40 years After Her Son Vanished, Somebody Tips Police To Look In A Very Unexpected Place
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.
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!
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.
There was no way she was giving up the twins. If Peter wanted to walk out on them, that was on him. Peter had hoped it would not come to this but, if anything, he was a man of his word. So he started to pack up his things and make plans that very same day.
It took only a few weeks to get everything in order and then Peter left them. For good. He moved to a different city and left Mary in the dark about which one this was. All she knew was that it was far away from her. This might seem surprising but Peter felt he was left with no other choice.
In her anger, Mary had also forbidden Peter from seeing their son ever again. The fact that Peter did not seem to make a big fuss about this only confirmed to Mary that it was the right decision to let him walk away. She would now have to find a way to make it on her own.
Mary decided to move back in with her parents. This way her mother could look after Joshua and the soon-to-be-born twins, while Mary found a job or maybe two to take care of her little family. Her parents were very sympathetic to the situation and didn’t even charge her any rent so she could start saving.
The twins were born a couple of months later in good health. It was a difficult labor period but Mary made it through. All the pain, struggles, and other difficulties she faced over the past couple of months just seemed to fade away in an instant when she saw her precious little angels.
Joshua was almost 3 years old and was fascinated by his new siblings. He was always around them when they were home and Mary was so happy that he seemed to like them. In her eyes, this was the beginning of a new and happier family without Peter. She was looking forward to the future.
With her parents watching the kids and Mary being able to save a lot of the money she was making from her two jobs, things finally started to look up for her. But, just when things started to look up, something bad happened again. Seemingly nothing could go well for her. And this setback was one she may never recover from.
Only a few days after his 4th birthday, Joshua went missing. While Mary was at work and her parents were busy with the Twins, Joshua suddenly disappeared. He was playing in the garden at the time, as he would often do so. But when Mary’s parents went to check on him, he was gone.
Mary’s parents immediately went to ask everybody in the neighborhood. Nobody seemed to have seen him or noticed anything. So they called the police. Mary went into a blind panic when she got the call from her parents and rushed home from work in the middle of her shift, not thinking of any potential consequences.
Mary called everyone she knew and all of her attention was going to the search for Joshua. This, however, brought other problems along. She was spending so much effort looking for Joshua that she wasn’t going to work. This put her at risk of losing her jobs and thus her income. And on top of that, her parents weren’t able to care for the twins all the time.
Mary’s mother had gotten sick only days after Joshua had gone missing. She had no other family to take care of her and so a lot of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of Mary’s father. But this did severely limit the time he could watch the twins and none of them could afford a babysitter.
Mary had a terribly difficult decision to make. It was obvious that she was never going to stop looking for Joshua until he was found, but she couldn’t let him be her only focus. Even though she really wanted him to be. She needed to be able to be there for her twins as well as provide for them.
She had to trust that the police would do their jobs. They promised her that they would do everything in their power to find Joshua. Mary herself had to get back to work and to the twins. Otherwise, she was at risk of losing everything she had worked so hard for.
With a hurting heart and an inability to focus on anything, she tried to get back to work. Her bosses gave her as much time as they could to let her get back in the swing of things considering the circumstances. Mary really tried to make an effort for this but it was very difficult.
Her mind just kept wandering off to Joshua: “What had happened to him? Where could he be? How had she let this happen?” Even though her bosses felt very bad for Mary, after a while, Mary was simply let go because both of her bosses felt that she was no longer working. Mary couldn’t even bring herself to care.
The next couple of years consisted of Mary moving from job to job, just trying to do the best she could while still holding out the hope that Joshua would return at some point. To her knowledge, the police had never stopped looking. But as the years passed, she knew that their efforts must have decreased considerably.
After four years without Joshua, with the twins now having to go to school, Mary finally forced herself to start to move on and make progress in her life again. The police had stopped their last efforts almost a year ago and Mary somehow found a way to accept it within herself that she would never see Joshua again.
She managed to land a new job. A good job. It was the first full-time job she’d ever had. Between it and taking care of her twins, she didn’t have much time to think about anything else. Then, Mary got the chance she had been waiting for for a very long time…
She was offered a long-term contract by the company, meaning she would finally have some stability again in her life, allowing her to build further. This also gave her the ability to move out of her parent’s house and get a place for her and the twins. But, the memory of Joshua still haunted her…
She kept wondering if she had done enough to find him. If she’d had the right priorities at the time. If there was something she’d missed. The twins were now also getting to an age where she needed to tell them about him. They were way too young to have a memory of Joshua, but they still deserved to know.
