I don’t get much sleep anymore. Aside from times I drift off involuntarily during the day, and each time I wake up in a frenzied state after the same dream of my daughter being murdered in the most dreadful way. The life leaving her eyes as she looks up at me. Each time I wake up screaming, so i don’t tend to sleep much.
You see, our 15 year old daughter, was reported missing a little over a year ago. The police combed every inch of our town, dragged every body of water in and around our town and had half of the citizens out looking for her. Not too long into the investigation, they told us that they were now looking for a body, and I felt as though my worst fear had just come to life.
They did say to us that maybe she ran away, but I assured them that she was always such a happy little girl, and that we never even punished her all that much because she never gave us reason to. Come to think of it, I think there was only one time. They still had to consider that it was a possibility, but once we ruled that out, due to her being so young and having no way of obtaining any money, they believed that she wouldn’t have gotten far and returned home.
Her body was never found, and we were ‘coming to terms with it’ as much as is possible for parents who lose their child. We thought that it was over. Her picture was still shown on the changing billboards; you know the ones with all the missing kids on them. But aside from that, it seemed as though the world had all but forgotten our daughter. We started to move on and we were healing.
Until about an hour ago.
We were sitting on the couch, watching some crappy tv show when the phone rang. My husband got up and picked up the phone and answered it, stopping dead in his tracks with a look I have never seen on his face before.
“Who is it?” I asked “Jason? What’s wrong, who is it?”
His face was pale. He pressed the speaker button on the phone and placed it on the table. There was silence for a few seconds, and then the person spoke.
“Dad? Mom?”
My heart felt like it was going to break a rib it was beating so fast. I swallowed hard and picked up the phone, holding it between us. “Jessie? Jessie is that you?”
“Mom…” Jessie, my little girl, sounded beaten and exhausted “I’m still alive.”
I didn’t even have time to say anything before my husband muted the call on our side. “No.” he put his hand over his mouth. “This can’t be possible. It can’t be.”
There was some rustling on the other end of the phone before we heard our daughter say “I’m coming home” then she hung up.
I looked over at my husband who was hyperventilating and the panic really started to set in. This couldn’t have been possible. She couldn’t possibly be coming home.
How could this be possible? A little over a year ago she was reported missing. And she was dead.
We made sure of it.