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Back Snow Creek Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. Books by Gregg Olsen
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Hear More from Gregg
  55. Books by Gregg Olsen
  56. A Letter from Gregg
  57. Acknowledgements

I don’t say it, but I remember thinking it at the time. That’s what you think, Doctor.

I see our conversation in pictures. My aunt sitting on the sofa, looking away from me to tell her story. I play the whole scene in my mind.

* * *

“When I was twenty, your mom was sixteen,” she told me. “She was coming home from feeding the neighbor’s cat. It was summer, and the dahlias were in bloom. We had planned to go out shopping after dinner. She needed a new outfit for a party at the end of the month.” Aunt Ginger hesitated, lost in a memory that might have been bittersweet and horrific at the same time. I gave her a minute. I have memories like that too; the kind that take me far away from the present.

“No one saw it happen,” my aunt said, back from wherever her thoughts had taken her. “I mean, she just vanished. It was as if Courtney was just lifted up away from home by a helicopter or something. There was no trace of her. Nothing.”

She stopped short.

I wanted an answer. “What happened?”

Again, Aunt Ginger weighed how much she’ll say. I wanted it all, but she looked at me and sees a kid. She had no idea how much strength I had or what I would do for my family.

“How much do you know?” she finally asked me.

“I know who my real father is, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Me: Aunt Ginger tells me she’s so sorry, or something lame like that. I just let it float away from me. I didn’t want apologies, Doctor. I wanted to know. I mean, here I was fifteen and my bio dad was a serial killer and that meant we shared a ladder of DNA code steeped in violence and murder.

Then she tells me. “Your mom was abducted by a monster. That’s what happened.” It was so empty. So, nothing. It was what I’d already known from the letter and clippings. I asked her for more. I needed to know details. If he took her again, then I wanted to find her.

Dr. A: How did she react?

Me: Weird. She said a couple of things. That I wouldn’t be able to find her and, here’s what I thought was so wrong, she said my mom wouldn’t want me to find her. She was insistent that we’d be better off just moving on or something.

Dr. A: How did that make you feel?

Me: Pissed. I told my aunt that no way was I going to just let my mom die. And that she’d left all the things in the safe deposit box, so I could find her. Even a gun.