When the doorbell rang, I ran to it, hoping it was news about my daughter. About Savannah.
Instead it was a dark-haired woman. “Lorraine? I’m Amy.” She held out a business card. On one side was In Trevor’s Memory, and the other, Amy Dowd, Volunteer Victim’s Advocate.
“Can I come in and talk?” she asked.
After a second, I stepped back. Was I doing the right thing? And would Tim mind? He’d gone into work, putting in some overtime. He said he didn’t see the point of sitting around the house if there wasn’t anything he could do to find Savannah. Besides, he needed the extra money to fix his car.
Amy seemed only a few years older than me, but she might as well have been a different species. A show dog next to a mutt. I could tell her black pantsuit was expensive, and it sure hid her extra weight way better than my wrinkled scrubs with a drawstring waist.
“In Trevor’s Memory is affiliated with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It was started by the family of Trevor Strider. Maybe you remember him?”
The feeling of unreality was so great that it was like I was watching myself nod. Anyone alive twenty years ago knew who Trevor Strider was. Six-year-old Trevor had disappeared from his front yard in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He’d never been found.
“Can I sit down?” After I nodded, Amy took Tim’s recliner, and I sat on the couch. Tim’s sweatshirt was thrown over the chair. The coffee table was covered with mail, dirty plates, and an open pizza box that still held a curling slice. I looked for judgment on Amy’s face. But all I saw was barely concealed pain. And somehow that was worse. This was the life I had made for myself, for me and my daughter.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I’m here to help, if you want. I’m not law enforcement, although I’ve worked with them many times, and they’re the ones who notified us. I’m not a counselor, but I’ve been to counseling and learned a lot from it. I’m mostly just here because I’ve been in your shoes. My daughter, Jenny, disappeared nearly a year ago.”
Her words hit me like a blow. “What happened?”
In a few sentences, she sketched out the story of Jenny’s disappearance from a tanning salon. Then she switched topics to what she could do for me. “I can assist you in getting the word out, help you deal with the media, set up a website, or whatever else you need. And I know about resources you can use. There’s a print shop downtown that will make missing posters for free. And there’s a fraternity at Portland State that might distribute them as a community service project.”
This was all going so fast. Just hearing Amy list everything she seemed to think I should be doing was overwhelming. I tried to find something to hold on to. “Wait. Your daughter. Jenny. Did they ever find her?”
Amy looked down at her black pumps with their sensible two-inch heels. “No.”
“So you don’t know what happened to her?” Even though I was sitting on the couch, I felt like I was falling.
This time she looked at me. Her eyes were the color of old ice. “No.”
“How do you live with that?” The words burst out of me.
“I won’t lie to you. Of course you want your child back. And if you can’t have that, then you want a body. When you realize this limbo might go on forever”—she raised her empty hands and let them fall—“it feels unbearable. Only you have to find a way to live with it.” She straightened her shoulders. “But it’s far too early to be talking about that. What we should be doing is figuring out how to maximize every resource to bring your daughter home. We need as many eyes as possible looking for Savannah.”
It was clear she was a much better mother than I had ever been. The best I could hope to do was follow her lead. “Okay.”
“The first thing to do is make a flyer and then get it put up all over the metro area.” She pulled a sleek silver laptop from her leather bag and set it on her knees. “Do you have a recent photo of her?”
“When Officer Diaz sent out one of those ‘be on the lookout for’ announcements to all the other cops, he used Savannah’s school portrait.”
“It would also be good to have a candid photo. Ideally, head and shoulders, with a light-colored background. But it needs to be sharp. So if you don’t have one that’s suitable, we’ll just go with the one from school.”
As I scrolled through photos on my phone, I realized how many there were of Tim and how few of Savannah. Again, shame washed over me.
While I searched, Amy asked me questions, gradually reducing my precious daughter to numbers and colors.
I found myself telling her what I never would have told Officer Diaz. “When I was pregnant with Savannah, I could feel her. Do you know what I mean?” I rested my hand on my belly. She stopped typing and almost reluctantly nodded. “Like this little hum of connection. And I can still feel it. I know she’s alive.”
Amy glanced away, blinked rapidly, then looked back at me again. “If that keeps you going, then good. Because you’re going to need every source of strength you can draw on.” She looked back down at her keyboard. “So have you found a photo?”
I held out my phone. “What about this one?”
It was Savannah the night she got her orange sash. She’d asked someone at her school to take the picture and then sent it to me.
Amy’s eyes widened. “My God!”
“What?”
“Jenny’s face was more rounded. But she and your daughter—they look a lot alike. And my daughter disappeared only about seven miles from here.”
Suddenly it seemed like Jenny’s mom and I had something in common after all.