At home, I attached two of the pictures to an email and sent
them to my sisters. I wrote, they should call me when they figured out who the
man in the picture was.
Carmen called two hours later. “That picture that you sent,
that’s Michael, right? You found him.” Her voice wavered.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s Michael. I found him.”
“You should have warned me. You just sent it like that…” her
voice broke. “You should have warned me.”
I felt bad. “I promised not to say anything to anyone, until
I spoke to Michael in person. If he wouldn’t have wanted contact with you, I
would have to keep this to myself. I’m so sorry I shocked you. I’ve known where
he is for over two months, but I couldn’t tell.”
“It was such a shock. How is he doing? Where is he?”
I told Carmen all I knew about him, and that one would have
to be careful talking with him, because he was like a child, so sensitive. He
probably didn’t remember much about his bad years, and he was so proud of
himself right now.
Carmen and I talked a long time. She told me the last time
she saw him, her daughter, now 38 years old, had just been a little girl, and
her first son a baby. Michael helped her and her husband in the shooting
gallery for a few weeks, but when Manfred and Carmen asked him if he would want
to work for them on a more steady basis he declined and didn’t return. “We
didn’t know how heavy he was into drugs by then already,” she said. “But Eva
knew.”
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