With her newfound stability in life and the twins needing less and less taking care of, Joshua started popping into Mary’s mind more and more again. She even made some calls to the police to see if they ever found anything, but the answer always disappointed her. It would be this way for the foreseeable future…
Many more years passed. The twins grew up and moved out of the house. They found partners and began living their lives. To Mary’s incredible disappointment, these lives took them both out of state. They would call a lot, but she barely got to see them anymore. Her whole life felt empty.
Mary spent most of her days alone and at home. After retiring two years previously, she struggled to fill the days. She did not have many friends left in the area and also had not made any new friends. She began to dread the rest of her days. Then, she got a call that could potentially change everything…
The phone rang. On the other end, was a policeman who introduced himself to Mary. Mary was confused. Why were the police calling her? The policeman explained that they had gotten a very noteworthy call from another police department across the country. The information involved Mary, but more importantly, her son Joshua!
Mary’s heart did a flip-flop when she heard that name and her voice began to tremble. Of course, she had never forgotten Joshua. But any hope she’d had that he would be found had been abandoned many, many years ago. The policeman explained that somebody had come forward with more information…
Mary barely seemed to hear the police officer on the other end of the line. She was still in that shock from the news that they had found new information about Joshua. But then, she heard the name of the person who had come forward and given the tip in question. She woke up immediately!
The policemen proclaimed that Peter, her ex-husband and the father of her children, had shown up at a police station across the country and told them that he wanted to make a confession. The guilt of what he had done had been eating away at him for many years now.
Mary had not taken a breath since she had heard Peter’s name. She waited with baited breath for the rest of the story. The policeman continued. Peter supposedly admitted that it was him who had taken Joshua, all those years ago. He had known when Mary was at work and had waited for a moment when Joshua was alone.
Peter had decided to drive up to the house when he saw that Joshua was playing in the garden by himself. Unsurprisingly, Joshua had gotten in the car with him without much hesitation. He had missed his dad and didn’t think anything bad could happen if he just went for a drive with him.
Peter was overcome with the idea that he might never see his son again and figured that this was the only way to get him back. He took Joshua to his newly acquired house across the country, where nobody knew either him or Joshua. They were able to build their own life away from it all.
Of course, Joshua wondered why he could not see his mother anymore but apparently, Peter had always made sure that Joshua never saw this as a problem. Peter had not told police how he did this but Mary would soon find out what this devil of an ex-husband had told her son.
With Joshua now having moved out of his dad’s house many years ago, Peter was alone. Alone with his guilt. And eventually, it all became too much for him to take. He knew that he would need to go to the police and tell them about everything that had happened.
Upon hearing this confession, the police arrested him and went about contacting Mary to verify everything that he had been telling them. Everything started to make sense now to her, but a lot of questions still remained. She was still angry and upset. And Peter had one more confession to make…
He told them that if they were going to contact Mary, they ought to know where Joshua was living now, so she could finally see him again after all those years. He had always told Joshua that Mary never wanted to see either of them ever again, and Joshua had always believed him.
With this information, there was not even enough time in Mary’s mind to be as mad at Peter as she should have been. There was only one thing she could think of, and that was getting in contact with Joshua. Because she was afraid that she would not be able to explain herself over the phone to him, she had to try something else.
She decided to book the first plane she could get. She packed her essentials and went off to the airport. Almost 20 hours of total travel later, and with it being now almost 8 o’clock at night, she stood in front of what was supposedly Joshua’s house. Had Peter given the right address?
Mary saw lights on in the house and knew someone was home. She rang the doorbell and after a couple of seconds, a young boy of about twelve opened the door. Mary immediately teared up when she saw him. While it wasn’t Joshua, he looked so much like Joshua!
With a trembling voice, Mary asked if the boy’s dad was home. The kid nodded and yelled inside for his dad. Mary heard footsteps approaching and within seconds, she was greeted by a tall and handsome man obviously in his forties. He greeted Mary and asked how he could help her.
With tears streaming down her face, Mary asked if his name was Joshua. The man raised an eyebrow. “Yes, that is me, but how did you know my name?” he asked. With Mary now barely able to control her emotions, she replied: “Joshua, my name is Mary, I am your mother.”
Joshua’s jaw dropped and he was completely speechless. Mary, too, wasn’t sure what to say at first. After a few moments, the silence was broken by the little boy yelling “Grandma!” and giving Mary a hug. Still stuck with confusion, Joshua invited Mary in. They had a lot to talk about over the next couple of hours.
Mary easily had enough proof of her claim and had no problem convincing Joshua that what Peter had told him growing up was all lies. Joshua had always suspected that something was not right with the situation, but had no idea how to go about fixing it or getting back in contact with his mother. Until now…
Joshua came to the radical idea of Mary moving into the empty house on their street. He wanted to make up for lost time with his mother. Since Mary no longer had any bindings to where she was currently living, she immediately complied with the idea.
This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment. Characters and events are the products of the author’s imagination. The images shown are used for illustration only.