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Joel, Sarah, and Tommy were all taking turns searching the area of the street fair, hoping to catch sight of Switch while they were also trying to maintain their booth and speak to customers before they finally got to tear down the booth and start searching in earnest.
“Dad,” Sarah whispered desperately when they came back together in the dark and unable to keep looking. He stood next to his truck, leaning over with his hands pressed to his knees, trying desperately to fight back the panic attack living in his chest. He needed to get his shit together and take care of his daughter.
“She’s probably fine, she doesn’t owe us anything, Sarah,” Joel forced out, trying to keep a calm tone about it even as his breath wobbled under the strain of his words.
“No!” Sarah snapped, and Joel forced himself to stand up straight and look her in the face. She wasn’t angry, not really. Sarah was scared, so he didn’t call her on the anger. Instead, he just pulled her into his chest and pressed a hand to the back of her head.
“It’s going to be okay, baby girl. She was surviving long before she ever met us.”
“She shouldn’t have to!” Sarah shouted, causing Joel to pull away and glare at her as his ear rang from the sound.
“Sarah! Knock it off, it's time to go home. We’ll come back tomorrow, so she knows where to find us, but we can’t stay out here all night long. I’m not going to let you get hurt.”
Sarah pulled away from him when he tried to usher her into the truck passenger seat, and he grabbed her wrist to keep her close. People were out and about around them, going to bars, and he wanted to get Sarah out of there before she got lost or hurt too. He couldn’t let Sarah get hurt for someone they’d known for less than a week.
Sarah didn’t fight him again as he shuffled her into the truck and took them home, calling Tommy to let them know since he was still out searching. There was nothing they could do, especially since they didn’t even know Switch’s real name.
The next day was spent similarly to Saturday, except Tommy hadn’t slept at all, walking the streets and sitting on benches near where the street fair was held, hoping to catch sight of Switch, so now he was working without any sleep. Neither was Joel, though his sleeplessness had at least happened while he was wrapped around his daughter, taking comfort from knowing she was safe even though Switch wasn’t safe.
Even if she wasn’t hurt and had just decided not to return to the street fair, Switch still wasn’t safe. She was living on the streets and scavenging for food from the trash. Not to mention anybody who wanted to beat her up… or worse.
Without ‘proof of life,’ it was eating all of them alive, and they barely made it through the shorter time frame on Sunday before they looked around some more and gave up to go home. Joel decided to call his administrator to say that she didn’t need to come in for the day; they would use the office to make some calls, and Sarah could get some rest instead of dragging herself through the exhaustion that was eeking out of all of her pores.
Sarah fought him again when he forced her into the truck, but they all got back to Joel and Sarah’s place before Sarah let him know how upset she truly was.
“You’re selfish!” Sarah railed at him, pacing as Joel and Tommy both stood near her walking path.
“Sarah, don’t say that to your dad; he’s done everything he could,” Tommy scolded when Joel didn’t speak up.
He didn’t want to imagine it was true, but every day when he came home and looked at the guest room that stayed empty most of the time unless Sarah had a sleepover and someone wanted to sleep in there. He imagined a little girl with reddish hair curled up in that bed, knowing that she would finally have a safe place to be, and he didn’t do anything to make that thing happen.
And now Switch was gone.
“I love her like a sister, already !” Sarah snapped, “And she needs a family, and I want her to be here, and you couldn’t do anything about it!”
“Sarah, you can’t just take in a girl off the street like a stray puppy,” Tommy declared, and Sarah turned and stared at him.
“You need to go to bed, Sarah,” Joel interjected before his daughter and brother got into a shouting match with each other.
She turned to glare at him instead, “We still had time to look! Why’d you make me come back here? Why don’t you want her to be here?”
“You think I don’t?” Joel demanded, pulled tight across the chest with anxiety, and was unable to pull back the words in the face of his daughter’s angry betrayal. “You think I don’t see her and need to do something for her?”
Sarah turned away long enough to wipe at the tears leaking from her eyes, and when she turned back, the coldness in her face shook Joel to his core: “Not enough to do anything more than what’s convenient.”
With that final accusation, which Joel couldn’t refute, she pushed past him and walked back to her room, slamming the door behind her, making both brothers flinch. Joel walked over to the table and sat down in one of the chairs, and Tommy sat across from him.
“I can’t sleep, Tommy,” Joel whispered to his brother.
“Me neither,” Tommy replied gently.
“We’ve known her for less than a week, less than two days when you look at the actual time we’ve spent with her. How is it possible that the thought she could be gone forever hurt this bad? Why does it feel like I failed Sarah?”
Tommy gripped his wrist, and Joel looked up at his brother’s hangdog expression, wanting to make fun of it for a second to break the tension, but he just swallowed against the pressure in his throat as his brother opened his mouth as spoke, “Joel, you didn’t fail Sarah by not taking in this stranger.”
Joel shook his head, sniffing against the burning tears in his eyes, feeling the redness and grit from a sleepless night, about to be followed by another. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What then?”
“It feels like I failed my other daughter. Why does it feel like that?”
Tommy made a soft grunt of acknowledgment, then patted Joel’s hand, “It seems like maybe you found yourself another daughter. Biology isn’t the only way to make a family.”
Joel nodded with a trembling smile and sent his brother home to get some sleep before he opened his laptop and started looking for ways to report Switch missing and figure out how to get her back safely. Not knowing her real name was problematic, and not only for the reports but also because he desperately wanted to learn something so integral to who she is.
He had another daughter; all he had to do now was find her and bring her home safely. Otherwise, his eldest daughter might never forgive him for not doing so before it was too late.