Darkness Before Dawn

for her.
    "I know, Aimee. I know," I reply and steer her toward the front door.
    She takes a step back and looks at me, holding my hands between us. "You know Blake would be horrified if she saw you right now, right? We're all hurting and worried about her, but you need to stay strong. Take care of yourself so that when you get her back you can take care of her too. You look like a mess. A ghost of yourself," she says, her voice breaking as her eyes fill with tears.
    I take a breath, wishing I could offer positive words, but come up short. "That's all I am, Aim. A ghost of myself. I don't even know who I am without her."
    A soft sob escapes her and she hugs me one last time, comforting me and herself at once. When she backs away again she wipes her tears and sniffles before leading the way again.
    As we make it up the steps, the door swings open and a man and a woman appear in front of us. I've been seeing them on television for a while now, so I'm not surprised by how they look. Still, seeing them makes the color drain from my face as I stand on the steps of their colonial style house. The house I was taken from. The house I slept in, played in, potty trained in. The woman is looking at me with eyes that only a mother could have for her son, lost or not.
    "Oh my god," she gasps as she clasps her hands over her mouth and tears stream out of her big green eyes. "It's really you."
    Camden is staring at me as if he's trying to figure out whether or not I'm real.
    I surprise myself, by stepping forward and extending my arms out to them before they both rush toward me. The woman clings to my neck as the man sandwiches her between us, holding us tightly. Aimee grabs on to my left arm and squeezes it. For a couple of minutes, we're as united as our family could be. Yet the more I think about family, the more I think of Blake. And even though these people, my blood, are holding me up, I feel myself shattering beneath them.
    They eagerly lead me inside and we settle down in their living room.
    "Wow," Camden says, his eyebrows pinched together. "I just can't believe it!"
    I nod and give him a shrug and a slight smile, as Colleen looks at me, and touches my face and my arms continuously. I let her, because that's probably what I'll do when I finally have Blake in my arms again. Though it is a little strange coming from a woman that hasn't seen me in over twenty years, but a mother is a mother and her touch doesn't make me uncomfortable.
    "Aimee tells us that you were involved with Blake Brennan before she went missing?" Camden asks, and I know I shouldn't feel the rage I feel at the question. He makes it sound so insignificant. No, I was not involved with Blake. You are not just involved with the person that causes your world to make sense. You live for that person. You breathe for that person. So no, involved, is not the word I would use to describe my relationship with Blake.
    "Blake is everything to me. She's not somebody I'm involved with, she is my reason, my everything," I say calmly.
    His eyebrows shoot up and I see the surprise in Colleen's eyes. I wonder if they think that because I've been lost all these years without them as my family, that I'm incapable of love. I look over at Aimee, who now has tears in her eyes, and I think again of how funny life is. Here she is, in the house she grew up in, with the people who raised her, and she goes through life isolating herself from most people. She's the opposite of what you would expect somebody in this upbringing to be.
    I, on the other hand, am whole. My friends are whole, and if you look through my family photos growing up, you won't find absent souls in our eyes. You'll see laughing, amused, caring, loving eyes. As I look at the photos on their end tables, all I see are ghosts. In that moment, I understand. I am not the orphan--they are. I am not the broken child, Aimee is. I didn't grow up going to private school or surrounded by socialites, but I grew up with love.
    "I thought you were dating that model, Erin Andrews?" Colleen asks quietly.
    "That was a long time ago," I reply.
    "I just saw your pictures together at an event. I even bought the magazine because I loved the dress she was wearing," my mother says.
    "And because you're a gossip queen," Aimee chimes in rolling her eyes.
    "You can't believe anything you see or read in those things. They probably took pictures of us talking and decided to make it into a story about us getting back together. Erin is happily