I hadn’t been lying earlier. I’m not a cop or an FBI agent. I’ve never met the girl who disappeared three months ago, Stacey Summers. Like the rest of Boston, or the country, for that matter, I’ve simply followed her case on the news.
But then again . . . I know her. I recognize her beaming smile from her senior pictures, all big blond hair and round blue eyes. I recognize her exuberance in all the high school cheerleader photos, red pom-poms thrust into the air. Then there’s the ominous videotape: security footage of a petite blonde being forcefully abducted by a hulking brute. Morning, noon, and night. There was never a bad time for news producers to roll the sensational image of a tipsy nineteen-year-old former cheerleader being dragged down a dark alley.
I read every account in the newspaper of her abduction. Sat mesmerized by her parents’ appearance on a nationally televised morning show, though in theory, I’ve sworn off that kind of thing. I watched her father, the strong corporate type, struggle with his composure, while her mom, an older, still beautiful woman, hand tucked firmly in her husband’s, begged for her daughter’s safe return.
Beautiful, happy, bubbly Stacey Summers. Who, according to her parents, would never hurt a fly.
I wonder what things she didn’t used to know. I wonder what lessons she’s already been forced to learn.
The truth is, I know Stacey Summers. I don’t want to. I don’t mean to. But I know Stacey Summers. It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to understand that every time I look at her photo, or read another article, I’m really looking at me.
No one called my mother the first twenty-four hours after I went missing. No one knew I was gone. Instead, she received a confused message four days into spring break from my college roommate: Is Flora with you? Why didn’t she tell us she was heading home early?
Of course, my mother had no idea what Stella was talking about. Apparently it took a good twenty minutes to sort out that I wasn’t in Florida with Stella, nor was I magically back in Maine at my mother’s farm, nor had I miraculously returned to my college dorm room. In fact, no one had seen me in days.
My mother is not the type to panic. She set down the phone and proceeded to cover the basics. Contacted my older brother. Checked her e-mail. Skimmed my Facebook page. Her heartbeat accelerated slightly. Her hands began to shake.
She drove to the police station. Later, she told me she felt it was important to talk to someone in person. But even reporting her concerns became confusing. My mother lives in Maine, but I went to school in Boston and in theory had disappeared while on spring break in Florida. The Maine officer was nice enough. He heard my mother out, seemed to agree that I wasn’t the kind of girl to run away, though given the circumstances, they couldn’t dismiss a drunken misadventure. He encouraged her to get the ball rolling by filing an official missing persons report, which was faxed down to the local PD in Florida.
And then . . . nothing.
The sun rose; the sun set. My college friends met with the police in Florida. They returned to campus in Boston. They resumed taking classes. While my mother sat next to a phone that still didn’t ring.
And then:
A single postcard delivered by mail. My handwriting, but another person’s words. And suddenly, I wasn’t a missing college student anymore. I was a suspected kidnapping victim who’d been dragged across state lines. Overnight, my case became red-hot news and my family’s world exploded with it.
As a parent, my mother told me later, you’d like to think you’d have some control over your missing child’s abduction case. But it doesn’t work like that. The first thing law enforcement established was that she wasn’t to call them; they would call her. In fact, my mother never even met many of the FBI agents working my case until the first press conference.
Instead, she got to meet her new best friends: the victim advocates. Which, given their title, you might make the mistake of thinking meant they worked on behalf of her, the victim. No. Victim advocates work for law enforcement or the attorney general’s office. It depends on the jurisdiction. My mother dealt with six of them over the course of my abduction. Local, state, federal. They took turns. Because those first few weeks especially, family members are never left alone.
The advocates told her it was for her own sake. And when they first started answering her endlessly chiming cell phone, she thanked them. When they put up a sign in our front yard warning the media it was private property and they were not to trespass, she was grateful. And as they miraculously supplied yet another meal, while deftly shepherding her to a prepaid hotel room so she could snag at least one night’s sleep, she wondered how she could survive this ordeal without them.
My mother, however, is not stupid.
It didn’t take her long to realize that the victim advocates were always asking questions. About her children’s lives, past love interests. About her life, past love interests. And hey, now that she’d had something to eat, why didn’t she chat with the detectives for a bit? Which, in the beginning, she thought was so that the detectives could update her on what they were doing to help find me, but later she understood was so the detectives could grill her with even more questions. And oh yes, this morning her kind and compassionate victim advocate would take her around the house to collect possible pieces of information—cell phones, tablets, personal diaries. While the next morning, her victim advocate would chime out, hey, let’s go take a poly, much in the same tone her friends once used to invite her for a mani pedi.
I disappeared in Florida. And my mother’s life became a high-profile investigative drama, governed at all times by the nannies. Both of us, I guess, got lessons in survival. And both of us still know things that we wished we didn’t know.
For example, I know a victim advocate will appear on Stacey Summers’s doorstep this morning. Most likely someone close to her case. Maybe, like me, her parents actually value their advocate, having forged a bond. Or maybe, like my mother, they merely tolerate the relationship, one more intrusion in lives that certainly can’t be their lives anymore.
The advocate will bear a photo of Devon Goulding, my now dead attacker and almost certainly a repeat offender. The advocate will ask if they recognize this man, is there any chance Stacey once knew him? The Summerses will immediately be bold enough, crazy enough, to have questions of their own: Is this the man? Is this the guy who took their daughter? What happened to Stacey? Where is she; when can they see her?
The advocate will say nothing. And eventually, the Summerses will succumb to bewildered silence, every crumb of information merely leading to more questions. They won’t be able to ask Devon Goulding any questions. That fault is mine. But closure, the actual discovery of their daughter . . .
I glance back at the house. I hope these detectives can find the answers I didn’t get a chance to hunt for. Such as whose blood is in the corner of the garage. And is Devon the one who took beautiful, happy Stacey Summers? And what did he do with her after that?
Because I know I’ve watched Stacey’s abduction video more than I should. I know I sleep in a room wallpapered with stories of missing people who still haven’t made it home. I know when I headed out last night, I was looking for things I probably shouldn’t have been.
Once, I could’ve told you all about myself. Foxes. Springtime. Family.
Now . . .
I hope Stacey Summers is stronger than me.
*
I WOULD LIKE TO SLEEP. Lay down my head in the back of the patrol car and dream of the days before I ever thought of college or the lure of spring break, the promise of a sunny Florida beach.
Back in the days before I was always and forever alone.