They're not dead, they're just behind the compost pile

A close friend, whose children are good buds with mine, invited us over for a birthday party. It was an uncharacteristically warm day in mid-November and after cake the kids went outside to play. Their house is at the front of their lot and the backyard slopes downhill away from the dwelling. The sandbox is situated under the apple trees and the play house (another favorite play area) is a few feet away on a concrete slab. The 4 1/2 year old children played while the moms cleaned up, looked at the garden, and visited on benches in the yard. When it was nap time for the two year old siblings, the mommies went inside to tuck the toddlers in. My close friend's husband who had been playing with the older kids followed us in to get ready to go back to work. After laying the wee ones down we began gabbing and suddenly realized that our older kids were still outside unsupervised. We went outside calling to them, which we had done many times, usually eliciting a response, and only heard eerie silence. As we called several more times, pausing to hear the munchkin voices respond, being left instead in silence, we began to worry. "What little stinkers, they're probably hiding", my friend hopefully interjected. We opened every cupboard, closet, and checked under each bed. No kids. I went upstairs and out to the street looking in bushes and peering through the underbrush of the deserted lot down the street. The other child's father ran up and down the street yelling for his son. At this point, trying to remain calm and collected, I asked my friend to call the police. She dialed the number and gave them the required information while I began to cry. Hiding my tears and trying to smooth the waver in my voice, every time I yelled, I continued searching for my sweet darling daughter. After scouring every shrub, every shadowed hiding place, for what seemed like an eternity, I stopped and stood in the street feeling the hysteria creep from the edges of my body, centering in the pit of my stomach. I felt like I might be sick thinking about what my father (who used to be a police officer) had planted in my mind. "If you are taken, you have almost no chance of surviving," he had reiterated again and again. "You must fight with everything you have, never get in the car, and run (because your chance of getting taken is much less than the certainty that you will die if you leave the scene of an attempted abduction)." What chance did a 4 year old have to survive in the case of an abduction. So helpless, so innocent...the scenarios played out in my head like a sick horror film. My thoughts went to a happier thought that we lived in Corvallis. A town of 50,000. Was something so awful as two 4 year old babies abducted by a pedophile or kidnapper in Corvallis likely to happen? NO!, not likely...Probably not likely. So where were they. Then my mind went to Brooke. 19. Sweet. Knowledgeable. Full of hope. I had known Brooke as a young girl and as the case of her disappearance had unfolded, the shocking nature of the crime had rocked me, unsettling beliefs of justice and familial/community protection. I couldn't think of what to do to find or save my daughter. Feeling the desire to take action I began knocking on neighbors doors. At the moment I knocked on a neighbor's door, I heard my friend say, "kids are you there?" She looked at me and said, "I think I hear one of them,". I ran into the yard and began yelling frantically. I then saw two faces appear from behind the compost bin. "We found a good hiding spot," my daughter said. "I'm glad you found us because it was getting stinky back there," my friend's son said. I was so relieved I couldn't stop the waterfall of tears that cascaded down my face. I grabbed my daughter and hugged the breath out of her, sobbing into her lavender scented hair. Breathing in her wonderful aroma I suddenly felt angry and didn't know whether to spank her or continue smothering her.

After tucking in the two older kids with books, cozy blankets, and special snugglies, my friend and I debriefed. Humorously she told me how when she had described what the kids were wearing. She first described her sons outfit as a red and white striped shirt, jeans, and boots. When they asked what the other child was wearing she said, "exactly the same thing." We had inadvertently dressed them in the same outfit.