My daughter went missing in Egypt 20 years ago — Then one day, a postcard arrived that brought me to my knees
For twenty long years, I fell asleep every single night fully convinced that my baby girl was kidnapped right off our garden in Cairo. Then suddenly, a postcard landed in my mailbox. On one side of it, there was an Egyptian postmark, while on the other – the return address of some place located just three miles away from my Ohio home. At first, I thought it was just one more sick-minded prank by a person who wanted to reopen the painful wounds of my past. However, the information that I received after going to the address mentioned in the postcard made me realize that I have been cheated by one person whom I trusted my life.
The postcard itself was wild. It had that Cairo postmark, but the address written on the back was just a quick drive from my front door.
No greeting or a signature at the bottom of it, just a single sentence written in cramped block letters: “Come alone if you still want the truth about Tara.”
Tara was my daughter. She simply disappeared without a trace when she was eight years old while we were in Egypt. And now, twenty years later, here I am, driving a car towards this dodgy line of storage spaces for rent, with my heart pounding wildly inside my chest, reading the piece of paper lying next to me over and over again. I located unit number forty-two. I grasped the cold metallic doorknob, took a deep breath, bracing myself for whatever horror scene, and opened the door.
I collapsed straight down to the ground as I lost my knees.
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The woman sitting there on a folding plastic chair near a couple of cardboard boxes was an exact reflection of me, the same eyes, that’s for sure. And all she did was sit there and stare at me, as if trying to figure out for if she absolutely hated me or not.
“You came pretty fast, Cassidy,” she said while making direct eye contact with me.
By then, I had trouble getting enough air into my lungs to say anything else. “Tara?”
She began trembling slightly, but stayed seated without even moving an inch. “I just needed to know if you’s come or not,” she said.
Before you start getting a grip of the situation, you must know that the story dates back to twenty years ago. Back then, I was married to a man named Grant, who was a journalist. At one point, he got offered a very lucrative overseas position, and as a result, the entire family had to pack everything and leave for Egypt. There we found a rather comfortable second floor apartment above a beautiful courtyard garden, which Tara loved and where she played almost every afternoon. In that moment, I honestly believed that we were happy.
It all changed after that fateful Tuesday, when I kissed Tara goodbye and left for work. Grant chose to stay behind because he was going to write something that day. He told me: “Don’t worry; I’ll keep watch over her.”
But when I pulled up to the building that evening, there were police officers all over the place. It was then that Grant told how Tara got out in the garden to play, and the next moment, she was nowhere to be seen.
For weeks, we searched high and low for my baby girl, but to no avail. No sightings, no random tips, no Tara. She simply vanished. In public, Grant was an absolute wreck, crying, and telling everyone that this was his fault, but as soon as we were alone in the apartment, he’d go completely silent and wouldn’t utter a word. Finally, after a year of madness, we decided to leave everything behind and go back home without our child. Not surprisingly, our marriage crumbled very quickly afterward.
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Over the next twenty years, Grant basically turned our absolute worst tragedy into a full-blown career. He penned bestselling novels and delivered emotional lectures around the nation on grief and bereavement, while I remained home in suspended animation hoping for a miracle. That miracle showed up when that postcard landed in my mail slot.
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