I wasn’t always who I am now. A woman with lots of pets and a garden and a penchant for decorating with bright colors. No, once I was just another young mother, going to college in between living life and packing lunch boxes.
My area of study was journalism. I chose investigative feature writing.
During the years of my writing, when I was young, there were cases of children whose stories were unfathomable. There were a couple of 13 year old girls I wrote about that were kidnapped in 1981, and still to this day have never been found. No bodies to bury. No gravesites to visit. Just questions lingering in dust-filled bedrooms the families can’t bear to change. And piles of gifts that will never be opened.
I met criminals with sad stories who ultimately turned to religion for redemption. And I sat in courtrooms where justice can’t ever really be properly meted out. Because the justification for crimes against children are an example of an oxymoron of the highest magnitude.
But then, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes.
When I was young, I still believed that things happened for a reason. And I just wasn’t wise enough to know the answer. Now I believe that people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And let it go at that.
Once I wrote a long in-depth story about a 12 year old girl who’d gone to a Friday night football game at her school. A man was trolling the area when the game was over, waiting and watching as the crowd began to disperse. For some unknown reason, this man chose Jen, all dressed up in her pep club uniform that autumn night. She was waiting for her ride, who got stuck in traffic and didn’t get there before Jen caught this man’s evil eye.
The man got out of his car and snatched her from amidst the crowd of onlookers. Who later said they assumed the girl, kicking and screaming for help, had had a disagreement with her father. Presumably the man who took her and drove off into the night. People don’t really like to get involved in what they assume to be “family scuffles” you know.
But he wasn’t who they thought he was. And he took her to a trailer in the woods and did unspeakable things to her. Until he tired of her. And then he drove out a ways and dumped her naked body on the side of the road. And threw her pep club uniform in an alley dumpster behind a strip mall.
He was later picked up for a traffic violation. He didn’t get far. You see, happenstance is sometimes just a cop who notices a minor traffic violation and chooses to stop you. And when a young girl is missing in the area, they wrap a tight rope around the community and whomever ends up in their path is a suspect.
While I was writing that story, I visited her grave with the assistant district attorney who’d been assigned her case. The trial was over, and the man who’d taken her sent to languish in a jail cell for the remainder of his sorry life.
We walked about the quiet cemetery grounds that long ago morning, trying to find her headstone. About the time we found it, music lifted up into the air and sailed right over to us. It was her school band playing Christmas carols not far away. Talk about irony.
The assistant district attorney, who’d become very enmeshed in the case, was suddenly overwrought. I left him alone kneeling in front of a stone bearing her name, and walked a distance away to give him some privacy.
I’ll never forget listening to the sometimes off-beat melody of the instruments belting out Christmas cheer. Young boys and girls who were probably Jen’s friends. Just trying to go on with life.
And so now I’ve told you something about the woman behind this cozy little house who stays to herself most of the time. And amuses herself with her garden and decorating and crafts. And writes her little blog. She isn’t all that interesting really.
Out in the garden, among my plants and flowers, I let these children come back in my mind for a little visit. I see glimpses of their rooms and their mothers’ tear-stained faces, and remember little things. Like the outfits they had on or the color they’d painted their toenails or the bracelet they were wearing. On the day that was their last. It would be a real tragedy if they were just forgotten, wouldn’t it?
Oh, and if you’re wondering what the evil man was doing right before he kidnapped Jen? Just wondering? He was at his brother’s house. The brother’s wife had just made homemade brownies. They asked him to stay and have dessert with them.
And after his snack he drove off and went to the school, where he picked up innocent young Jen. Who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
