“How old are your girls?” Tara asked.

The woman lifted her head up.“Twenty-one and seventeen. Here…” she replied as she got up from her seat and grabbed a picture frame sitting on a shelf above the TV. “This was them a couple months ago at Kelsey’s graduation. Kelsey’s my youngest. Anna is my older daughter.” She held the picture frame in her hands and smiled at it before handing it to Tara. Tara looked down at it. The youngest, Kelsey, stood proud wearing a blue graduation robe and cap. Her long jet-black hair fell perfectly straight past her shoulders. Her sister stood next to her with her arm around her waist smiling proudly at the camera as well, her hair short and curly, like her mother’s.

“Kelsey loves photography. She just got accepted to the School of Visual Arts,” the mother added before her words caused her to cry and Tara’s stomach twisted in a knot. These were two girls with their whole lives ahead of them.

“Do you know anyone who may have wanted to harm your girls?”

“No, not at all,” the mother replied without hesitation as she took a seat again on the couch.

“And what about your street? Have you seen anyone that seemed off to you? Anything unusual in the past week or so?”

After all, they lived so close to the trail—but the woman only shook her head, and so did her husband.

“We do see cars parked on our street all the time, but I haven’t seen anything odd…no,” the woman said. “But I also don’t pay much attention to it all either.”

Tara asked more questions—if any neighbors had acted odd lately, if their daughters were dating anyone—but each time, the mother only shook her head again, and Tara and Warren weren’t any closer to gathering important information.

“My daughters weren’t dating anyone,” the mother confirmed. “Only my oldest had a boyfriend about a year ago but they were on good terms, and he would never do something like this. I think he’s studying abroad in Italy right now anyway.”

The husband leaned forward in his chair, growing agitated at their questions.

“What I want to know is why anyone was able to access the trail anyway?” he asked barely able to hold his voice steady as his words shook with emotion.

His words hit Tara like a knife in the gut. It was a guilt she already felt and to hear it echoed only made the wound wider. The trail was closed just north of where the girls were found. But Tara wondered if the range were made just a bit wider, maybe it would’ve protected them.

“I understand your frustration sir, I’m so sorry,” she replied. “The National Park Service closed down twenty miles of the trail. We hoped that was enough.”

A flash of anger took hold of the man’s face before his lip curled and he started sobbing. He cupped his face in his hands and closed his eyes, trying to steady himself.