Whatever Happened To Abigail Grace?
A kidnapping cold case sparks off the detective instincts of teenage Ava…
She must have been so scared, Ava thought as she pressed clear strips of tape across the top and bottom of the missing poster with a gloved hand. Stepping back to admire her handiwork on the streetlamp at the quiet park, a deep sadness washed over her.
Little Abigail Grace, with wispy red hair and brown eyes, had only been four years old when she was kidnapped from Petaluma, California. It seemed a world away from Ava’s small snowy town, Trouville, Utah, but the mystery had infiltrated their quaint bubble after twelve years.
In class the day before, her English teacher’s husband, a retired FBI agent who still volunteered working cold cases, came to talk to them for Career Day. No major crimes ever happened in Trouville, so Ava had been fascinated as he told them stories of cases he’d helped crack. Then, he’d told them about the kidnapping of Abigail Grace. She’d been taken from her mother’s car in the parking lot of a coffee shop in her hometown forty-five minutes outside of San Francisco.
Winter’s chill seeped through Ava’s puffy coat and she shivered, remembering the details Agent Tate had told them. She could almost see the young girl, huddled up in the backseat of their minivan as her mom ran in to grab her to-go order, promising to be right back. Only she came back to find the seat empty. Ava couldn’t believe no one saw anything in broad daylight, that there had been no leads. That was … until a month ago.
A man in California was arrested but had struck a deal for a lighter sentence by giving up information on other crimes. One of those was Abigail’s disappearance. He’d been travelling through Trouville around the time Abigail went missing and had seen her and a woman walking down the street holding hands. He was positive it was them as he had just come from California and had seen Abigail all over the news. He said the little girl had looked lost, eyes darting around like she didn’t belong. Since Agent Tate lived in Trouville now, he had volunteered to see what he could drum up, the local connection making it the perfect example for Career Day.
What made Abigail’s case even more disturbing to the class was that Abigail would be the same age they were now. Did they know her? Was she sitting in class next to them?
Ava and a few friends volunteered to help however they could… which was what led Ava to her current task on this brisk Saturday morning. Hanging missing posters around town with a picture of Abigail at four years old, next to a computer-generated image of what she might look like now.
It was that current, artificial picture that Ava couldn’t tear her eyes away from. There was something familiar about the girl. She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she’d seen her before. But the synthetic features were undefined, generic in that way age-progressed photos tend to be.
Maybe that’s why she looks familiar – she could be any girl at Trouville High, Ava thought.
A screeching, metallic sound broke through the crisp air, mingling with trails of laughter. Ava turned and saw two young girls spinning on the metal roundabout in the otherwise empty playground. Their hair was filled with snowflakes, their noses pink from the cold. One of Ava’s first memories was of herself and Celeste on opposite ends of that same roundabout, leaning back as it spun, tongues out to catch snowflakes.
Celeste was her best friend whom she’d known since before she could remember. They were usually glued at the hip, but today they’d decided to split up to cover more ground.
A heavy feeling settled into the pit of Ava’s stomach, imagining what Abigail’s childhood would have been like. Did she ever play in that park? Where was Abigail Grace right now?
Clutching the stack of posters to her chest, she took one final look before popping them into her bookbag. She hopped onto her bike and pedalled into town. With tourists still stopping in Trouville on their way back to Salt Lake City airport following the Sundance Film Festival, there was a chance they may reach a wider audience than normal.
When Ava reached Gail’s Nails, she leaned her bike against the brick wall and walked inside. There were two women she didn’t recognise near the back getting pedicures, and Danica Morrison’s mom at the front station having her nails painted.
Ava looked toward the front desk where Gail and her niece Carrie were chatting. When the two women looked her way, Gail smiled widely.
“Well look at that, Ava Arnette. You come to get your nails done before Winter Ball next week?”
“Oh, no, I’ll probably come with Celeste on Wednesday after school. I just wanted to ask if I could hang this poster up in your window?”
Gail and Carrie walked over as she held out the poster. She filled them in on the case and how Mrs Tate’s husband was searching for the girl.
“THIS LOOKS LIKE AN ANGEL’S KISS BIRTHMARK. DANICA HAD ONE. DOC SAID IT WOULD FADE AS SHE GOT OLDER AND IT DID”
“She’d be, what? Eighteen now?” Gail said, studying the poster.
