A twenty-minute drive from where Maggie was forcefully losing her virginity, her parents, Rob and Lorraine Clarke stood in their living room, talking with the police. In the first moments when Lorraine couldn’t find Maggie at the mall, she felt as if her heart had come to a screeching halt. She had fought for every breath. Her body ice cold, she frantically hunted through the food court like a wild animal. Shoppers looked on as Lorraine’s self-control vanished and she became increasingly hysterical. Her guttural sobs made everyone around her feel the throbbing sorrow wedged in her heart. Feeling Lorraine’s anguish and deep loss, shoppers pulled their own children closer to them, silently thankful that they weren’t suffering such heartbreak.
Even after the police and Rob arrived, Lorraine felt frozen in time. She wanted to turn the clock back to undo the decision she’d made about Maggie. Lorraine yearned for the past so she could make the right decision and go with her daughter to buy a slice of pizza.
As each event unfolded—the arrival of the police, the crowd of onlookers gathering, and then Rob’s arrival—Lorraine held to the belief that Maggie would reappear and they could go on with their lives. But after hours passed without any sign of Maggie, thoughts of her daughter being molested and murdered played through Lorraine’s mind. Rob tried to soothe her, but there was nothing he could say to keep the dark thoughts from seeping into her mind or his own, sending the couple further into the murky stickiness of their reality.
Lorraine had become frenzied and refused to leave the mall without Maggie. She lingered until the mall closed. She had to be certain that Maggie wasn’t just lost in the sea of people. The police practically had to force her to go home. She agreed only after they promised to patrol the parking lot throughout the night.
Lorraine blamed herself for all that was happening to them. She never should have allowed Maggie to go off alone. She knew better than to let the children out of her sight. Even in the first hours of pure chaos, Lorraine believed that her husband would hate her as much as she hated herself for the life-altering decision she’d made.
Lorraine wanted the police to find her daughter immediately, and after many hours of telling her story to them, she grew tired. She had explained it at least a dozen times while standing in the food court, but they kept coming back to her with the same question: why did Maggie go off by herself? Lorraine explained through anguished sobs that her daughter had begged to be allowed to buy a slice of pizza by herself, and Lorraine had finally given in. One single moment of poor judgment would cause a lifetime of regret.
Now Lorraine sat on her sofa remembering every detail of her daughter. She could see the silky, jet-black hair and the soulful, ocean-blue eyes. Maggie had been a precious gift from the moment she was born. Her sweet demeanor and later, her insatiable appetite for learning, made her the teacher’s pet as each new school year rolled around. Of course, Lorraine loved the attention Maggie received from her teachers, but it made it difficult for Maggie to make friends. The other girls in Maggie’s class thought she was a geek and envied all of the attention she received from the teachers.
Maggie had a sharp sense of humor and would often verbally spar with her father while Lorraine was cooking dinner. Maggie teased her father about being an old man, even though he was only forty. She mocked the clothes he wore and often told him that he smelled bad, although he never did. Rob would pretend to be offended, and they would banter back and forth, laughing until their stomachs ached.
Lorraine and Rob were a down-to-earth, well-liked couple. The two had met during college and were married in their early twenties. A few years after they married, they bought a two-story home on a half-acre lot in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Lorraine was an eighth-grade teacher, and Rob was a computer analyst at a large engineering firm. They waited until they were in their late twenties before they had Maggie, and they’d planned to have just one child. To their surprise, seven years later, Lorraine became pregnant with Keith.
Of the two, Maggie was the rock star. As a toddler, adults would stop and listen to what she had to say. She was charming and charismatic, which made her easy to engage. As she got older, Maggie’s love of reading accelerated her ability to be clever with words. She was her parent’s pride and joy. They loved Keith just as much as they loved their daughter, but being the firstborn, she secretly held a special place in their hearts.
Before Maggie was stolen, Lorraine and Rob would lie in bed at night and talk about their children. They agreed that Maggie would be something very special when she grew up. Rob was confident that she would become a doctor and find the cure for cancer. Since kindergarten, they’d told Maggie that she could be anything she wanted to because she was capable of learning. This encouragement gave Maggie the motivation to go above and beyond in everything she decided to do. She was a very special child.
But now, with Maggie missing, Lorraine and Rob sat silently on the sofa together. Each of them prayed she would be returned to them soon. They had no idea what had become of their little girl. As the minutes of waiting turned into hours, their agony grew to higher levels. The emptiness engulfed them, making them feel as though they were completely hollow inside—rightly so, because while they didn’t know it at the time, their daughter had been forced into human sex trafficking.