HAVE YOU SEEN HIM by Kimberly Lee

What if everything you believed about yourself was totally wrong?

For David Byrdsong, life is a series of daily obligations. An attorney, he lacks both ambition and the ability to commit to a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Gayle. Abandoned by his family at an airport when he was eleven, he learned to blunt his feelings, despite his subsequent adoption by a loving couple.

Until one day, when David discovers his own face in a missing child ad. Suddenly driven to uncover the truth about his past, he is forced to tap into his inner strength as he encounters corporate conspiracies, murdered bystanders, and distressing suspicions about the only family he’s ever really trusted. David enlists Gayle's help—and the help of an unlikely stranger with secrets of his own—as he attempts to find his true family, whoever they are.

Thrilling, exploratory, and propulsive, Have You Seen Him is a story of lost identity, dangerous secrets, and a deeply personal pursuit of the truth.

EXCERPT:

Even though David knew recycling was the right thing to do—for the melting polar ice caps, the coral reef, all that—he hated the monotony of sorting through everything. He suppressed the urge to chuck it all into the same bin. Trash, like pretty much everything else these days, was unnecessarily complicated. Who knew for sure if the carefully categorized items ever even made it to the place where things could be salvaged and revived and turned into handbags made of candy wrappers, seatbelts, and pull-tabs. A documentary he'd watched had uncovered the fact that in at least one town, and probably many others, every single throwaway went to the landfill, whether the bin was blue, black, or green.

But he felt guilty when he didn't do it, and he had enough things to feel guilty about. The incident at work, his useless behavior. Not picking Gayle up from the airport. He'd wanted to see her, especially after the upsetting day. On the brief phone call before her flight took off, he’d promised to meet her at LAX. But he knew he'd conjure up a reason not to be there. Airports were overripe with too much—too many people, too much movement, too many unknowns.

He rifled through the papers and envelopes. Deals on mattresses, Lay-Z-Boy recliners, chimney cleaning, and towards the bottom of one of the leaflets, the words "¿Me Has Visto?" He had taken Spanish from the voluptuous Mrs. Boyette in 10th grade, so the translation was easy.

"Have You Seen Me?"

The pictures accompanying the plea were obscured by something from the Red Cross. He crushed all of the pages into a pointy, misshapen ball, then felt shame for not even glancing at the photo of the poor lost child. He opened the bundle back up and laid the paper on the table, smoothing the crinkled paper with his hands.

David focused in on the ad and saw his own face gazing back at him. He shook his head as if to shake the foolishness out.

"What the—?" His eyes locked on the image. "This. Can't be real." He leaned further in and squinted. The technology had somehow managed to match his exact shade of brown. Although the nose in the picture was a bit too narrow, it was close enough. David had a full, close-cropped beard; the man in the picture barely had a mustache. Regardless, it was him, in a "computer-generated image of subject at thirty-six years old," as stated by the printed words below the man's, well, his, picture.

What the hell?

Kimberly Lee is a versatile writer, workshop facilitator, and editor, with a passion for nurturing the imaginative spirit and helping others reveal their creative gifts. Kimberly holds degrees from Stanford University and UC Davis School of Law, along with certifications fromAmherst Writers & Artists, SoulCollage®, Guided Autobiography, the Center for Journal Therapy, and the Center for Intentional Creativity. Recent collaborations include Esalen Institute, Hollyhock Retreat Center, Omega Institute, The Huntington, and West LAVeteransAdministration. Kimberly’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, and she has served on the staffs of Literary Mama, F(r)iction, and Carve magazines. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.