A month shy of five years Bill and Sally had a visit from the FBI who gave them the news that their daughters were fine, not abducted and living in mid-state Connecticut with two men they left with voluntarily five years earlier. No reason given.
The following week a cab dropped Lori and Shelly off at their old home they hadn’t seen since their disappearance. Without knocking they walked in to the unlocked house and not seeing or hearing anyone went up to their old bedrooms. Nothing had changed. Dolls and stuffed animals still littered their beds and their clothes were in their walk-in closets.
They went down to the kitchen and picked through the refrigerator and checked out the cookie canister. Then they walked out to the back yard. Their parents, Bill and Sally were sitting by the pool and the lawn sloped down to Long Island Sound and their private beach in gentle rolls.
“Hi,” Lori said. “We’re home.”
Bill and Sally stood to greet the girls and Lori and Shelly walked down and they were hugged briefly and awkwardly. No kisses or words were exchanged and their father took his seat and motioned for them to sit.
For over four years the girls were thought of as being abducted and huge rewards were offered and every year on the anniversary of their going missing the local TV station did a segment on the family.
All this time they were living in trailers on five acres of land and were long haul truck drivers—, just as their men were. There was going to be a big to do in the newspaper and the local TV station about their return home—the prominence of their father insured that.
They gave a couple of small interviews, let the photographers take some pictures but said very little except that they weren’t abducted and were just ready for a change. They didn’t give the names of their boyfriends or tell where they’d been living.
Lori and Shelly moved back into the house without discussing it with their parents, who they now called Bill and Shelly, and stayed for a couple of months lounging by the pool, going to the Club with them, and even connecting with a few old friends.
They were solicitous of Bill and Shelly, cleaned up after themselves, made some family dinners, but never spoke of anything in depth. Bill and Shelly had become uncomfortable with this arrangement and one day at cocktail hour Bill asked his daughters what their plans were. “Are you planning to live here? What about work and do you plan to disappear again and leave us wondering?”
The girls said they’d hang around a bit more and wanted to marry their truck driver husbands and go back to living in their trailers in the woods. They said they had talked it over and would like to visit a couple of times a year, like on holidays and they were up for their parents visiting them but since their trailers were small they’d have to make do with day visits. Shelly told them that they would also like to get married and would like to do it in the backyard down by the water, something they dreamed of growing up.
Bill and Sally met their husbands-to-be and they turned out to be educated, well-spoken, and polite men a couple of years older than the girls.
The four of them wanted to plan their own wedding and offered to pay for it. Bill wouldn’t hear of them paying for their own wedding and gave them free reign with his caterers, entertainment booker and tent company.
For a wedding gift Bill and Sally gave each couple a double wide to replace their small mobile homes. True to their word, the girls came back yearly for brief visits, twice alone and once with their husbands. Bill and Sally made one day trip the first year to visit and that was enough for them.
