Chap­ter 10 begins with my arrival home around eight o’clock at night. As I sort­ed through my mail, which most­ly con­sist­ed of junk, one white enve­lope caught my atten­tion. It had no return address, and the name was typed on it with what appeared to be an old man­u­al type­writer, a detail that seemed unusu­al. The enve­lope was post­marked from Hopps Fer­ry, New Hamp­shire. Inside, I found a pho­to of Aidan, my future son-in-law, look­ing about fif­teen pounds heav­ier than I remem­bered. He was smil­ing along­side a young woman I didn’t rec­og­nize, casu­al­ly dressed, with her arm around his waist. The pho­to was accom­pa­nied by a hand­writ­ten mes­sage that read: “WHERE IS DAWN TAGGART???” This sud­den, cryp­tic mes­sage stirred imme­di­ate con­cern and con­fu­sion in me.

At first, I had ques­tioned Aidan’s char­ac­ter only once or twice, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing the sto­ry behind his black eye. But I had always trust­ed my daugh­ter Maggie’s judg­ment, know­ing that she was a smart, respon­si­ble woman. The image and its mes­sage, how­ev­er, rat­tled me, par­tic­u­lar­ly because it seemed to impli­cate Aidan with some­one named Dawn Tag­gart, who I sus­pect­ed might be the woman in the pho­to. I need­ed answers, so I called Mag­gie right away. She picked up the phone, but her tone revealed that she was dis­tract­ed, like­ly due to the upcom­ing wed­ding in three days. Still, her demeanor shift­ed when I told her about the pho­to and the dis­turb­ing note that came with it.

After a long pause, Mag­gie revealed that Aidan had dat­ed a young woman named Dawn Tag­gart the pre­vi­ous year, who had gone miss­ing after a hik­ing trip. Dawn was from Hopps Fer­ry, and while Aidan had been cleared of any involve­ment by the police, who had con­firmed he was in Boston at the time, Dawn’s moth­er still blamed him for her dis­ap­pear­ance. Mag­gie advised me to hold onto the pho­to and enve­lope, sug­gest­ing it was like­ly sent by Dawn’s moth­er to harass Aidan’s fam­i­ly, pos­si­bly in hopes of gain­ing some form of com­pen­sa­tion. As the con­ver­sa­tion unfold­ed, doubts about Dawn’s dis­ap­pear­ance began to sur­face, espe­cial­ly after Mag­gie shared that a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor had sug­gest­ed Dawn might have inten­tion­al­ly dis­ap­peared to escape a trou­bled rela­tion­ship with her moth­er.

I felt a wave of unease wash over me as I lis­tened to Maggie’s account, recall­ing my own past rela­tion­ships and real­iz­ing that per­haps I was over­look­ing things about Aidan. While Mag­gie seemed con­vinced of Aidan’s inno­cence, I couldn’t shake the feel­ing that some­thing wasn’t quite right. After our con­ver­sa­tion, I searched for more infor­ma­tion about Dawn’s dis­ap­pear­ance and came across a local news arti­cle that con­firmed Maggie’s ver­sion of events but men­tioned that Aidan had been thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and was not involved in any way. Despite the con­fir­ma­tion, my unease lin­gered, and I won­dered if Mag­gie was tru­ly see­ing Aidan for who he was or if she was over­look­ing aspects of his past that could affect their future.

Reluc­tant­ly, I sealed the pho­to and enve­lope in a Ziploc bag, know­ing I had to take it with me to New Hamp­shire. I pushed my con­cerns to the back of my mind, focus­ing on the wed­ding and the cel­e­bra­tion of Maggie’s future instead. Yet, as the days passed, the more I tried to push aside my wor­ries, the more they crept back in. The excite­ment of the wed­ding and the joy of being with fam­i­ly over­shad­owed my increas­ing sense that some­thing wasn’t quite right. Despite my efforts to stay focused on the hap­pi­ness of the occa­sion, I couldn’t ignore the nag­ging feel­ing that the mys­tery of Dawn Tag­gart and its impli­ca­tions for Aidan were unre­solved, and that it would inevitably affect the fam­i­ly dynam­ics.