What Happened to Nina?

by Dervla McTiernan

The certainty in my head was leaving me, and I didn’t want it to go. I wanted to be in the world where I found my girl and I held her and kissed her warm head and called an ambulance and I was her mother and she was hurt but the kind of hurt that I could make better.

Nina was a pretty girl. Pictures of her would get the media interested. They would have to use that. They’d have to use whatever would help.

My whole philosophy assumed that they had no challenges of their own. That their world outside our house was smooth and simple, and because of that I had made our home a place where they could expect to be pushed and challenged and questioned, instead of loved and cared for and reassured. Nina hadn’t trusted me. That was the truth. She didn’t come to me with her problems. She didn’t ask me for help. And that was my fault.

If this story got national attention (and I thought it would, if only because Nina was so goddamn photogenic), then Simon’s future, and ours, was going to be decided on Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube. Opening arguments were already being made in the court of public opinion and there were no attorneys involved.

“These guys said that you can’t stop this kind of thing when it starts. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole. They said the only real option is to flood the field with moles of our own.”

I learned what I’m sure many frightened parents had learned before me. Explaining things to other people and dealing with their reactions forces you to deal with the enormity of the situation.

Nina’s our daughter, but you hoard information as if it doesn’t impact us. Like we’re just spectators on the sideline. When your investigation is over you’ll just move on with your life, but this is our life. Why don’t you get that?”

I had a pain in my heart. That boy had hurt my girl, and she hadn’t loved herself enough to walk away. And she hadn’t trusted me enough to come to me.

Simon wasn’t a murderer. He was a kid who’d made a mistake. That was it. I told myself I believed it. I did believe it. I just couldn’t stop thinking about that bruise on the left side of Nina’s face. The thoughts rolled around and around in my head. Andy Fraser had said that if I’d spent more time with my son, none of this would have happened, but that was bullshit. No amount of parenting could prevent an accident. And that’s what this was. An accident. An accident. An accident.

“Look, to build a conspiracy theory, you need to feed two appetites. The first appetite is that people want to feel like they’re in the know. Like they’re smarter than someone else. They want to have the latest twist or little bit of information that they can pull out when their smart-ass, know-it-all brother or sister or friend or colleague starts to talk. Just to be clear, it doesn’t matter if that piece of information is correct or not. Nobody trusts facts anymore; it doesn’t matter if the source for the information is an expert in their field or some bottom dweller living in his momma’s basement. They’ll get equal weighting online.”

people want to feel safe. No one out there really wants to believe that Leanne and Andy Fraser are good parents. No one wants to think that they’re innocent. Because if they are, and if Nina is equally blameless, then that means that Nina’s disappearance is completely random. And people don’t really want to believe that, not deep down. Because if bad things happen to good people, and it’s all completely unpredictable, what’s to stop it from happening to them too? People would much rather believe that the Frasers did something to deserve this.”

I tried to shake it off. I tried to smile at him. But there was another part of me. It was the part that felt sick when I was fourteen years old and my dad’s friend looked at me for a little bit too long. It was the part of me that knew to avoid the skeevy guy who was looking for a roommate at rent that seemed too good to be true. The part of me that saw it coming just a second too late when the bar manager at my old job cornered me in the basement. That part of me was saying that something wasn’t right.

But when people shout about their prayers it makes me wary. Probably because the people I’ve known who talk most about God have always been the people with the least humanity.

You put everything into your kid. Your love for each other, your hopes and dreams for the future. And then some predator comes along and destroys not only your precious child, but everything that made you you.

Basically, the rule is that you have to talk about your kid as if he’s something between a mild and a serious inconvenience to the life you actually want to live. What you are not allowed to say is that they are the light and purpose you live for. Not, at least, unless you lose them. Then you can say anything you want. You can tell the truth. What are the social rules when your child is a murderer?

I wept at that. The words hurt so much. Returned to me. I’d dreamed of that, of having my girl handed back to me. My girl. Not her body. Not just her cold remains.