Chapter 4: Losing Ted.

I had always called him ‘dad’. After all, he was both my biological and legal father. Then he disappeared. And I guess that I transitioned into calling him ‘Ted’ because of mother's subliminal insistence in that the objectivization of Ted would make the whole ordeal far less traumatic.

I can't exactly recall when, nor how, he disappeared. Precise memories —the ones that I should have kept— fade under a protective veil.

I know I was around 8 at the moment. I know that it happened in June, a bit over two months after my eighth birthday.

Ted was an Amtrak conductor. It wasn't anything like one would think —specially if one's imagination is tainted by a prototypical depiction of an airline pilot. He rarely spent the night out. Not more than once a week, as an average, thoughout the years.

He didn't drink. He was methodic.

He had been assigned an area close to home, and his seniority granted him a very unlikely chance of being on the extraboard or being assigned unexpected routes.

I even suspect that, when they happened, rarely, many of those “nights out” were just him trying to find an excuse to relax and take a break from his wife —not so much any conveniently laid schedule. Were those days with a special schedule just a lie? Or was he the nicest workmate, the first to volunteer in helping their fellow conductors whenever they needed?

He wasn't a liar or a cheater, but it's not difficult to imagine how could he build up such excuses in order to disappear, without even having to resort to distorting reality. Mostly because Satsuki didn't care at all. Probably she didn't even ask. Probably he just slept somewhere else and she was the one winging the presumed lie to feed her daughter with. However, not for the reasons a white lie would be usually told.

It was one of his nights away that became two, three, four. It wasn't until the fifth day missing that Satsuki called the Sheriff's office. Rustown is a tranquil town, and it doesn't need nor have a big nor particularly competent police force.

The sheriff did what Satsuki would have already done, had she cared about dad at all. Simply calling his workplace, digging around a bit. The fact that she called the sheriff first seems suspicious to me.

Why would she do that? Was she guilty? or was it just her subconscious expressing some of her inner desires through pretend fears —after having delayed any potential search, in order to increase the chances of him not being found alive? I know now that Ted's death couldn't be one of her true fears. But neither one of her aspirations.

Maybe she was trying to find some notoriety through strange means? That would make more sense.

Alas, my recollection of what happened is particularly close to Satsuki's version. At the end of the day, she was the only person providing me with information. I can't trust those implanted memories. Almost any other imaginable option has a similar —if not higher— probability of being the truth.

As that version of the story goes, Ted just left. He wrote one last letter to Satsuki, which she found days after calling the sheriff. Driven by ire, she immediately destroyed the letter. It supposedly expressed discontent with his life and acknowledged that he had given up on his family. He simply had fled away and basically deserved to be dead to us.

A promise was explicitly made in that letter: that he would never try to contact any of us.

Satsuki's version was very convenient for her: I was left without any incentive to contact Ted, the abandoner.

It also made very little sense. Why would she be so irrational to destroy that evidence? If not to convince her daughter, it would be practical for many things. I don’t know. Alimony?

All in all, I can't picture Satsuki as a murderer. As much as I grew to hate most of her being, as much as I think that she hadn't many moral inhibitors towards murder, I don't think she was stupid enough not to see that the rewards couldn't ever surpass the risks. Because Ted was, pretty much, under her control. He had always been: he rarely opposed her. He rarely did things she would disapprove.

Satsuki wanting to homeschool me had been the last one of their very few conflicts, and it had been of minimal intensity. He barely opposed her.

Also, she wasn't attracted to anybody else. And Ted had nothing of real value to inherit. To establish the motive of Satsuki violently wanting out of her marriage would be groundless. As a matter of fact, Ted was going to be her last relationship. At least as far as I know —I'm not sure how much incentive would she have had in hiding a newer relationship.

She's not off the hook, though. I suspect that —somehow— she caused his disappearance. Their dynamics had turned odd a few months prior. She was always weird around the subject, even considering her lack of empathy and consideration towards her husband.

To me, beyond the need to find who —if anyone— was responsible, lurked the obsession of knowing what had happened. The will to disprove that he would reject to spend time with her daughter. The will to bring Satsuki's lies afloat.