Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“I’m Chris,” the man said. “How are you?”
Edward shook his extended hand. “I’m good, thanks. My name is Edward.” Edward swallowed, unable to predict how this was going to go. “I’m sorry to show up on your porch like this. I have a strange question.”
Chris smiled and stepped outside, closing the front door behind him. “Let’s hear it.”
“Did a young woman come to your house today?” Edward asked.
Chris frowned. “No…” But then something seemed to land, and his shoulders squared as he took a step closer. “Who did you say you were? Who came here today?”
“Her name is Ren.” Chris didn’t show any sign of recognition, but his eyes were wild now, searching Edward’s. “We drove across the country to find you.”
“How old is she?” Chris asked sharply.
“She just turned twenty-three.” Edward winced. “I dropped her off earlier to talk to you, but she never returned to the hotel, and I got worried.”
Chris was white as a sheet, and Edward pulled out his phone, opening his photos to show him a picture of Ren at dinner the other night. He swiped through photos of her at Mount Rushmore. “This is her. This is Ren. Ren Gylden?” Pausing, he added quietly, “She—she thinks you might be her father.”
With a shaking hand, Chris took the phone and stared down at the smiling girl. “Gracie?”
Edward went still. “What did you call her?”
When Chris looked up again, tears streamed down his face, and he pointed to the screen. “That’s my Grace. Oh my God.” A sob escaped his throat. “That’s my girl. My daughter. Becky! Come here!” he yelled into the house, before turning back to Edward, a world of devastation in his eyes. “She was taken twenty years ago.”
On their dining room table, Chris and Becky Koning spread out every document, photo, and newspaper clipping they had and told Edward the story of the disappearance of Chris’s three-year-old daughter Grace Koning at a Fourth of July celebration in a local park. Chris, at the time recently divorced from Ren’s mother—Aria, a petite blond woman—had taken his daughter to see the fireworks and, distracted by the question of a man nearby while looking for his daughter’s sweater, turned back to find she was no longer at his side.
What followed was an all-out manhunt lasting nine months and spanning eight states. But Grace was never seen again.
“Over the years,” he said, carefully moving his hands over his collection of documents, “there have been nearly ten thousand calls in to the hotline we set up, but only a handful of credible leads. For years I’d think I’d see her in every crowd. I think that feeling of needing to look for her every second I was out started to wane maybe eight or nine years ago.” He looked to Becky, who nodded, rubbing his back. “All this time,” he said, “she’s been all the way in Idaho.” He laughed, a sad, sharp exhale. “So many nights I’d wake up wondering if I imagined her. I’d get up and look at these pictures and try to figure out how I could possibly keep moving forward if I never got to see my little girl again.”
Edward glanced around the house. It was cozy and warm, and from his chair he could see into a large great room with a TV and two big, pillowy couches. There were toys on the floor and a collage of construction-paper artwork covering one wall, a cluster of family photos covering another. Besides Christopher and Becky, there were some of the little girl who had answered the door, and older photographs of another girl Edward assumed was Ren. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out immediately, hoping it might be her. Seeing it was his father, he silenced the call.
“I don’t understand, though,” Becky said. “If you dropped her off here, where did she end up?”
“I dropped her off a few doors down, yeah,” Edward said, wishing he’d put up more of a fight and insisted he go with her. “I only know what Ren told me, but Gloria seemed really controlling. If I had to guess, I think she was waiting and probably told Ren a good story that made her question whether she wanted to talk to you after all.”
His phone buzzed again, but he ignored it once more. This was the part he didn’t totally understand. Why would Ren come back to the hotel and leave his phone at the front desk? He could only assume that Ren had insisted, knowing it was expensive and he didn’t have the money to replace it before his interview. But why would Gloria agree? She must’ve been so convincing when getting Ren to leave with her that she wasn’t even worried a chance run-in with him would change Ren’s mind.