“They performed a fairly cursory search of the area,” Misty shrugs. “They interviewed Ashley’s friends. That’s really it.”
“Why didn’t you push any more?” I ask.
Misty looks at me, her eyes narrowing slightly as if she’s confused.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Your daughter disappeared five years ago. You say you don’t have any more information and the police aren’t interested anymore. Why didn’t you press more about her disappearance during those five years?” I ask.
“We did,” Misty says, sounding almost offended by my question. “No one would listen. I just told you, they said she was a runaway. That she had gotten into some sort of argument with us or was mad that she couldn’t do something. They concluded she wasn’t happy at home. So, she ran off.
“That’s really what they wanted us to believe. It didn’t matter what evidence there was or who our daughter was as a person, once they decided she had run away, that was that. This has been awful for us, and for Leona,” Misty says.
“I understand that,” I say, “but…”
“No,” she cuts me off, shaking her head. “You don’t understand that. You can’t. We spent all this time having no idea what happened to our daughter. Finding out about the murders gave us almost this kind of hope. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To hope your child was murdered and chained to the bottom of the lake just so you know where she is? So you know she isn’t being starved or tortured?”
I feel my heart constrict. I shake my head. “No. I don’t.”
“You have children, Emma?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her.
“Then you can’t possibly come close to understanding. Don’t judge us, please.”
“I’m not here to judge you,” I say. “I’m here only to help.”
The woman locks her eyes on mine intensely. “Then help.”
A beat of silence passes. I give a solemn nod.
“Tell us what happened the day Ashley disappeared,” I say.
Misty and John exchange glances. They both draw in breaths before looking back at us.
“She was spending time with her two best friends, Vivian McLemore and Allison Miller. The three of them were practically inseparable. They were a year or two older than she was, but Ashley had always been very mature for her age, so they got along perfectly. It had been raining for several days and when the weather cleared up, Ashley wanted to get outside with her friends. She was feeling cooped up,” John says.
“It was summer,” Misty adds. “That’s when kids want to be out playing and having fun all the time. They don’t want to sit at home with their families.” She lets out a painful-sounding laugh. “She told us they were going to go to the park and hike.”
“You were okay with her going to such a big park by herself?” Dean asks. “Is that something she had done before?”
Misty shakes her head. “No. We didn’t think she was going by herself. Vivian’s family camped all the time. The girls had gone with them on several occasions, so we just assumed she was going with them again. We didn’t ask.”
I nod. “Go on. Ashley told you she was going to the park to hike. Did she tell you what area she was going to be in?”
“She mentioned the name of one of the trails. It was the same hiking loop they usually did. From what I understand, it’s not too far from the campground. As I always did, I told her to be safe. I said to make sure they were paying attention and didn’t get in the way of any bikers. That they didn’t go poking around in the abandoned cabins. That was the kind of thing I was worried about. That they would get wrapped up in some conversation and get hit by a biker or get in trouble for going to an abandoned area,” Misty says.
“So, you did expect for her to be alone at some part of the hike?” Dean asks.
“There had been a couple of occasions when Vivian’s family was setting up their camp and the girls were allowed to hike a short distance on their own,” John says. “It always made Misty so nervous because she didn’t like the idea of the girls walking around by themselves. But I told her there wasn’t anything to be worried about. They were in a park. The hiking trails are very clearly marked. And they were good, smart girls. Ashley had just turned thirteen a couple of months before and I told Misty it was time to stop treating her like a baby and really let her grow up.”
He hangs his head. It shakes back and forth as he draws in a shuddering breath, as if he’s trying to stop himself from crying.
“It’s alright,” his wife whispers, reaching over to rub his back.
It’s obvious this is a conversation they’ve had between them several times.
“It isn’t,” he says. “It’s my fault. If I had never said that she should be able to go, if I’d insisted she needed to stay with the adults the whole time, this wouldn’t have happened. She’d be home right now. She would be the one getting ready to go to college.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Misty says. “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”
I brace myself for the next question I have to ask.
“When did you realize she was missing?”
Nine
Misty looks up at me almost as if she’s forgotten we were sitting in the room with her. She keeps an arm wrapped protectively around her husband.
“The next day,” Misty says. “We expected her to be staying at least one night in the park with Vivian’s family. Maybe even two. But she was to call us the next day to check in, like always. But we didn’t hear from her. Instead, Allison called us. She said Ashley forgot her backpack and was going to come by the house
