Free The Almost Truth by Eileen Cook Page B

was meant to be polite or flirting.
    “My family knows the McKennas,” Chase admitted. “My mom and Mrs. McKenna were roommates back at Vassar. I’ve been helping out with the foundation since I was a kid. My major in college is communications, so they arranged for me to have this job for the summer. I’m organizing this event and a 10K run they sponsor at the end of August, plus helping the communications director with any press releases, that kind of thing.” He looked over at me. “Admit it, you’re blown away by the glory of my unpaid internship.”
    It sounded more glamorous than passing out salad dressing to hotel guests, but I was willing to bet Chase Parker didn’t have a lot of manual labor job experience. “It’s great they gave you the job.” It was great for me at least. Spending time with Chase was way better than sucking up to some old guy with hair growing out of his ears.
    “The McKennas are amazing. What happened to them, with their daughter, Ava, was terrible. I was really young when it happened, but I can still remember bits and pieces of it. They turned their personal tragedy into a chance to help others. So many people don’t make it through that kind of thing. Did you know something like seventy percent of couples who lose a child end up divorced? And the problem is huge. The National Center forMissing and Exploited Children estimates more than seven hundred thousand juveniles were reported missing last year.”
    “No, I didn’t know that, Mr. Communications Director.”
    Chase laughed. “Sorry. Hazard of the job. I start talking like a public service announcement.”
    “What made them want to do this big event now? Ava’s been missing for years.”
    “I think for them, time is measured in what could have been, milestones that aren’t actually being reached, but they still think about it anyway. Ava would have been eighteen this year. She would have graduated from high school. She’d be heading off to college in the fall. They can’t help but imagine what school she would have picked, if she would have been more like her mom, or if she would have been a sports nut like her dad. They wanted to do something to mark the occasion, maybe let the universe know they haven’t forgotten.”
    I guessed since she was only three when she disappeared, it’s all about imagining what she would have been like. They can’t really miss who she was, since she never really got a chance to be anyone.
    We walked without saying anything and instead watched the kids who were playing on the beach, sitting on bright candy-colored towels, scooping sand into pails and then dumping it out, or running up to the water and screeching when the waves licked at their feet, all under the watchful eyes of their moms, siblings, or babysitters.
    “It must be hard for them, the not knowing,” I said. “Was there ever any clue about what really happened?”
    “The FBI is fairly sure she was abducted. There were witnesses who saw a man walking away from the hotel with a girl that might have been Ava.”
    My ears pricked up. This hadn’t been in the newspaper reports. “I never heard that.”
    Chase shrugged. “No one ever identified the guy. Three witnesses saw him, but he was with two small children, not just one, so it’s quite possible it was some dad with his kids. No one was even sure it was really Ava to start with, and then you factor in that eyewitnesses are really unreliable and you don’t have much to go on. A few years ago they thought they might have found her stuffed rabbit.”
    “Rabbit?”
    “It was a detail the police didn’t release in case they ever needed something that could verify a real lead versus some crackpot. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who call in with tips, or claiming to be the person who took a child, or know who did.”
    “People confessed to a crime they didn’t do?” I motioned for us to sit on one of the painted benches that lined the sandy beach. There was