Echoes in the Darkness

Epilogue

It seemed that after the most massive police investigation in Pennsylvania history had been concluded, the thing to do would be to return to the lovely countryside near Downingtown where the trees are bronze and fire in Indian summer, and wild flowers riot on the hillsides, and haystacks are molded into huge bread loaves. Where one can watch young geese spiraling toward the sun, their sapphire heads glistening in the rays.

Susan Reinert and her children had had some happy times in the old springhouse near Pennypacker Road, hearing the wings of the young honkers cracking like spinnakers in the wind, watching the young birds bursting through pale plumes in the summer sky. It was not out of the question that the bones of Karen and Michael Reinert could be resting in a place like this. There was no harm in wishing it.

In the summer of 1986, Pat and Biv Schnures younger daughter Caitlyn was four years old, and Molly was nine by then, very tall like her parents.

Molly still had an old-fashioned rubber doll with blue eyes that used to belong to another little girl. All her life Molly had called that doll Karen, but she’d forgotten why she’d named her that.

When her mother asked Molly if she remembered the little girl who gave her that doll, she tried to recall her doll’s namesake. But Molly was growing up and dolls weren’t so important anymore.

It was just too hard for her to remember the other Karen. It seemed like such a long time ago.