Allison nods. “She never seemed younger than we were. She was so smart. If I didn’t know her, I might even think she was older than we were. She had always been the one to make the good decisions.”
I notice her wording but don’t know if she did it on purpose, so I decide to move on.
“What do you remember about when she went missing? Was Ashley at all upset on that day or the days leading up to it? Did she talk about leaving, or problems she was having with her family or anything?”
Allison shakes her head. “No. She was in a fantastic mood. She was happy and excited to be out. The only thing that was upsetting her at all was the weather. It had been raining for so long and the temperature dropped so it didn’t feel as much like a summer hike. I remember her saying her mom told her she had to bring a hoodie with her, and she thought it was so ridiculous. She didn’t want to have it and had almost left it in the car, but then at the last second, she pulled it out. She ended up wearing it an hour later.”
She lets out another short laugh.
“How was her relationship with her mother?” Dean asks.
“They were close,” Allison says. “They argued like any mother and thirteen-year-old daughter. But it was never anything serious. I never heard her say she didn’t want to be at home anymore, or anything like that. She spent a lot of time with her mom. Ashley was never one of those kids who was embarrassed to be seen with her mom. She would actually still hold her mother’s hand when they were at the mall. Not because she was scared or couldn’t get around by herself or anything. Just because she wanted to hold her hand.”
“How about her father?”
“They were close, too. I never saw any problems between them. Maybe not as close as with her mom, but not in a bad way,” Allison shrugs.
“And she had a sister,” I say.
That’s when I realize how easily we’ve slipped into referring to Ashley only in the past tense. I hate that it’s the natural inclination. No one, not even her parents, has said anything about her in the present tense. Nothing has been that she is a certain way or did certain things. Everything is about who she used to be and what she used to do.
Even if they still have hope she could be alive, they’re too afraid to say it.
“Yes,” Allison confirms. “Leona. She’s three years older.”
“So, it would have been more likely that you were friends with her than with Ashley,” Dean comments.
Allison’s eyes narrow. “Why are you so fixated on our ages? People can’t be friends if they aren’t at the exact same age?”
“It’s not that,” Dean says. “It’s just an observation.”
“We’re trying to understand the dynamics,” I add. “It’s not that you shouldn’t be friends with someone younger, it’s just interesting that of the two sisters, you were friends with one with a larger age gap than another.”
“Leona is really quiet. Not unpleasant or anything, just really quiet and not exactly social. When we were over at Ashley’s house, she would sometimes come and hang out with us, but Ashley was much more like us than Leona, so we were friends with her,” Allison explains.
“So, Ashley and Leona got along well?” I ask.
“The most part,” she shrugs. “I mean, there was some tension between them sometimes. But I think that’s the way it is with all sisters. It would probably be stranger if they got along perfectly all the time.”
“That’s true,” I say. “So, what can you tell us about that day?”
I don’t mention anything Ashley’s parents told us. I don’t want to lead Allison or dissuade her from saying anything she might have if I hadn’t given her a basis for what we already know.
“The three of us, Ashley, Vivian, and I, wanted to hang out because it had been so rainy. We went to the park to do some hiking. We live so close by, going there is like going to any neighborhood playground. We’d been a million times before. It was nothing new. We set up camp and Ashley was talking about how she hadn’t told her parents we were camping out. That was a little bit strange, because we almost always camped out when we went to the park unless we were just there for a couple of hours in the morning.
“We told her we were sure they knew, and it was going to be fine. She was really anxious about it. As though she thought she was going to get in trouble. I don’t know, maybe she’d had an argument with them earlier and we didn’t know about it. But she was really on edge. She kept looking at her phone and checking the reception. Eventually, she said she was going up to the bathhouse and was going to try to call her parents,” she says.
“Did you let her go by herself?” Dean asks.
“Yeah,” Allison nods. “It wasn’t all that far away. And as I said, this is a familiar area. She came back and said everything was fine, but that she was going to have to leave early. The next morning she wasn’t at the campsite anymore. Her shoes, phone, and everything else was gone, so we figured her parents had come and picked her up from the parking lot next to the bathhouse. We realized she’d left her backpack and decided to take it to her house. That’s when everything fell apart.”
“But you were in the park that whole day?” I ask.
“All day. We got there in the early afternoon and stayed the whole time.”
“And you were alone?” Dean asks.
Allison shifts uncomfortably. “Yes. Vivian’s family had brought us up there a bunch of times before, so Ashley’s and my parents just assumed they would be with us.
