I racked my brain for her name all day. Her first name was Joanie. I may never remember her last name, but her face unchanged by the years will never leave me.
I was a weekend wife. I commuted from my job in Seattle to Beaverton, Oregon on the weekends. The truth is I was always a weekend wife. That and the fact that I married a man I didn’t love, contributed to the failure of my marriage. At any rate, we had a great apartment in a small kind of exclusive complex.
Joanie was a nurse in a nearby hospital. She was a short woman in her forties. She talked fast and had a slow smile. Sometimes you just meet someone and you know you are going to be friends. When I was unloading my car to move in to the apartment Joanie walked right up and introduced herself. My oldest daughter was almost two and Joanie swooped her up and carried her as we talked. Later I would understand, that my daughter had drawn Joanie to us. She loved kids.
We became instant friends. She was capable and funny and filled with information. This woman was totally detail oriented. She never missed anything. She was a watcher and a question asker. We played racquetball a couple of times, but mostly we talked.
We talked about my job. We talked about her job. We talked about men and books and my daughter. Joanie had been a nurse in Vietnam. She told me stories that were both funny and sad. I don’t think I ever met any other women that had been there.
She never told me about her daughter. I saw the flyers in the laundry room. A little girl missing for 4 years….long dark hair…big brown eyes…I think she was 11 when she disappeared. Joanie had mentioned her daughter but not that she was gone.
That afternoon I asked about it. Joanie was almost matter of fact, like she had answered these questions a thousand times… Her little girl had been riding her bike. The bike was found at a local Fred Meyers store. Her ex husband lived in the area and was not a suspect. The police had given up.
Joanie was still looking. She worked overtime to continue to pay private detectives. She had been in touch with profilers and a local crime writer. She put fliers out every week all over the area. She was in some sort of support group. She had newspaper clippings and books and maps and notes all related to the disappearance of children.
There were serial killers like the Green River guy at work in the Pacific Northwest. It was the tail end of Bundy’s reign of terror. She said her friends wanted her to give up, but she couldn't. I never suggested she forget or move on or let go. I thought that the search was keeping her alive.
If our children are our hearts, Joanie's heart had been ripped out by the stranger that had murdered her child.
When we moved into a house in Portland a few months later, my daughter disappeared from the backyard. I was watering the garden and she disappeared out of a fenced yard. I was paniced by the thought that she had been somehow taken by the same monster that took Joanie's daughter.
Just as I picked up the phone to call 911, I heard her laughter from underneath her plastic swimming pool. She hid for maybe 10 minutes while I walked right past her calling her name. I think those long moments of desperation and fear and icy terror were what Joanie felt all the time. I grabbed my daughter up and hugged her and cried. I was crying for relief. I was crying for my friend who was searching for her heart.
I lived in Beaverton in 1989. It has been over 20 years since that beautiful child disappeared. I guess real life doesn’t always have a happy ending. I am pretty sure that Joanie is still looking.
