Isaiah felt detached, somewhat saddened even on the funicular ride back home from Queenie’s place. Part of it obviously had to do with her story, which was desolate on its own. But it was also what he said to her once she felt nothing after taking the photo in her own hands. “Then it’s not him.” In all fairness, he had no right to make such a bold claim. The spirit lingering around the photo may have still been Harlan Douglas – it just wasn’t his wife that he was missing. And yet, Isaiah thought it exceedingly ruthless to share this fact with Queenie. She had just found out that the man she treasured all her life had no desire to reconnect with her after death; telling her that he may have stayed around for someone else would’ve been an arrow to the heart.

And yet, as the cabin slowly descended past colorful houses in Strona’s old town, that idea began to seem unlikely to Isaiah. By all accounts, Harlan was a loner, an old soul that was too deep in his own troubled world to really forge deep connections with others. At this point, Isaiah felt confident to exclude him as the possible lingering spirit. If he wasn’t missing his wife, the person that he was closest to during his short life, then he probably wasn’t missing anybody else. From what Queenie shared, death was probably liberation for Harlan.

“Welcome back, darling,” Nigel greeted Isaiah the moment he heard the door unlock. “Lunch is ready!”

Isaiah just walked up to the kitchen entrance and stood there quietly. Nigel turned to face his husband, and immediately read his downcast eyes.

“It didn’t go well?” he said tenderly.

Isaiah didn’t even have to say a word, for Nigel was already at his side, holding his hands. He then felt Isaiah’s arms squeeze tightly around him in the tightest embrace he’d ever felt.

“I just want you to know that I love you and I can’t imagine this world without you,” Isaiah said. “You know that, right?”

“I do,” Nigel smiled, and the two of them stood embraced like that for a while, their kitchen turning into a tiny shelter from the reality of the world around them.

After lunch, Isaiah didn’t really feel like doing anything much for the remainder of the day. A sudden nagging pain appeared in his shoulders, demanding rest. He also needed to recharge for his next interview tomorrow. And he wanted to just be with Nigel and let the hours melt away, which Nigel was all too happy to oblige.

When the next day came, as clear and sunny as the one before it was gloomy and wet, Isaiah felt prepared for what he had in store. Celia Rowse lived on the same level as he did, and not too far from Muriel Atwood street at that, so he decided to walk there. The wet cobblestone glistened in the sunlight, the gorgeous architecture of Strona reflecting itself in the many puddles. The city looked stunning even when it was soaked.

Celia’s neighborhood was not quite as charming as Queenie’s. Narrow old houses, some of them with slightly decaying facades, were packed tightly next to each other, within earshot of one of the busier tram lines. There was no greenery to distract from the dull, muted colors. It was the first time Strona had reminded him of the often faceless, sterile conditions in the capital.

As it turns out, Celia lived in the only house that seemed to stubbornly resist the passage of time. There were no outward signs of damage – its coat of teal paint looked like it could’ve been laid down yesterday. The windows were clean, the shingles on the roof were tidily stacked, and flowers hung from the balcony. The tidiness and attention to aesthetics were reflected in the woman who opened the door: she was wearing a silk house dress with some gorgeous embroidery on the neckline and sleeves. Her jewelry was tasteful, her hair done up in a perfect bun. The wrinkles on her face did their best to show her age, but beneath them one could easily see that she was strikingly beautiful. In her youth she must have been the talk of the town.

After Celia and Isaiah exchanged pleasantries, she welcomed him into her home. They walked past the staircase into a small living room, where a sofa stood across a glorious old rocking chair. Celia gracefully slid into it, sighing with an obvious relief as she began to sway back and forth.

“Thank goodness for this chair,” she said. “Walking’s not really doing it for me these days I’m afraid. Please, sit down.”

Isaiah settled himself on the sofa, and then explained to Celia why he was there.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Hargraves,” she said with a bluntness that could easily be mistaken as dismissive, “I’m not really sure why I agreed to talk to you today. Digging up some of the most traumatic events from my past won’t exactly bring me comfort.”

