That night, around eight o’clock, I arrived home and retrieved my mail, which was most­ly junk, except for a white enve­lope lack­ing a return address. My name appeared to be typed with an old man­u­al type­writer and was post­marked from Hopps Fer­ry, New Hamp­shire. Inside was a pho­to of Aidan, my future son-in-law, look­ing fif­teen pounds heav­ier and smil­ing along­side an unknown young woman dressed casu­al­ly, with her arm draped around his waist. The image bore a hand­writ­ten mes­sage: “WHERE IS DAWN TAGGART???”, which sparked imme­di­ate con­cerns in me.

Ini­tial­ly, I had a few doubts about Aidan, like the sto­ry behind his black eye. How­ev­er, I trust­ed my daugh­ter’s judg­ment of him as a smart and respon­si­ble woman. The pho­to unset­tled me, main­ly because it raised ques­tions about Aidan’s con­nec­tion with Dawn Tag­gart, who I sus­pect­ed was the girl in the pic­ture. Con­fused, I called my daugh­ter Mag­gie, who sur­pris­ing­ly answered. She appeared pre­oc­cu­pied, giv­en the wed­ding was in three days, but this tone shift­ed when I explained the pho­to and mes­sage.

After a long pause, Mag­gie divulged that last year, Aidan had dat­ed a young woman named Dawn Tag­gart, who went miss­ing after a hike. Dawn was from Hopps Fer­ry, and despite Aidan being cleared by the police—proven to be in Boston at the time—her moth­er had blamed him. Mag­gie instruct­ed me to pre­serve the enve­lope and pho­to as evi­dence, as it was like­ly sent by Dawn’s moth­er seek­ing to harass Aidan’s fam­i­ly for mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion.

Fur­ther dis­cus­sions raised doubts about Dawn’s fate; a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor sug­gest­ed she might have inten­tion­al­ly dis­ap­peared to escape her trou­bled rela­tion­ship with her moth­er. I felt uneasy about the sit­u­a­tion, recall­ing my own roman­tic expe­ri­ences and real­iz­ing that Mag­gie might be over­look­ing Aidan’s flaws. After the call, I researched Dawn’s dis­ap­pear­ance, find­ing a local news arti­cle that con­firmed Mag­gie’s sto­ry but not­ed the lack of Aidan’s involve­ment.

Reluc­tant­ly, I sealed the pho­to and enve­lope in a Ziploc bag for the upcom­ing trip to New Hamp­shire, sup­press­ing my wor­ries to focus on the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tions ahead. My excite­ment for the fes­tiv­i­ties and my daugh­ter’s future over­shad­owed my increas­ing sense that some­thing was amiss.