Prologue
Now, I don’t know what to do now that you’re not here
I don’t know how to love, don’t know how to feel,
But I don’t want to believe
I believe in you
I believe in you
Sully
I don’t live in the dark. I know that I have been dealt a shitty hand. I play it though and move forward. I don’t want to own stock in pain. I don’t want my pain to be worse than another’s, or my story to be harsher. I don’t want any of it. It’s just what I was given in life.
I mourn her every minute of the day. In sleep, in work, and in fun. At every turn, I see the cherub grin and deep brown curls of the love of my life. Kace Deja Sullivan was almost three when she vanished from my life.
There was never closure, only acceptance. My little girl had become a statistic. Every forty seconds here in the United States, a person is abducted. Statistically, eighty-five to ninety percent of those abductions is a child. Twenty-four percent of that is a non-family abduction. Most common in this type of abduction is females. They sometimes involve use of a firearm or other weapon, and involve sexual abuse. About twenty percent of the children reported missing to the FBI are not found alive. That is an estimate of one in ten thousand.
Most murders occur within three hours of abduction and those abductions are within 75 miles from the home. I stopped reading the statistics after three years because there wasn’t a double-digit percentage for being found alive.
My daughter Kace is believed to be one in ten thousand.
Deja and I became the typical divorced statistic most common to couples that experience the loss of a child. We were on rocky ground before the abduction, so in the end, there was no saving us. Deja was able to go on with life and I resent her for it.
I can’t sleep and at times it suffocates me. She has moved on, remarried, and even had another child. I was breaking in half by her loss. Ruined by the shattered pieces of that life. I could not rebound or recover from it.
I tried to get help. I joined a group for mourning parents, parents with missing or endangered children, but nothing helped because I don’t have answers. I was there. It was a party at the shop I owned with Deja. Everyone knew and loved Kace, yet there were no witnesses. I had left after a fight with Deja and went to my folks to cool down.
Deja left with Cordell, the artist we hired a few months prior to that fateful Halloween, and also the man sleeping with my wife. In everything that happened that night, her affair meant nothing to me. I don’t blame Deja solely. I place that blame on me. I even told the FBI Agent, Sorell, that I deserved to be charged for leaving without ensuring she was safe.
Nothing was ever charged against me, but I blame myself, I blame Deja… I blame everyone because I lost everything. Now, I coast through life like a zombie. I go through the motions. I feel pain, loss, and sadness. I have also felt laughter, happiness, and the ever-constant love of family and friends. I acknowledge them. I acknowledge the life I live now and try to go on for her. I didn’t ask for this, it was the hand dealt, and my new normal.
I still contact Agent Sorell every morning. I have a few private investigators that I hired four years ago after feeling that the FBI wasn’t as invested as I was, but nothing ever comes back. I finally moved to Gig Harbor, Washington, three years ago to start over. My closest friends from childhood lived there and had become my biggest support team.
I promise her twenty times a day that I will find her, bury her, and bring her peace. I feel it in my heart that she is gone forever. I know it, but for the love of God, I need the proof of it in order to go on, and I fear it will never come.
That is how I survive. I don’t know how to start this story. I am not complete. I am not able or willing to fall in love again. I have issues rivalingMaxim Magazineand there isn’t a woman alive who could penetrate the steel bars around my heart.
But there is one woman who is determined to try. I guess in there, the story lies. Proceed with caution. Heed that warning because there is no way you will walk this line with me and end up unscathed.