“I guess,” she continued, with the faintest tinge of hope, “that I just wanted to believe something good would come out of this. I’ve heard of you, Mr. Hargraves. Don’t think that your story hadn’t made it to our newspapers and radio. That’s really why we’re sitting here now. If anyone else had asked me to do this, I would’ve politely declined. But there’s something about you that makes me think you could genuinely make a difference.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Isaiah said, stopping himself before saying anything else. His experience in the Archive made it clear that reports of his involvement in the Ambrose Annable case were slightly embellished, but arguing about the semantics of old newspaper articles would surely make Celia quickly reconsider her decision to accept the interview.

The conversation then turned to Ezra and the circumstances of his disappearance.

“I don’t think a day went by that I haven’t missed him,” Celia said somberly. “Fifty years of missing someone. You cannot imagine what that must be like.”

“I truly can’t,” Isaiah said, just the thought of it making him slightly uneasy.

“My brother is the most amazing person I know. He’s always polite and respectful, and always willing to see the good in others. He loves to read, and he’s obsessed with poetry. I still have them, notebooks full of poems he wrote. I don’t think I’ve ever mustered the strength to read them though.”

“Can you tell me something about the rest of your family?” Isaiah asked, and Celia’s eyes shifted straight to him, as if she knew why he would be asking that question.

“I have another brother, Clay. Don’t bother seeking him out, he’s a personal advisor to the president of the city council. There’s no way you’d be able to make an appointment, and that’s probably for the best. My husband passed away a few years ago, so now it’s just me and my son Frank. He’s currently an apprentice to my brother. It’s the Rowse tradition to have all the men involved in politics,” she scoffed.

“But let’s get to the real reason why you asked me about my family, Mr. Hargraves,” she said with a mixture of contempt and sorrow.

“There’s really no way of sugarcoating it, so allow me to be blunt,” she continued. “Our father was a contemptible human being and a terrible parent.”

“I realize that it’s probably not a conversation topic you enjoy coming back to,” Isaiah said tactfully, “but could you tell me a little more about that?”

“Oh, I could talk to you about it all day,” Celia said bitterly. “How anger seemed to be the only emotion he wasn’t shy about showing to his family. How we all felt we were secondary players in his life, irrelevant compared to his wretched gun collection. How terrified I was of having so many deadly weapons in our house and how little he seemed to care. How he beat us, all of us, for every perceived wrongdoing…”

She choked on her words, and Isaiah could tell she was on the verge of tears. He walked over to her rocking chair and knelt next to her, and then clasped her hand. His instinct was telling him that it was the right thing to do, just as it had told him that Queenie Douglas needed to be left alone.

“Thank you,” Celia said with a frail voice, still holding back the tears.

“We don’t have to continue, Mrs. Rowse,” Isaiah said gently. “If you feel like it’s too much for you…”

“It’s alright,” she replied, somewhat more spryly. “I want you to hear this. I want you to know what a horrible person my father was. Because I’ve been trying to tell everyone I’ve known for as long as I can remember, and yet you’re the first person who wants to listen.”

“I can understand that,” Isaiah said reassuringly. And he could – here was a woman who just wanted her story to be heard.

“Anything you want to say, feel free to say it,” he added, and she smiled at him.

“I don’t want to make this about me, Mr. Hargraves. For all the hardship I had to endure growing up, I made it out the other end relatively intact. There’s still a hole inside me that will probably never heal entirely, but at least it’s not the chasm it once was. I filled it with love,” she concluded, hopefully. Her eyes moved to a framed photograph hanging on the wall: her, her husband and her son, all looking content.

“Ezra is the real victim. I want you to know that I blame our father for his running away.”

“If you would feel comfortable talking about that,” Isaiah proceeded with caution, “I would like to hear what you would have to say. And please understand that you can absolutely say ‘no’, alright?”

“My goodness, Mr. Hargraves,” Celia couldn’t help but chuckle. “Aren’t you just the sweetest thing? And so good-looking too. I bet you’ve made some lucky lady incredibly happy.”

