CHAPTER 3

“T oday is the one-year anniversary,” Raleigh said as she looked down at the white-and-gray linoleum floor.

She’d been staring at the same spot for several minutes now, waiting for her opportunity to share. The linoleum was peeling in a corner, and she so wanted to reach down and just pull it up. She knew if she did, though, she wouldn’t be able to stop. She’d pull and tear it until she had every bit of that linoleum off the floor and in a messy pile all over the place. She’d scream and yell in anger as she tore it. Then, she’d crumple on the leftover floor and cry until she had no more tears left.

That was how it had been working for her ever since that day. At first, there was the shock and worry. Then came the action. After that came the anger. And, lastly, the tears. She’d held on for days, but then the tears came in buckets. She screamed more as she cried out, asking why this was happening to her. Sometime later, she’d manage to exhaust herself, and after days and days of no sleep, her body took over. That was when the inaction had kicked in, and she couldn’t move. Her frozen body remained in her bed for days on end as the world continued to move around her. For that, she would never forgive herself. What had been happening while she’d been cocooned in her disbelief? Why and how had other parents managed through this, and she hadn’t been able to?

“How are you feeling?”

“Numb,” Raleigh replied. “Her birthday was hard, but this is even harder. I’ve missed a year with her. I’ve missed watching her grow up this year. I don’t know where to put that, though, because I’m just so scared that she never got this year. We don’t know what happened to her. There are no new leads. I just feel like she’s still here.” Raleigh pressed her hand to her heart. “I have this sensation in my heart that she’s still with me, but I don’t know that for a fact.” The tears welled up. “Did my little girl die at three years old? Was she in pain? Is she still?” Raleigh wiped at her cheeks. “It feels like no one is doing anything. And I know that people are, but it’s never enough. I want to scour the planet, dig into the earth, and dive into the oceans until we find her; until I know what happened to my daughter. It’s only been a year. Some of you have been dealing with this unknowing, this pain for decades, and I just don’t know if I can.” She wiped tears off her cheeks and looked up from the peeling linoleum. “I don’t know if I can live with the not knowing. Sometimes – and this is the worst part – but, sometimes, I actually hope that she’s gone.” Raleigh choked up. “I can’t imagine she’s not in pain if she’s still here, and I don’t want my little girl in pain. How messed up is that?”

“It’s not messed up,” John, a father of a missing teenage son, said, giving her a compassionate nod. “I’ve wished that, too. It’s been three years since I’ve seen JJ,” he said of his son, John Jr. “He’d be seventeen right now. I know what’s out there. I’ve read the books and talked to the cops enough to know that if someone took my son when he was fourteen years old, there’s a good chance…” John faded out as he stared down at his joined hands. “And I don’t want him to go through that kind of pain. Ever. So, I’ve thought about that, too. It’s awful, and it hurts even more, but he’s my boy. I never want him to feel pain.”

“I won’t lie to you and tell you it gets easier, Raleigh,” Molly, the mother of a girl who went missing when she was eleven years old, added. “It doesn’t. It’s been ten years for me. Ten years of not knowing if she’s even alive, if she’s in pain, if she remembers me. Gradually, though, you just sort of start trying to live again. Every moment of every day of my life for over ten years, I have thought of my daughter. That won’t ever stop. I won’t ever stop trying to find her. But I have two other children who need me, too, so I can’t stop living. ”

“She was my only,” Raleigh said, sniffling. “I wanted her for so long. I worried things would be hard for her because I was a single parent. I wanted to make sure I could provide everything for her, you know? I never thought this would happen. I never thought she’d be there one day and would be gone the next. I was getting ready to say goodbye to her for a few hours when she went to pre-school, not to say goodbye to her forever.” She wiped at her cheeks with shaking hands.

“We don’t know that it’s forever,” Molly said with a warm smile. “You have to keep the hope.”

