PART 4 – After Eleven Years of Believing Matthew Was Gone, I Asked Ramirez to Take Me Through the Door Separating Us

The door was close enough for me to see from my chair.

I kept looking at it.

Ramirez had told me Matthew was in the adjoining room.

I had asked to see him.

Now I was waiting for that request to become real.

I did not know what Matthew looked like anymore.

The boy in the photograph was the Matthew I remembered.

A child holding a red bucket.

A child standing in front of Robert.

A child who had no reason to know that an ordinary day at the beach would become the last day I saw him.

Eleven years had passed since then.

I tried to imagine him older.

I could not do it properly.

Whenever I thought of his face, I saw the photograph.

It frightened me to realize how much time had gone by.

Matthew had been living somewhere beyond my knowledge.

I did not know what those years had been like for him.

I did not know what he remembered.

I did not know whether he had thought about me.

Those questions made me want to reach the next room even more.

I looked at Ramirez again.

He had said Matthew was there.

I wanted to hear him repeat it.

But I had already asked for what I needed.

I did not want to delay.

My thoughts went back to the day at the beach.

I remembered leaving Matthew with Robert.

I remembered the reassurance.

I remembered going upstairs.

I remembered coming down into confusion.

There had been a point that day when I still believed Matthew would be found quickly.

I had not known then how many years I would spend without him.

I had not known I would come to believe the ocean had taken him.

I had not known I would eventually sit across from Ramirez with an old photograph between us.

I had not known Robert's position near the pool would return to my mind with such force.

But it had.

The memory was there now.

I could not make it disappear simply by turning my attention to Matthew.

I wondered whether Robert had known more than I thought.

I wondered why he had watched instead of joining the search.

I wondered how differently I might have remembered that day if I had questioned him.

But I stopped myself.

I did not have answers.

I had a memory.

I had a photograph.

And I had Ramirez's statement that my son was nearby.

Those were the only things I could honestly rely on.

I looked at Matthew's red bucket one more time.

It was such a small object.

For years, it had belonged to the last day I remembered clearly.

Now it was lying in a photograph that had brought me to the edge of seeing my son again.

I wanted to put the picture down.

I wanted to stop looking backward.

I wanted to walk toward the person Matthew had become.

I tried to imagine speaking to him.

Would I recognize his voice?

Would he know mine?

Would he call me Dad?

I had no way of knowing.

I had spent so long believing he was lost that I had never learned how to prepare for his return.

I understood something then.

Finding Matthew would not return the eleven years that had passed.

Nothing could give us those years back.

He would no longer be the little boy in the photograph.

I would not be the father who had walked upstairs to check on an excursion.

We would have to meet as we were.

That thought frightened me almost as much as the possibility of never seeing him again.

But it did not change what I wanted.

I wanted my son.

I wanted to stand in the same room as him.

I wanted to know, without relying on anyone else's words, that he was alive.

The questions about Robert could remain unanswered for another moment.

The memory of the pool could wait.

The photograph could stay on the table.

For the first time in eleven years, there was somewhere I could go to see Matthew.

I turned my attention fully to Ramirez.

I was ready to be taken to him.

Click here to continue reading: PART 5: When Ramirez Finally Opened the Door, I Was About to Meet the Son I Had Spent Eleven Years Mourning