Page 23 of My Child is Missing

“Then I looked at her reading history,” said Shelly. “It was story after story of sex stuff.”

Dave added, “We told her once that it wasn’t appropriate, but then she kept reading it so we told her we were taking her phone for a week.”

Josie could remember every girl in her high school reading Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series precisely because it was scandalous and racy. It had been released before Josie was born but had seen a resurgence when she reached high school. She and most of her classmates devoured anything that adults deemed too mature for them. The more inappropriate, the better. Even kids who didn’t like to read were glued to those types of books. In Josie’s experience, the fastest and most surefire way to get a teenager to read something was to tell them they couldn’t.

Shelly wrung her hands together. “I know what you’re thinking. She’s sixteen, she’s not a baby. I’ve had the sex talk with her. She’s not completely sheltered. It’s just that this stuff she was reading was really over the top. It was…disturbing. Not something a young woman should read. Maybe not even something any woman should read.”

Changing the subject, Josie asked, “Is Kayleigh dating anyone?”

“No,” Dave answered immediately.

Shelly said, “She doesn’t have time. Not with school and work and softball.”

Josie felt a small prick of guilt for what she was about to do but it could not be avoided. She punched the passcode into her phone again and swiped until she found the clearest profile photo of the boy that Kayleigh had had in her vault. “Do you know who this is?”

Both parents leaned in to study it. “No,” said Dave.

“Should we?” asked Shelly.

“You can’t see his face,” said Dave. “How could we even tell?”

“Who is he?” Shelly said.

Josie explained where she had found the photos concluding with, “From these pictures, it appears that Kayleigh may be dating this person.”

Dave shot up out of his seat. “Son of a bitch.”

Shelly looked over at Savannah, her forehead creasing. “Dave!” she hissed.

He paced back and forth in front of his wife. “She lied to us. Again.” He stopped moving and looked at Josie. “How long has this been going on?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Josie said. “From what I was able to tell from the details attached to those photos, they were taken at various times in the last year.”

“Oh God,” Shelly said.

“You didn’t know?” Dave asked, whirling on his wife.

She pressed a hand to her chest. “No, I didn’t know. How would I know?”

Josie said, “Mr. Patchett, you said she lied again. What else had she lied about?”

He glared at Shelly.

She sighed and looked away.

Dave answered, “She lied about a school assignment. Something she had written for her English class. We thought that was bad, but it was certainly nothing on this grand a scale…a secret boyfriend. How do we find out who he is? Do you think he’s the one who took her?”

“I’ll start by asking her friends if any of them knows who he is, maybe speak with the principal and see if he’s a student at her school. If we can’t figure out his identity from there, then we go to her workplace and see if anyone there recognizes him. There aren’t a lot of contacts in Kayleigh’s phone and not many text exchanges other than with Olivia. Do you know the names of any other kids she hangs out with regularly?”

A look passed between Shelly and Dave. He said, “She doesn’t talk much with anyone on the softball team anymore, not outside of practice.”

Shelly looked at her feet. “Kayleigh always had trouble making friends. All she ever wants to do is sit in her room and read. That’s why we signed her up for softball. She tried soccer and volleyball, but she wasn’t very good. She did a bit better at softball. For a while she seemed to get along well with all the girls but in the last year, she stopped hanging out with them. Or anyone, really, even from school. Except Olivia.”

Josie rattled off some of the names she had seen in Kayleigh’s contacts, concluding with Felicia (from English class). “Do you know any of those kids?”

Dave said, “Just Felicia, but they’re not friends.”

Shelly said, “Just classmates.”

---