“I’m trying, but it’s hard,” Raleigh admitted. “It’s only been a year, and there are no leads. When I hear you all talk, it seems like there were a lot of new leads for a few years after your kids went missing.”

“They didn’t go anywhere,” John pointed out.

“But they were something,” she replied. “I used to call the station twice a day. Then, once a day. The officers are so annoyed with me; they’ve asked me to call once a week since they know I won’t stop. They insist they’ll contact me when something happens, and I know they will, but they don’t contact me. And when I call them, they tell me there are no new leads, but they’re still looking.” She took a deep breath. “She’s my daughter. No one will look harder for her than me. But they tell me to let them do their jobs and that I could interfere. Interfere with what, exactly? They’re not finding anything. They’re not finding her .” Raleigh stood up abruptly, and the chair scraped the linoleum. “Fuck!”

“Why don’t we take a break?” Molly suggested.

She’d been the one running the group since Raleigh had joined three months ago, and Raleigh liked her because Molly seemed to understand when someone in the group needed to share, when they needed to not say a word, or when they needed a break without asking. It was likely because she’d been there herself. There were eight other regular members of this weekly group, but Molly’s daughter had been missing the longest out of all of them .

At her first meeting, Raleigh had been scared. Eight people with missing children from the same town? There was something wrong about that. Then, she discovered that one of the eight had been a kidnapping victim herself. Only two of them lived nearby. The other six members drove in from out of town. Some drove as far as two hours to be a part of this group. Raleigh felt lucky that she’d found it and that it was close by.

“Have you talked to that doctor I recommended?” Molly asked once they were outside the building and alone.

“Not yet,” Raleigh replied.

“He really is great, Raleigh. He’s trained specifically for–”

“No, I know,” Raleigh interrupted. “I’m just not there yet. Talking about her here helps, but I don’t know if I’m ready for therapy, too. It’s already hard, working and paying bills without breaking down constantly. When I talk about her, I can barely keep it together. You saw me in there.”

“It happens to all of us,” Molly said. “I’ve punched two walls in my house. I broke my hand twice because of it.” She shook her head. “Both times were after the cops told me they had a solid lead. They even showed me blurry pictures of a teenager they thought was my daughter, and I swore to them that it was her. They got the DNA, but it wasn’t her either time. I wanted it to be her so badly.”

“I haven’t even had that.” Raleigh sighed.

“You will,” Molly replied as she put out her cigarette in the ashtray and then tossed it in the bin beneath it. “They’ll call you up one day and tell you that they have something promising but that they don’t want you to get your hopes up. ‘It’s a long shot,’ they’ll say. They’ll show you a video or a picture. You’ll see a little girl who looks almost like your own. A moment will come where you’ll know it’s not her, but it will be gone just as quickly before your brain convinces you that they’ve found her.” Molly popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “You’ll swear up and down that that’s your daughter. You’ll ask where she is so that you can get in the car and drive a hundred miles an hour to get to her. They won’t tell you exactly where. They need more evidence. They need proof. They’ll tell you that they’re going to discreetly get her DNA and that they’ll keep an eye on her. You can’t stand the waiting. I bit my nails to the point of bleeding. I stopped eating. I didn’t sleep. I lay in bed with the phone next to my head in case I couldn’t stay up any longer. I’d check that it was on constantly and turn up the volume to max to make sure I didn’t miss the call.” Molly tossed the gum wrapper in the trash. “Then, they’ll finally call and tell you that it’s not a match. She’s not yours. You’ll tell them that there’s been some mistake. The hair they got off the brush wasn’t hers, or the gum they took from the trash hadn’t been chewed by her, because she’s your daughter. They will do the best they can, but you won’t believe them. You’ll grow to hate them for their inability to find her. Then, you’ll grow to hate yourself because you’ve lost her in the first place. I’m not sure that ever really goes away. Even if they found my daughter tomorrow, I don’t know that I could ever forgive myself for losing her. She was mine to protect, and I didn’t protect her.”

