Never be the same

Chapter fifteen: Hope

The girl's houses are being too quiet. The endless laughs are gone. The situation going on doesn't match with the hot weather which describes their lives before as full of fun and happy moments.

Now it's turned into a cold forever lasting winter for them. Everyone is at their houses. Only Zak and Leo are going to school since one of them has to take notes for later and one of them is trying to forget about his argument with his girlfriend...

The teenagers are being called one by one to the police station. They all share whatever they remember about that night.

Two days later Mrs. Shelden gets called to the police department. The always elegant dressed mother looks terrible for the first time. She doesn't even have a bit of make up on her pale face. She grabs her keys and heads to the police.

On the doorway she feels coldness running through her whole body. As she goes in, Officer Janet greets her and takes Mrs. Shelden to her office. She makes a hand gesture to Shelden as she goes to her seat.

"How are you doing Mrs. Shelden?"

"Not good. Tell me! Did you find my girl? Did you find my daughter?"

"Unfortunately, not yet but we've been looking at the cameras that Rachel has shown to. The last place where she was seen is the coffee shop near the bridge that is at the end of the city. Do you have any ideas why would she go there?"

"No! She would never go there at that time. Maybe she was meeting up with someone?"

"Who do you think that she will meet at this time and there? Do you have someone in mind?"

"Isn't finding the suspects your job, Mrs. Officer? Just find my daughter already!"

"Yes, Mrs. Shelden. But it would be easier to find them if you share with us your thoughts since you know Rachel."

A tall woman knocks on the door and goes in as she hands a couple of documents to Janet.

"Ah, Kayla! Just in time! This is Mrs. Shelden, Rachel's mom."

"Hello. I'd like to ask you some questions about an item that we found, Mrs. Shelden. Would you come to my office?"

"Yes, let's go."

As they leave Janet's office she starts reading the documents that Kayla brought. She sees that these pieces of paper are Rachel's friends statement documents. She reads each of them and makes up her mind that they have nothing to do with Rachel's lost.

"So, Mrs. Shelden I suppose that Officer Janet told you about the cameras that we looked at, right?"

"Yes, she did. What did you find? Why don't you find my daughter?"

"Please be calm, Mrs. We are doing our best to find her, I can assure you! So we looked around that coffee shop and didn't found anything significant until we started looking near the bridge."

"Are you telling me that Rachel jumped of the bridge? Impossible! She would never do it! That's just impossible!"

"No, no she didn't, well we don't know yet but we found a phone under the bridge."

She pulls out an evidence bag from the cabinet that has a phone in it. She hands it to Mrs. Shelden wondering if it really is Rachel's.

The investigations around the bridge are still ongoing without knowing if they'll find something important but finding this phone might even help to find out what exactly happened to Rachel.

"Is this Rachel's phone, Mrs. Shelden? You can open the bag if you want."

The desperate mother grabs the bag. While looking at it she sits to the chair and tears run down through her red eyes. She doesn't want to believe what she sees. At this point she would even prefer to not find anything about her daughter but seems like it's too late.