But by the time the sun came up, it was clear my story contained at least several kernels of truth:
A social worker confirmed that Teddy Maxwell did, in fact, have the anatomy of a five-year-old girl.
A child named Flora Baroth was registered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Teddy Maxwell matched all her identifying physical characteristics.
An internet search of property records confirmed that the Maxwells purchased a cabin on Seneca Lake just six months before Flora’s disappearance.
A quick flip through Ted’s and Caroline’s passports （recovered from a dresser in their master bedroom） confirmed they had never been to Spain.
And when reached by telephone, your father, József, confirmed several key details in my story—including the make and model of his wife’s Chevy Tahoe, information that was never released to the public.
By seven thirty the next morning, Detective Briggs was going next door to Starbucks to bring me some herbal tea and an egg-and-cheese sandwich. She also invited Adrian to join us in the interrogation room. He had spent the whole night waiting in the lobby on an uncomfortable metal bench. He hugged me so hard, he lifted me off the floor. And after we both stopped crying, I had to tell him the whole story all over again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner,” he said.
It turned out that Adrian was the person who called 911—after arriving at my cottage and finding Ted Maxwell dead on my floor.
“I never should have gone to Ohio,” he continued. “If I’d stayed with you in Spring Brook, none of this would have happened.”
“Or maybe we’d both be dead. You can’t obsess over what-if scenarios, Adrian. You can’t blame yourself.”
The drive from Seneca Lake to Spring Brook takes about five hours, but that morning your father made the trip in three and a half. I can only imagine what was going through his mind as he barreled down the interstate. Adrian and I were still at the police station, plying ourselves with sugary snacks to stay awake, when your father arrived. I can still remember the precise moment when Detective Briggs led him into the room. He was tall and thin with shaggy hair, an unkempt beard, and deep sunken watery eyes. At first I thought he might be a criminal from a neighboring cell. But he was dressed like a farmer, with work boots and Dickies pants and a button-down flannel shirt. And he knelt down and took my hand and started to cry.
* * *
I could write an entire book about everything that happened next, but I’ll try to keep things brief. You and your father went back to Seneca Lake, and Adrian moved back to New Brunswick to finish his last year at Rutgers. He invited me to come with him, to live rent-free in his apartment while I figured out the next stage of my life. But my whole world had turned upside down, and I was afraid of making big commitments in a moment of weakness. So I moved to my sponsor’s guest bedroom in Norristown.
You might not think of a sixty-eight-year-old man as the ideal roommate, but Russell was quiet and clean and he kept our pantries stocked with countless varieties of protein powder. I took a job at a running shoe store, just to get some money rolling in. The other employees had a little informal running club and I started going out with them, two or three mornings a week. I found a good church with plenty of twenty-and thirty-something parishioners. I started attending NA meetings again, sharing my stories and experiences with the goal of helping others.
I wanted to visit you in October, for your sixth birthday, but your doctors advised against it. They said you were still too fragile and vulnerable, that you were still “assembling” your true identity. We were allowed to speak on the phone, but only if you initiated the conversation, and you never showed any interest in speaking to me.
Still, your father called once or twice a month to update me on your progress, and we exchanged a lot of emails. I learned that you and your father were sharing a big farmhouse with your aunt and uncle and cousins, and instead of starting kindergarten, you participated in a slew of therapy programs: art therapy, talk therapy, music therapy, puppets and role-playing, the works. Your doctors were astonished by the fact that you had no memory of being roused from bed, dragged into the woods, and pushed up into a tree. They concluded that your brain had repressed these memories as a response to the trauma.
Your father was the only person who knew what really happened in the forest that night. I told him the whole story, and of course it sounds crazy, but once I sent copies of your mother’s drawings, in her inimitable style, he had no doubt I was telling the truth.