten fifteen.
Sandy Shortt was late. His legs bounced up and down nervously beneath the table, his left hand drummed on the wood and his right hand signaled for another coffee. His mind stayed positive. She was coming. He knew she would come.
Eleven A.M., he tried calling her mobile number for the fifth time. It rang and rang and finally, “Hello, this is Sandy Shortt. Sorry I’m not available at the moment. Leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Jack hung up.
Eleven thirty, she was two hours late and once again Jack listened to the voice message Sandy had left the previous night.
“Hi, Jack, Sandy Shortt here. I’m ringing to confirm our meeting tomorrow at nine thirty A.M. in Kitty’s Café in Glin. I’m driving down tonight.” Her tone softened. “As you know, I don’t sleep,” she laughed lightly. “So I’ll be there early tomorrow. After all our conversations I look forward to finally speaking with you in person, and Jack”-she paused-“I promise you I’ll do my best to help you. We won’t give up on Donal.”
Twelve o’clock, Jack played it again.
At one o’clock, after countless cups of coffee, Jack’s fingers stopped drumming and instead made a fist for his chin to rest on. He had felt the café owner’s gaze on his back as he sat for hours waiting nervously, watching the clock, and not giving up his table to a group willing to spend more money than he. Tables filled and emptied around him; his head snapped up every time the bell over the door rang. He didn’t know what Sandy Shortt looked like; all she had said was that he couldn’t miss her. He didn’t know what to expect but each time the bell tinkled, his head and his heart both lifted with hope and then fell as the newcomer’s gaze flitted past his and settled on another.
At two thirty, the bell rang once more.
After five and a half hours of waiting, it was the sound of the door opening and closing behind Jack.
9
For almost two days I’d stayed in the same wooded area, jogging back and forth trying to re-create my movements and somehow reverse my arrival here. I ran up and down the mountainside, testing different speeds as I struggled to remember how fast I’d been running, what song I’d been listening to, what I’d been thinking of, and what area I was in when I first noticed the change in my location. As though any of those things had any part in what happened. I walked up and down, down and up, searching for the point of entry and, more importantly, the point of exit. I didn’t want to sleep, I wanted to keep busy. I didn’t want to settle like the personal possessions scattered around; I didn’t want to end up like the backless earrings that glinted from the long grass.
Thinking you’re missing is a bizarre conclusion to arrive at. I’m well aware of that. But it wasn’t a sudden conclusion, believe me. I was hugely confused and frustrated for those first few hours but I knew that something more extraordinary than taking a wrong turn had occurred because geographically, a mountain couldn’t just rise from the ground in a matter of seconds, trees that had never grown before in Ireland couldn’t all of a sudden sprout from the ground, and the Shannon Estuary couldn’t dry up and disappear. I wasn’t simply lost-I was somewhere else.
I did, of course, contemplate the fact that I was dreaming, that I had fallen and hit my head and was currently in a coma or that I’d died. I did wonder about whether the anomalous nature of the countryside was pointing toward the end of the world and I questioned my knowledge of the geography of West Limerick. I did indeed consider very strongly the fact that I’d lost my mind. This was number one on the list of possibilities.
But when I sat alone for those days and thought rationally, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery I’d ever seen, I realized that I was most certainly alive, the world had not ended, mass panic hadn’t taken over, and I was not just another occupant of a junkyard. I realized that my searching for a way out was clouding my view of where exactly I was. I wasn’t going to hide behind the lie that I could find a way out by running up and down a hill. No deliberate distractions to block out the voice of reason for me. I am a logical person and the most logical explanation out of all of the incredible possibilities was that I was alive and well but missing. Things are as they are, no matter how bizarre.
Just as it was beginning to get dark on my second day, I decided to explore this curious new place by walking deeper through the pine trees. Sticks cracked beneath my sneakers, the ground was soft and bouncy, covered with layers of fallen, now decayed leaves, bark, pine cones, and velvet-like moss. Mist hovered like wispy cotton above my head and stretched to the tips of the trees. The lofty, thin trunks extended up like towering wooden pencils that colored the sky. During the day they tinted the ceiling a clear blue, shading wispy clouds and orange pigment, and now by night the charcoaled tips, burned from the hot sun, darkened the heavens. The sky twinkled with a million stars, all winking at me, sharing a secret between them, of the world I could never know.