One of the worst things that can happen to a mother is if one of her children disappears.
But in Mary's case, she has two other children to take care of and must give everything to stay as strong as possible for them. And even though a mother will never truly stop looking, at some point she has to find a way to make peace with it.
With years, or even decades passing, wounds will heal and the memory will fade, but when the police get an unexpected tip nearly 40 years after Mary's son's disappearance, it changes everything...
The phone rang loudly through Mary's empty house. "Who could it be? At this time none the less". Mary picked up the phone and muffled a nervous hello. She was taken aback when the men on the other side of the line introduced himself as a police officer. What could he want from her?
There was only one thing Mary could think of. Could this have to do with Joshua somehow? After all those years she had given up hope completely. At least that's what she thought, but apparently, with one call from the police, it is again all she could think about...
Mary tries to calm herself down, but then the police tell her they got a tip-off. Mary's heart nearly stops when she hears who gave them the tip and she immediately rushes to the police station...
But to better understand Mary's reaction, we have to start at the beginning of the story...
Mary is a now-elderly woman living on the east coast of America. She has only recently moved, having come all the way from the west coast. But what inspired this big move at such an old age? The story that leads up to this big event and change is incredible.
As one might expect, Mary’s story starts on the west coast, with Mary only being 18 years old. She had just met the love of her life in Peter. The first time Mary saw her boyfriend to be, she could not keep her eyes off of him and when Peter noticed this, he was ready to act on it.
Peter was a couple of years Mary’s senior. He had been around the block and while he was Mary’s first real relationship, she definitely was not his first. This meant that even though Mary wanted to take some things slowly, Peter didn't want to wait for some of the pleasures of a relationship…
Even though Mary might not have felt fully ready for a relationship like this yet, she did enjoy it a lot more than expected. They ended up having a lot of fun together. But it is possible that they were having a little too much fun. Without the proper protection…
Mary got pregnant. This was absolutely not what she and Peter had planned for. They were both still so young and didn’t intend on having children for years. They spent a lot of time thinking and discussing the situation. After weeks of going back and forth, they made their decision.
They decided to keep the baby. Mary would move in with Peter and they rushed to get their life in order. It put a lot of stress on their still relatively new relationship, but they seemed to weather the storm somehow. Nine months later, their son Joshua was born. Mary’s whole life changed.
All the stress, anger, and struggle from the past months seemed to just flow out of Mary. She fell head over heels in love with her little angel. She had never been this happy. It might have come a lot sooner than expected, but this was the life she had always envisioned for herself.
The first two years felt like surprisingly smooth sailing. Peter had found a job in the harbor which sadly meant that he could not be home much, but it did pay just enough for the couple to keep their head above water. Still, it definitely was not easy for the couple financially.
Mary and Peter seemed to have developed a somewhat steady relationship with her putting the focus on raising Joshua, while Peter was mostly working to put food on the table. They knew they had everything they needed, even if they didn’t necessarily have everything they wanted. But their relationship was about to hit another unexpected big speed bump.
Mary got pregnant again. With one child, it was already very difficult for the couple to make ends meet. But with another child, this would become nearly impossible. For the next couple of weeks, they were trying to come up with other ways to make money, but there was yet another surprise for them.
About halfway through the pregnancy with the couple yet to figure out how they would make things work financially, Mary had to go to the doctor again for a check-up. She did not think much of it but the doctor would have some very unexpected, and possibly unwelcome news for her...
The doctor told Mary that she was not just having one baby, but two! Twins! The feeling of joy and financial stress were going back and forth in her head. But the positives did heavily outweigh the negatives for her. Peter, however, saw it a little differently. He was not happy at all!
He didn’t see having two more children as a possibility. There was no way they could make that work and he predicted that it would affect their life very negatively. Mary was furious about Peter’s reaction and they got into a big argument that ended in a surprising suggestion from Peter.
The only solution Peter saw was for Mary would get an abortion. Maybe at a later date, they could think about having children again, but this was not the time in his eyes. Mary wanted to hear nothing about this possibility but then Peter came with a shocking ultimatum for her…
It was him or the twins. If Mary decided to keep the children he would leave her. Mary was stunned by this unexpected ultimatum but Peter was very firm with his demand. When the gravity of the ultimatum really got through to Mary, she had no hesitation in her answer.