“How do you deal with it?” Raleigh asked.

“I come here,” Molly said, shrugging. “I talk to you. I listen to all of you. I go to therapy twice a week. I focus on my other kids, who need me, too. One’s about to go to college. The other is about to get married. They deserve a mother that’s fully present. This isn’t their fault. I get by.”

“I’m not at the getting by stage.”

“Yet,” Molly added. “You’re not there yet .”

“It doesn’t feel like I ever will be,” Raleigh replied.

“Excuse me,” a woman said as she approached them on the sidewalk. “Is this the support group meeting?”

“AA or NA?” Molly asked her.

“Oh, no.” The woman looked at the building behind them. “Neither of those.”

“Shit. I shouldn’t have asked you that. It’s anonymous for a reason. I lead a group for people dealing with missing loved ones.” Molly explained .

“Yeah,” the woman replied. “Well, I’m not…”

“You don’t have to tell us anything, if you don’t want to. Everyone is welcome,” Molly replied.

“I’ve never been to one of these before.”

“That’s okay. It’s pretty simple stuff,” Molly told her. “We’re on a break now, but we’re about to start back up.”

“Oh, I thought it started at eight.”

“Seven,” Molly replied. “We had to switch blocks with the AA group.”

“I can come back another time, then,” the woman said, looking down the sidewalk like she wanted to flee.

“Come in,” Raleigh spoke to encourage her. “We’re just on a quick break. You don’t have to share, if you don’t want to, but listening helps.”

“I don’t even know if this is the right place for me.”

“Let’s start with your name,” Molly suggested.

“That depends on who you ask,” the woman said. “I was born Hollis, but my dad changed it to Heidi when he took me to another country when I was five years old.” She met Raleigh’s eyes. “I’m going by Hollis again, though.”

“Hello, Hollis. My name is Molly. As I mentioned, I run the group most nights. This is Raleigh.”

“Hi,” Hollis said.

“Hi,” Raleigh replied.

Hollis gave her a small smile, and Raleigh gave her one back. This new woman looked to be about Raleigh’s age. She had beautiful blue eyes, and when the streetlights got caught in them, they shimmered. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing a pair of nice jeans and a loose-fitting dark-green sweater. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, though, which was strange because it was a chilly night.

“You’re not cold?” Raleigh asked her for some reason.

“Oh, no. I’m Canadian; this isn’t cold,” she explained, smiling a little wider. Then, she stopped smiling. “Actually, I don’t know if I am Canadian anymore. I was born here.”

“Why don’t we go inside?” Molly spoke. “You can get a cup of coffee for the caffeine, if not for the warmth, and if you want to tell us more, you can. If you don’t want to, though, that’s okay, too. You can get a feel for the group and decide if you want to come back next week.”

“Okay. And sorry I was late. I was told eight by the person who recommended the group to me.”

“That’s okay. You can come and go as you please,” Molly told her. “We’re not formal here.” She opened the door then, and Hollis walked inside. Molly continued to hold it open for Raleigh, too, who walked in after Hollis. “You can come every week, or however often you want to. Next week is my week to bring cookies, and I bake a mean chocolate chip, so you should try to make it.”

Raleigh followed them until they were back in the meeting room with the old linoleum and the brown metal chairs. She’d resisted the group, too, at first. It had taken her months to agree to come. She’d been na?ve. She’d thought she would be the exception; her daughter would be found. She didn’t need to talk to anyone about it because it would all be over soon, and she would be able to get back to her normal life.

Now, it had been a year, and she was still sitting in the same uncomfortable metal chair, listening to someone else talk about their missing child while she stared over at the newest addition who had just introduced herself to the room. Raleigh saw a lot of herself in Hollis. There was the anxious twiddling of thumbs, the tight shoulders, the nibbling on her lower lip, and the fidgeting in her chair. Raleigh had done all that, too. The only difference was that Raleigh’s daughter had been taken while Hollis had been kidnapped herself.