“A gentleman, actually,” Isaiah said blushing. “And I’m the lucky one.”

She put her other hand over his and patted it gently, another smile flitting across her face.

"I don’t understand why, but my father was always particularly strict with Ezra,” she began her story. “Perhaps it was because he was the eldest son and father had high hopes in him being his successor. But Ezra didn’t seem interested in that, and the only way my father knew how to respond to that was with rage. He was violent to all of us, but Ezra seemed to get the brunt of it. I remember all of our arms and backs being covered in bruises. And the worst part of it is, I grew up thinking it was normal. That all families were like that. When I started dating my husband I was shocked that he never beat me,” she said with a nervous chortle, realizing the absurdity.

“One day, though, things got really bad. Father was livid at Ezra. I don’t think I’d ever seen him that angry before or since. To this day, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night when the memory of that face sneaks into my dreams.”

“Do you know what brought that on?” Isaiah asked.

“I haven’t a clue. Father wouldn’t tell us and Ezra kept it to himself. The thing about my brother is that he’s incredibly kind and loving, but also very private. I always had the feeling that he never opened up about the true extent of his feelings. There was a whole world locked inside him that he never shared with anyone”.

Isaiah nodded. Celia’s words echoed those of Bubba, who said that none of the boys in the class ever really got to know Ezra.

“The morning after that day, during breakfast,” she said grimly, “father told Ezra that he would kill him if he set foot into the house again. I don’t know if he meant it only as a threat, but the way he was looking at Ezra made it clear that he was capable of doing it.”

“Ezra left for school that morning,” Celia said with a heavy heart, “and never came back. It was the last time I saw him.”

“I checked the newspapers from that time,” Isaiah spoke up again. “The police were searching for him day and night.”

“They were. He’s a Rowse after all,” Celia hissed with disdain. “They even told us that someone had seen him before he’d gone missing, a friend of his from school. But in spite of all the effort, Ezra didn’t turn up, and the story just slowly slipped away from the news. The case is still open, but it’s a formality. I feel like I’m the only one who still believes he’s alive.”

“This friend of your brother’s,” Isaiah said inquisitively. “Can you tell me more about them?”

“Only that he exists,” Celia replied. “Ezra did talk to me about a boy at school that he spent a lot of time with, and it sounded like they were really close. I remember being so happy when I’d heard that because he’d never really had friends before. But I never even learned the name of this boy. That’s Ezra and his tight lips again.”

Isaiah took a moment to make a mental note of all the information he’d heard, and then thanked Celia for her time.

“You’ve been incredibly helpful Mrs. Rowse,” he said as he reached for his suitcase. “If you don’t mind, there’s another thing that I would like to ask of you.”

He pulled out Bubba’s school photo and explained everything to Celia. He wanted her to touch it: if the lingering spirit was Ezra, and she was the one he was missing, then that would be that.

Celia hesitated. She understood full well what it would mean if she did feel something upon touching the photo. It would be a tacit acknowledgment of something she refused to accept as fact, even though all evidence pointed to it.

She took the photo, and suddenly there was silence.

Isaiah looked into her eyes, a permanent image of Ezra’s smiling face reflected in them.

“Do you feel anything similar to what I described?” Isaiah asked.

“I do not,” Celia replied. “Nor should I, because that spirit is not my brother. Ezra is still alive.”

Isaiah just gave her an encouraging nod. In a way, it was hard not to admire her relentless optimism. But on the other hand, it was just as hard to ignore the stone-cold facts. If someone went missing fifty years ago and was never heard from again, odds are it’s because there’s no one to hear from.

But there was no point in saying this to Celia. You could throw all the rational facts in her face and she would still dismiss them, because hope is not a rational thing. And hope was all she had – Isaiah didn’t dare cut that rope.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Isaiah said as he stood by the open door, ready to leave.

"Likewise, Mr. Hargraves,” she replied cordially. “If I ever see you again, I hope the occasion will be something far more cheerful.”

“I hope so too,” he said, and they parted ways.