His Personal Mission. Justine Davis

It looked, he had to admit, pretty good. Maybe his black wall—his mother had only allowed him to paint one—had been a bit oppressive. On the walls were some things he recognized, prints of horses running free, and framed photos.

      He stopped in front of one in particular, a shot from the last vacation they had all taken together, the year before he’d graduated from high school. His parents looking amazingly, as they did now, Trish, a lively-looking child with a tangle of sandy brown hair the same shade as his own, and himself, thin, gangly and awkwardly teenaged, zits and all.

      They’d gone to Yosemite, and while he’d groused mightily about the boredom of it, complained that he’d wanted to stay home and hang with his friends, the memories from that trip were among the most vivid—and best—he had.

      The sights, from the amazing two-tiered drop of Yosemite Falls to the towering, unbelievable and almost otherworldly mass of Half Dome, were a dose of genuine reality he’d never forgotten, images no amount of virtual reality could match.

      He hadn’t even minded the constant presence of then seven-year-old Trish tagging at his heels. He’d even been watchful of his little sister, out in the real world where big animals—the favorites of the already-set-on-her-life’s-path Trish—roamed and smaller critters milked the millions of visitors for all the free food they could get.

      If there hadn’t been ten years between them, would they have stayed closer? Would he perhaps have seen some sign, some clue about what was to come? Would she maybe even have confided in him, the way she once had?

      Or was it not the age difference, but his own fault, for being so wrapped up in his own life and world? Was Sasha right, had she been right two years ago? Was he truly that insular, that shallow?

      He stared at the image of his little sister, at the way, in this photo, she looked up at him with what he couldn’t deny was childlike adoration. Had he taken what he had so for granted that he’d lost it?

       Where the hell are you, Trish? And why?

      His mother’s plaintive words echoed in his mind. What if she never comes back, what if we never know?

      That wouldn’t happen. It just wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let it.

      And Sasha wouldn’t.

      He knew that, on some deep gut level he didn’t even question. If there was a way to bring Trish home, or at least to find her safe and explain all this, Sasha would do it. If there was one thing he’d always known about her it was that there was no way she would give up.

      Ever.