Carrie laughed and shook her head. “Math never was your strong suit, Aunt Gail. She’d be sixteen.”
Gail gave a throaty chuckle.
“Don’t need to be good at math to give a good manicure.”
Ava smiled; she’d always liked Gail. “I don’t think we have any redheads that age around here, not that I’ve seen on a regular basis, anyway,” Carrie said.
“I know, I can’t think of anyone at Trouville High who matches her description. Even if that guy did see Abigail in Trouville, the chances of her still being here seem slim. But we’re hoping someone saw something back then, and the posters will jog their memory.” Ava shrugged.
Gail’s thick eyebrows came together. “Ava, you see this brown hair?” she asked, grabbing a short brown curl.
Ava nodded.
“Well, you shoulda seen me when I was little. It was bright red; I looked like Raggedy Ann.” She snickered. “By the time I was six, it turned brown. This girl might not even have red hair any more.”
Ava looked back at the poster as Gail laid it on the counter. Changing the hair colour to shades of brown in her mind, Ava thought the computer-generated photo looked a little like Celeste with her light brown hair, but maybe her mind was reaching for a connection. She gulped and studied the little girl’s features.
Carrie leaned over and looked again, before saying, “What about this birthmark? Says here she had a red birthmark between her eyes. Look, you can see it,” she said, tapping the photo of little Abigail as she popped her gum.
“I saw that, seems pretty unique. I can’t think of anyone with a mark like that,” Ava replied.
“Between the eyes, you say?” Mrs Morrison chimed in from the manicure station a foot away. “Can I see that?”
Ava walked over and set a poster next to her. Mrs Morrison took a long look and harrumphed.
“This looks like an angel’s kiss birthmark. Danica had one when she was little. Right here on her eyelid and between her eyes,” she said, pointing a finger to her eye area.
“Really? Did you have it removed?” “Didn’t have to do anything. Doc said it would fade as she got older, and it did. If that is the type of birthmark Abigail had, it could be gone by now. Danica hated it and was thrilled when it faded.” She smiled mischievously, putting her free hand to the side of her mouth like she was telling a secret, careful not to bump her fresh pink polish. “But I can still see its outline when she gets mad or embarrassed, a light red patch that looks like Texas, giving her emotions away,” she said, laughing.
Ava laughed with her, imagining Danica’s reaction when that patch betrayed her feelings. If Abigail’s birthmark had faded, she wondered if it would pop out with her emotions too.
Ava hitched a breath and bit at her bottom lip, lost in thought for a moment before shaking her head. She secured a poster to the front window before saying goodbye.
Ava pushed the bike pedals harder across a patch of sidewalk that hadn’t been cleared of snow, her mind reeling. Out of breath, she made it to Higher Grounds, the popular local café that was usually packed with tourists and locals alike.
As she walked to the bulletin board where people hung posters for lost dogs and free guitar lessons, the strong coffee aroma filled her senses. She wished her mom would let her drink coffee, but she’d always been overprotective and said Ava was too young.
Ava pulled out a poster and was about to anchor it with one of the colourful tacks nesting in the corkboard, when Sharon and Liv, a couple who led local yoga retreats, asked what she was putting up. Ava explained as the women huddled together to scan the poster.
“Does anything ring a bell? You both grew up here, right?” Ava asked.
“Yeah,” Liv replied, distracted. “Look Sharon, this poor girl had a lisp. I feel her pain… I had a hard time with my Rs when I was little, but Mrs Finnick worked with me in the third grade to get rid of it. I used to get teased so badly.” She paused, a haunted look passing across her eyes as if she still felt the sting. “Could you check with the school? If she was here, maybe they have a record of who had speech therapy around that time.”
Sharon shook her head. “Finnick retired in 2006. I don”t know if they hired a new speech therapist after that.”
“They didn’t,” Ava chimed in. “When I was little and my mom started working as the guidance counsellor at the elementary school, they didn’t have one. Celeste and some other kids had speech issues and my mom volunteered to work with them even though it wasn’t her specialty. The school didn’t have the budget for a specialist.”
Liv, deflated, looked back at the poster.
“Oh my God, look at that! She had a Cabbage Patch Kid. Remember those?” she said, looking at Sharon. “I had three of those dolls.”
“What’s a Cabbage Patch Kid?” Ava asked. “I had American Girl dolls.”
