Sunday Short: The Brother

They always say detectives chase the truth.

For me, it was never about justice. It was personal.

My name is Claire Dalton, and I became a detective because of a boy who vanished twenty-seven years ago, my brother, Michael.

He disappeared when I was seven. I don’t remember much, only fragments, laughter echoing through the trees behind our house, the sound of a bicycle bell, the way his hair caught sunlight like copper. Then, nothing. Just silence and police lights that painted our white fence red and blue.

My parents rarely spoke about him. Whenever I asked, they’d just say, “He went missing.” My mother would change the subject, and my father would leave the room. I stopped asking, but I never stopped searching.

After joining the force, I worked on dozens of missing-person cases, each one reminding me of him. I told myself every new lead I cracked, every life I restored, brought me closer to finding Michael. But no matter how deep I dug, his trail was cold.

It was like he’d been erased.

The only thing I had left was a photo of the two of us, sitting on a hill near our old home. I’m holding a balloon, and he’s grinning at me. Sometimes I’d stare at it for hours, trying to remember what it felt like to have a brother.

Lately, though, things have been strange.

I’ve been dreaming of him, not the little boy from the photo, but a teenager. He stands by the same hill, his face hidden by shadows, whispering things I can’t quite hear. Every night, he gets closer. Every night, his voice gets clearer.

And sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I see him. The curve of the jaw, the shape of the eyes, it’s fleeting, but it’s there. A familiarity I can’t explain.

A few weeks ago, I revisited my old neighborhood. The house still stands, though smaller now, as if time has been gnawing at its edges. The old woman who lives next door told me she remembered the Daltons, remembered the “accident.”

I asked her what accident?

She just frowned and said, “Your mother was never the same after it. Poor woman.”

That night, I dreamed again. Only this time, I wasn’t watching the hill, I was on the bicycle, speeding down, hearing a child scream behind me. Then the crash. Then darkness.

When my mother died, I thought maybe the truth would finally rest with her.

But when my father fell ill months later, I couldn’t resist asking one last time.

He looked at me, really looked at me, and his eyes filled with something between guilt and fear. His voice cracked when he spoke.

“Claire… your brother didn’t disappear.”

“Then where is he?” I asked.

He swallowed hard. “You are him.”

The room went silent except for the slow beep of the monitor.

He told me about that day, how Michael had begged to take his little sister for a bicycle ride down the hill. How he lost control, how she hit the wall first. How they thought both were dead.

But only one woke up.

When Michael came out of the coma three months later, he didn’t remember who he was. My mother couldn’t bear losing her daughter, so she made a choice. She told him his name was Claire.

And the doctors helped her make it true.

I sat there, frozen, staring at my father as if he’d spoken another language. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

I ran home, tore open the old photo albums, and for the first time, I noticed the child in the picture wasn’t holding a balloon. He was holding a pink ribbon.

And the other wasn’t a brother at all.

The next morning, I looked in the mirror again.

And this time, I didn’t see myself.

I saw him — smiling faintly, whispering the words that had haunted my dreams.

“You finally found me.”