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Twenty one years.
Every month I change my big desk calendar to a new month, pick up my special pens and start marking important dates: birthdays, meetings, trips, and work events. Every May my pen hesitates at May 24 and think “Uh oh….here it is again.” May 24. The date I can’t ever forget.
Twenty one years ago, on May 24, my friend, Paige Renkoski, vanished. A trip to the airport, a visit, to a friend and a journey home turned into a never-ending nightmare for her family and friends. Twenty one years ago, many drivers on I-96 near Fowlerville saw Paige standing at the side of the expressway talking to a man or men, her car on the shoulder, a maroon van behind her car.
Twenty one years ago, police found Paige’s shoes and purse in the car, which was still running. But they’ve never found her.
Twenty one years of missed birthdays, Christmases, and holidays, of births and deaths, of joy and heartache. Life goes on whether one wants it to or not. But there is a small hole in mine and a bigger hole for Paige’s family. Because she’s not here and hasn’t been for twenty one years.
Paige and I were little girls together and endured the painful puberty years together (she was cute, perky, and vivacious while I was the poster child for the awkward age). She moved away when we were in seventh grade, just to the next town but it might as well have been across the country for all we managed to keep in touch. One’s circle is pretty small during the teenage years. But, while we and her other friends from our town, went our separate ways, she was still always there. I’d see her from time to time and we’d always pick right back up where we left off. In college I’d see her more often and the bond was always still there.
It had been a few years since I’d last seen Paige when my mother called me to tell me that “something weird has happened with Paige. Her car was found on the expressway but nobody knows where she is.” That was May 24, 1990. We all thought it was nothing, that she’d turn up with a plausible explanation. But that was twenty one years ago. And still nothing.
I came home. I went over to the Renkoskis’ house with a friend to see what I could do to help. I still shudder when I remember the creepy vibe I got from her coldly indifferent boyfriend who acknowledged my introduction by thrusting a fistful of posters at me to put up. He didn’t even look up. And, despite no evidence, some instinct in me thinks he was involved. I remember how frantic we all were in those first few days and how unreal it all seemed. How could this happen to Paige?
For twenty one years, we have been without the joy that was Paige. Joy is the only way to describe her. Paige radiated with joy. When I think of her I think of light and laughing. She had crazy ideas that she pulled us into. She made up dances in her basement and dragged us into them. She went through some tough times both physically and emotionally but she never lost her spirit or her optimism. On that ride to the airport she told her mother how she just felt everything finally coming together for her.
Twenty one years. The case has never died and, as I write, there is a team of dedicated detectives who have identified six possible suspects, and who are getting ready to use new high-tech equipment to search for Paige again. My emotions are so mixed when I think of that. We need the closure that finding Paige will give us. But I’m so afraid to know what she went through. I’ve kept that emotion in check for twenty one years.
For twenty one years someone has known what happened to Paige. Maybe more than one person. Someone knows there is a family in agony, that there are friends who grieve. From the bottom of my heart, I hope this monster is found so I can at last look him in the eye and tell him that I hope he rots in the bowels of Hell. Because he didn’t just destroy one life, he destroyed many. And those of us who loved Paige, who mourn her loss, who think of her daily will never forget. Just as we haven’t for twenty one years.
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