When Home Becomes Tragedy
All night, the fear. Tossing me from side to side on 600 thread-count cotton sheets that my future mother-in-law bought. 
Waking to think, if they arrested someone and didn’t find her, is she dead? Is that what they are looking for just barely beyond the woods that I can see at 2am from the window above my bed?
The prayers, “Help her. Help them. Help.”
A teenage girl has been missing from my hometown – the town where this farm lives – for 9 days. Alexis Murphy.
It has always seemed odd, no, selfish. It has always seemed selfish to me when people are more concerned, angry, involved in the tragedies that happen near their homes. Yet, now, I know. It’s not selfish. It’s home.
The place – the gas station where Ms. Murphy was taken I have stood in, I pass every time I go to the local Food Lion or Subway. The space of road where they got her last cellphone ping, the place they were searching last night, is not even a mile down the road onto which my driveway exits – Cannery Loop. I have driven by so many times wondering what they canned there.
Now I pray I will not drive by and hear that a young woman’s body was found there.
Yesterday, there was an accident at the end of my driveway. I called 911. An officer answered, ready to take tips in the abduction. I had nothing to give, only need. The deputy who arrived on the scene stayed only moments before racing off. . . perhaps to help with the arrest that has not – yet? – brought Alexis home.
Today, at 8:30, I hear there will be a press conference. I will watch. I will pray. Because this is my place, these are my people. Every one.