“They were these dolls with bulbous heads and features. Some were bald and some had hair made of yarn. They came with birth certificates and were all the rage when we were kids.”
Ava’s face pinched in.
“Sounds kinda creepy.”
The women laughed. “I guess they were, but we loved them. You can’t see it well in this photo but it’s hanging from her little hand,” Liv replied.
“Here, they look like this,” Sharon said, holding up her phone, the screen filled with small thumbnails of various Cabbage Patch Kids.
Visuals shifted in Ava’s brain, as if she was putting together a puzzle but didn’t know yet if the box had all the pieces.
“Looks like she gave hers a haircut,” Liv said, pulling the poster up so Ava could get a closer look.
Ava squinted and was able to make out the doll with one red pigtail lopped off. She sucked in a breath, a memory of her and Celeste flying to the surface.
Quickly Ava said, “Thank you so much, you have no idea how much you’ve helped.” She turned and walked purposefully towards the door.
“Hey, do you want me to hang this on the board?” Liv hollered out.
Ava looked back. “No need any more.”
When she made it to her bike, she texted Celeste. “911! Meet me at the Tates’ house NOW.”
Hopping on her bike and pedaling into the wind as fast as she could, Ava made her way toward a quiet residential neighborhood, her eyes watering from the cold. A jumbled mix of images assaulted her from every direction as a story began forming.
The girls from the park this morning morphed in her mind into a young redhead and brunette, spinning and squealing in delight. The redhead had a light red patch between her eyebrows that scrunched up as she crinkled her nose in laughter.
“Faster!” she shouted, the “S” not quite forming right.
Ava’s heart broke at the visual… her foot almost slipping off the pedal.
Celeste had always been by her side for as long as she could remember. BFFs. Would Celeste’s task hanging posters bring up the same memories… maybe more?
Ava was almost afraid to ask. Would she think Ava was out of her mind? Or maybe she already knew…
Ava turned a corner sharply and saw her destination just two houses down. Another memory flashed behind her eyes as she leaned her bike against their mailbox, hurrying up the sidewalk to the front door.
As she left footprints in the fresh dusting of snow, in her mind she was sitting in her mom’s small office at school with Celeste, her mom beaming at them and clapping as if in slow motion, a photo of seashells tacked to the wall behind her.
As Ava knocked on the door, the sound of footsteps approaching on creaky floorboards, she allowed her mind to rest on the doll.
A few weeks ago, Celeste had convinced Ava to sneak up to the attic with her to search for their Ouija board and try to contact Celeste’s recently passed cat, Melvin.
“Ava? What are you doing here?”
Mrs Tate asked softly, her arms crossed to keep warm.
They to re through old boxes, lifting worn cardboard flap sand pulling out old textbooks and trinkets.
“Is Agent Tate home, please? I need to speak with him.”
“Come in dear, it’s freezing out there.” She turned and hollered, “Franklin! Can you come down here!”
“Look at this !” Celeste yelled from across the attic, laughing as she held up an old, dirty doll with a single red pig tail.
Agent Tate came bounding downstairs.
“What is – oh, hi Ava!” he said when he saw her.
“Agent Tate, I need to tell you something. It’s about Abigail Grace.” She couldn’t wait for Celeste. He became serious. “Did you find something when you were hanging posters?”
“I think I’ve found her,” Ava blurted out, her breath coming heavy, her stomach twisting.
“…Found her? What do you –” He trailed off as the scene in Ava’s mind finished playing out like a movie... She took the doll from Celeste, dropping the photo she’ d been looking at of a woman with a young girl, an dr an her fingers over the doll’ s lopsided hair. Laughing, she said ,“What a tragic haircut, poor doll.” “It’ s so ugly, isn’ t it ?” Celeste laughed as foot steps creaked up the attic ladder. As she fingered the ragged edges of bright red yarn hair, a shriek erupted from the ladder. “It old you to never come up here !” Ava felt he doll slip through her fingers as it was ripped away.
“I think I’ve found her,” Ava repeated, shaking her head back and forth as the memory faded, faint red blotches forming as her face scrunched up, tears threatening to explode.
“It’s me. I’m Abigail Grace.”
VISUALS SHIFTED IN HER BRAIN, AS IF SHE WAS PUTTING TOGETHER A PUZZLE BUT DIDN’T YET KNOW IF THE BOX HAD ALL THE PIECES