…drove them away from the bad man.”
I stared at the screen. The woman in the footage had my hair, my coat and my build. But she wasn’t me. I knew who it was the moment she turned her head.
My sister, Diane.
Diane had been a domestic violence advocate for twenty years. What I didn’t know until that night was that she and my husband, Paul, were part of a quiet network of volunteers who helped women and children escape dangerous homes when the system moved too slowly. Paul drove. Diane handled the families. They used my name with the children because “Mrs. Anderson” sounded safe and ordinary, and because Diane and I look alike.
The missing woman was named Kara. Her husband had reported her and their daughter missing. He told police she was unstable and had kidnapped their child. In fact, Kara had full legal custody. Her husband had violated a restraining order twice, and the last time, he’d broken her arm.
Paul hadn’t run away. He had left to move Kara and her daughter from a motel to a shelter in another state before her husband found them. He’d taken the drawing because the little girl had insisted he give it to “Mrs. Anderson.”
I told the detectives everything I’d just figured out. Then I called Diane. She called Kara. An hour later, Kara herself called the police department from the shelter, with a lawyer on the line, and confirmed she and her daughter were safe and had left of their own free will.
The detectives closed the missing person case that night. One of them, before he left, said quietly, “I wish more people did what your husband does.”
Paul came home two days later. He was terrified I’d be furious. I was. For about a minute. Then I asked him how long he’d been doing it.
“Eleven years,” he said. “Forty-three families.”
He’d never told me because the fewer people knew, the safer everyone was. And because he was afraid I’d ask him to stop.
I didn’t ask him to stop. I asked him how I could help.
Now I answer the phone line on Tuesday nights. The little girl’s drawing is framed in our hallway. Last month, Kara sent us a new one. In this one, there are four stick figures, a house and a little girl holding a balloon. At the top it says: “WE’RE HOME.”
