Voices

On the morning of 28 June, I woke up at 5 am, as has become my very uncivilised habit, and set out for my morning run.  It was a pretty good run; it was cool and not too humid and I walked back into the house feeling very good about the day ahead.  I picked up my phone to check on the weather so I could make final decisions about my clothes for the day.  To my surprise, I had several missed calls and two voice messages on my phone.  I almost never check voicemail - I prefer to just call the person back so we can have a conversation - but the obscenely early hour made me curious.  Who was calling me at this time of day and why? 

I started out with a number I did not recognise.  I pressed play and I heard, "Good morning, Pandave, this is Deputy Sheriff from some spot in Virginia.  We are trying to locate some information on your cousin.  She is possibly missing from a location down here in Virginia and we're just trying to get some information on her.  Please give me a call back."

Whatever I may have been expecting when I pressed play, that was not on the list.  My cousin (who is actually my aunt) lives in New York, so I was really confused.  Why would she be in Virginia?  She has a three year-old son, why hadn't the Deputy Sheriff mentioned him?  Where was the son?  As my not-really-awake brain tried to process this, I dialed the phone number that the Deputy Sheriff had left me.  I got his voicemail.  Then I listened to the second message on my phone - it was my aunt's friend, asking me to call her back.  So I did.  I got her voicemail.  Panic.

I started pacing and trying to figure out what to do.  Well I thought I was trying to figure out what to do, but how can you figure when you know next to nothing.  It was so early in the morning and I couldn't even begin to try to imagine what was going on.  Should I try the Deputy Sheriff's number again?  Should I try to be patient and wait for him to return my call?  What was going on?

My phone rang.  It was my aunt's friend.  What she knew was that my aunt had gone out to Virginia to a summer camp that was run by a church.  The previous night, my aunt had been on the phone with her friend and sounding a little frantic and confused.  She was not clear, but my aunt believed that she was in danger.  At some point in the evening, the sequence of events was fuzzy, the police arrived at the camp and my aunt and her son were missing.  The police were searching for her and were trying to figure out what happened.  Before I could ask my aunt's friends any questions, my phone beeped.  It was the Deputy Sheriff calling me back.