Given a chance to read Amy’s blog for the first time, he confirmed that the substance of their relationship as described was true, but he claimed never to have received a phone call from her about the possibility that he might be the father of her unborn child. He said that if he had, he would not have hung up on her. He said that the last time they spoke was five or six nights before her disappearance when she called him at work. He had told her many times never to call him there. Annoyed, he told her that he would call her back as soon as he could. He never did.
The local couple who hired Amy to be their nanny, the “Spooners,” confirm all of the facts of this blog except the most important one. The husband denies any improper sexual relations with Amy. We have no way of disputing this. We are urging local authorities to obtain a search warrant.
Amy’s former tutor, “Joel Seidler,” was not difficult to find, as Amy did not bother to change his last name. He says that her disappearance has devastated him. He is also burdened by a terrible feeling of guilt, because their last contact (the voice mail he left) was so unfriendly. His mother claims that he has never shown a history of violence toward anyone but himself.
Our investigator spoke to “Jade,” but found her in a very bad state due to obvious drug abuse. She confirmed that she and Amy had not been in contact for months, but denied ever having had a sexual or romantic relationship with Rory.
We still have not been able to track down “Nick Dempster.” On each day that Amy claims he left her a voice mail, she did indeed receive at least one phone call from a blocked caller ID. Is this the same blocked caller who contacted Amy the night she disappeared? We have no way of knowing.
Which brings us to “Glenn A. Warburg.” While he confirms the truth of all of the early incidents Amy relates, he claims that he never saw or spoke to her again after she left his employ. Which would mean that everything which took place afterwards was a complete fabrication. We have found no record of Amy having received an abortion under her own name at any clinic within two hundred miles of here. While Mr. Warburg’s home has no free-standing garage, there is an empty guest bedroom.
I beg you once more for your help. If any of you exchanged e-mails or phone calls with Amy in which she confided anything that might shed some light on her whereabouts, please write to me here. Your help will be kept strictly confidential. There is now a $50,000 reward for any information leading to the discovery of Amy. Again thank you for your prayers and good wishes.
Yours truly, Carol Grantham
p.s. To those of you who continue to send hateful and threatening e-mails filled with contempt for my daughter and ridicule of me, I beg you once again to stop. From now on your letters will be turned over to the police.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Dear Readers:
Again I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to write to me, not only to express sympathy and genuine concern but to offer help. I cannot tell how much I appreciate it. While most of your help so far has been in the form of conjecture and speculation (much of it quite shrewd), we are still hopeful that one of you might have something more concrete to offer.
Many of you have written with suspicions in regard to the man you know as “Mr. Silaggi.” In the days after Amy’s disappearance, I called the last phone number I had for the “Silaggis” and there was no answer. Yesterday our investigator tracked them down to a retirement community in Green Valley, Arizona. I just hung up with their daughter and would like to share with you what I have learned.
Amy’s letter was forwarded to them in Arizona. Since “Mr. Silaggi” is legally blind and no longer reads his own mail, his wife (I will call her “Elsa”) read it aloud to him. Needless to say, she was appalled. “Mr. Silaggi” denied Amy’s allegations, insisting that she was either crazy or a liar or both. This might very well have been the end of it, except that Elsa had the good sense to call their daughter and tell her of Amy’s accusations. Elsa’s daughter (whom I have met just once or twice) called me tonight to say that she believes Amy’s accusations. In fact, she is certain they are true. She only wishes that she herself had shown such courage.
I doubt that “Mr. Silaggi” had anything to do with the disappearance of my daughter, but I am proud that Amy had the strength of character to confront him. I am sorry that she had to go through this trauma alone. I wish she had come to me. Yours truly, Carol Grantham
Monday, May 11, 2008
This morning the decomposed remains of a young female were discovered a hundred miles away, in a stream at a local forest preserve. Amy’s dental records are on their way to the coroner’s office.
Pray there is no match.
Since Amy’s disappearance, on nights when I cannot sleep, I read and reread this blog. I read your letters, even the cruelest ones. I ask myself who would want to hurt my daughter. I hear the answer: almost anyone.
Amy is my heart, my whole life. I cannot imagine that I will never see her again.
A VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES ORIGINAL, AUGUST 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Allison Burnett
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House
of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burnett, Allison.
Undiscovered gyrl: a novel / by Allison Burnett.
p. cm.—(Vintage contemporaries)
eISBN: 978-0-307-47558-9
1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Blogs—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.U763U63 2009
813’.6—dc22 2009006812
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.0
Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries) Page 21