The response to my last post about my friend’s missing daughter has been absolutely overwhelming. Thank you all for your concern, for your prayers, and for your kind comments.
First and most important I want you all to know that what was lost has been found. My friend’s daughter is home. She’s safe. And, externally at least, she doesn’t seem to have been harmed. However she did run away from home. Why she did that remains to be seen, and I’m sure she and her family will be addressing that and other issues in the course of the next few days-and most likely for sometime after that as well.
She was found and brought home last night, but things were so hectic today that I didn’t get around to picking up my computer until just now. When I did so, I was utterly stunned by the huge number of messages I found there. As always, the thing that astonishes me is the number of people I’ve heard from who wrote to express their concerns, people who have dealt with similar problems in their own lives. Of the messages I’ve skimmed I’ve posted only the one from LouAnn.
The sheer volume of mail on this topic precludes me from answering each of them on an individual basis. I’ll be posting more and responding individually when appropriate and as time allows.
P.M
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By then it was late afternoon. When Chris came home after school, he went directly to the kitchen to dish up and zap a bowl of his grandmother’s beef stew. “The last I knew you were heading out to find Dave Holman’s missing daughter,” Chris said while he waited for the microwave. “How did that work out?”
“Not all that well,” Ali said. “I brought her home here, and while I was sleeping this morning, she tried to sneak off in one of your ski jackets.”
“As in steal?” he asked.
“Exactly,” Ali replied.
“So she wasn’t particularly grateful.”
“You could say that,” Ali agreed. “Not particularly.”
“How old is she again?”
“Thirteen.”
“And you did get my jacket back?” Chris asked.
“Yes.”
“So where is she now?”
“I dropped her off at her dad’s.”
Chris grinned. “So, now she’s his problem.” He pulled his bowl out of the microwave. “I don’t remember ever being quite that difficult.”
“I don’t remember it either,” Ali said. “Because I don’t think you ever were that difficult-not even when you were sixteen, which, as I remember, wasn’t a banner year.”
“Does that mean the next time I leave the kitchen a mess, I’ve got some slack coming?” he wanted to know.
“Get out of here,” Ali said. She plucked a small pillow off the couch and threw it at him. Sam, who disapproved of pillow fights, disappeared into the bedroom while Chris, bowl in hand, headed for the basement studio they had carved for him out of what had once been Aunt Evie’s two-car garage. Later, Ali heard him head out for the evening. She didn’t ask him where he was going, and he didn’t offer to tell her.
In the deepening twilight, Ali helped herself to her own bowl of stew. Only after dinner had been eaten and cleared away and with the house quiet once more, did she realize that she no longer had any viable excuse for avoiding Arabella Ashcroft’s diary. By agreeing to take the volume with her, she had tacitly agreed to read it- whether or not she wanted to-and it was time to start.
Ali adjusted the living room lights and turned on the gas log in the fireplace. Then, after retrieving the diary from her purse, she settled onto the leather sofa. She had no more than sat down when Sam joined her there, snuggling up against her leg and purring noisily. Comforted by the big cat’s solid presence, Ali opened the gold- embossed book. Shuffling through the book, she found that the vast majority of the pages were blank, but the pages that had been used were covered in a blocky, immature cursive. Ali turned to the first one.
That initial diary entry wasn’t at all what Ali had expected. She had thought she’d encounter something terribly graphic or terribly grim or both, and she hadn’t wanted to inflict those gory details on herself. She didn’t really want to know exactly how little Arabella Ashcroft, incest survivor, had been victimized by her older brother. What Ali had discovered instead, was a profound and completely unexpected connection between herself and the nine-year-old child who had penned those innocently bittersweet words some six decades earlier.
Ali Larson had been around nine years old when she, like Arabella, had been bitten by a similar ambition. Ali Larson had decided in fourth grade that she wanted to be a writer. And through some combination of luck and determination, and with the timely help of Arabella’s mother, Ali had done just exactly that-she had become a journalist. And now she was writing every day in her blog with people reading what she had written and, more important, responding to it in very personal ways
For whatever reason, Arabella’s ambitions had never come to fruition. And maybe that’s what this was all about. Maybe that was one of the reasons Ali had been put in touch with Arabella at this juncture in their lives. Maybe, even at this late date, Ali Reynolds could somehow help Arabella Ashcroft realize her long-buried dream. Or perhaps Ali was involved with Arabella, just as she was with Velma T, in order to sort things out between these two aging women and their interfering younger relatives-Velma’s son and Arabella’s nephew.
Before Ali managed to turn to the next entry in the diary, her phone rang. “What am I going to do with her?” Dave Holman asked.
He sounded exasperated beyond bearing. Having spent several long hours with Crystal Holman, Ali knew the girl came complete with a tangle of complications, none of them with easy answers. Before Ali tried to reply, though, she needed to know which one of Crystal’s many thorny issues Dave’s question addressed. Was it primarily due to Crystal’s being a runaway? Was it about her precocious and generally blase attitude toward sexual activity and the need to have her checked out for possible STDs? Maybe the real answer was all of the above.
“It’s like I don’t even know her anymore,” Dave went on. “She’s not the same kid she used to be. She won’t look me in the eye. When I ask her questions, she won’t give me a straight answer about anything.”
“Did you ask her why she ran away?”
“Of course.”
“What did she tell you?”
“All the usual BS,” Dave replied. “She hates her new school. She doesn’t have any friends. Her teachers are stupid. Gary Whitman is a jerk. Her mother likes Richey better than she likes her. It’s all pretty typical teenage angst. My God, Ali. I know I wasn’t the easiest kid to deal with when I was her age, but I never pulled anything like this.”
Listening to Dave’s recitation of what Crystal had told him, Ali couldn’t help thinking about Arabella Ashcroft. She had been molested and had never told anyone, most especially her parents. Would things have been better for Arabella if she had told? And did anyone else have the right to tell Dave about what was going on with his daughter
