Daughter's Drawings by Nick Botic

Author:Nick Botic [Botic, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

Nine

I

Three months had passed since we’d received the tape, the contents of which stayed at the forefront of my mind’s eye day in and day out. I wanted to know who the girl was...I wanted her parents to have closure, however painful it might be to learn of their daughter’s fate.

The end of the month quickly approached, and Katie’s birthday with it. For her eighth birthday party, she had elected to have an arts and crafts-themed party, something which every bone in my body told me to object to, but not wanting to disappoint my daughter and not wanting to submit under the boot of our aggressor, I acquiesced, and we set up the party she asked for.

Her birthday that year fell on a Saturday, so we had her party on the day of, and all of her friends showed up, piling gifts and cards on a table under a pop-up canopy. My wife and I both helped Katie host the party with our heads on swivels, but we felt at least a modicum of security with the number of parents who had stayed for the party instead of simply dropping their kids off as others had. A guest with whom no one was familiar would stick out, and we knew that if nothing else, our stalker liked his anonymity.

Our backyard was bustling for the better part of the afternoon, with different stations set up for different art projects. The party was the spurred all the children into fervent creative action, with all eleven in attendance having what appeared to be a wonderful time painting, drawing, and making jewelry. They ran around our backyard and through our house; the liveliness of the day proved to ease our perpetual stress, however minimally.

Katie had made the final decision on the food that would be offered at her party, landing on a spread of hot dogs, burgers, brats, pizza, and mashed potatoes. The kids sat on either side of two long folding tables and ate, each of them trying to finish their meals as quickly as possible in order to get to the main attraction - the dessert.

We’d told Katie that she could have whatever cake she wanted. We presented her with a variety of options from yellow to chocolate to confetti, with chocolate frosting or vanilla or fruit-filled, with characters on it or not, but our daughter had chosen to go a different route - cupcakes. A local bakery that specialized in cupcakes large enough to be meals in and of themselves had filled our order - thirty-six cupcakes of a variety of flavors and combinations. Kimmy had set them up at the end of the food table, a multi-tiered display of sugary heaven that the kids had wanted to invade so fiercely that we needed to have a parent stationed to protect it.

And once that table had become a barren wasteland of crumbs and wrappers, it was time for the main attraction of any child’s birthday party: presents. Kimmy, Alex, and

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