…hide.”
My neighbor’s name was Carol. She was seventy-six. She sat down on an overturned flower pot and put her face in her hands.
“Emily’s alive,” she said. “She’s twenty-eight. She has two kids of her own.”
Twenty-two years ago, Carol was a pediatric nurse. Emily’s mother, Laura, came to her with a little girl covered in bruises. Laura’s husband, Mark Parker, was a well-liked police officer in our town. Every time Laura reported him, the report disappeared. A judge refused to give her an emergency custody order. Mark had threatened that if she ever left, she’d never see Emily again.
So Laura did the only thing she could think of. She arranged for Emily to “disappear.”
One afternoon, while Mark was on duty, Carol drove Emily to Laura’s sister in Oregon. Laura stayed behind and played the part of a heartbroken mother, so Mark would never suspect her. She put up posters every year. She cried on the news. She visited her daughter in secret twice a year, telling Mark she was at a grief retreat.
The greenhouse had been the last place Emily stayed before Carol drove her away. Carol kept the backpack and the shoes, because she couldn’t bring herself to throw them out. The box held letters Laura had written to her daughter over the years.
“Mark died last month,” Carol said. “Laura was going to tell the police everything next week. I wanted to wait until she was ready.”
Buddy had found a gap in the old greenhouse door. He’d been bringing Carol’s “treasures” to my yard ever since.
I didn’t call the police. I called Laura. She came that evening, with Carol, and we sat in my kitchen. The next week, Laura walked into the police station with a lawyer and told them the truth about her daughter and about her husband.
Prosecutors decided not to charge her. Several officers who’d buried her reports were later disciplined.
Emily came home for the first time in twenty-two years last spring. Half the town came out to see her. She brought her children to the greenhouse and showed them where she used to play. Buddy followed her around all afternoon, as if he’d been waiting for her too.
