To Love Somebody

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is inspired by Alice Sebold's best-selling novel "The Lovely Bones," which is about a 14-year-old girl who is brutally murdered by a neighbor and the effects her death has on her friends and family. It is one of the most disturbing, most difficult and, ultimately, one of the most memorable books I've ever read.

There are a few places where the plot of the story and the plot of the book coincide in a general way, but for the most part this story is wholly original, about how love triumphs over tragedy. The title and tagline come from the hit song by the Bee Gees from 1967.

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Twelve-year-old Carly Mitchell sometimes cut through the woods to get home from school, especially if she stayed late working on some after-school project.

As the crow flies, it wasn't but a half-mile, maybe less, from the school to the Mitchells' back door. However, since the school and their house were in two adjoining, but quite separate neighborhoods, it was a three-mile bus ride for Carly.

He had watched her, and he knew she sometimes walked through the woods, through his sanctuary. He waited patiently, for patience was one of his most trusted virtues, and when the time was right, he made his move.

So it was that on a cold afternoon in early December, right at dusk, with a light snow falling, Carly Mitchell went missing...

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Except for one person, I wouldn't wish the hell my life turned into on anyone.

I'm Allison, Ally to my close friends. I live in a mid-sized city in Virginia, not far from the small town where I grew up. I work, as I have for almost 20 years, with a large corporation for which I've managed to work my way into a management position.

A little over 10 years ago, my life changed forever when my 12-year-old daughter disappeared. She was murdered, but we didn't know that for sure until her body was found several years later, after the man who killed her was finally caught.

My entire life -- I'm now 45 -- is neatly divided into before and after that awful December day when Carly was taken from me.

One day, my beautiful daughter was alive, vibrant and growing, her future bright. She was ambitious and popular, even if she was going through something of a geeky stage as she struggled to catch up with her body, which had already begun to change into that of a woman.

One day, she was there; the next day, she was gone.

Unless you've lived it, you can have no concept of the agony a parent goes through when their child vanishes. And Carly vanished, as if the earth just swallowed her whole, which, in a manner of speaking, it did.

Until that awful day, my life had been a fairy tale. I had two parents who lavished love on me and my siblings -- a younger sister and two brothers, one older, one younger. We weren't wealthy by any means, but we lived comfortably.

I grew into a nice-looking woman with dark hair, a perky nose, modest lips and a very average figure. I had a sunny disposition and I had a lot of friends in high school and college.

I was in college when I met the man of my dreams. At least he was the man of my dreams until the nightmare engulfed us. Brad was a dazzler, tall, good-looking, a go-getter with a forceful personality and we fell in love almost from the first.

We dated for two years in college, then got married a couple of weeks before Christmas during our senior years. A couple of years after that, I became pregnant with Carly and our world expanded to include our precious little girl.

It was a difficult pregnancy and a painful childbirth, so my doctor advised me that I ran a real risk to my health, even my life, if I became pregnant again. So I had my tubes tied to prevent that.

I think even then God was preparing to mock me, setting me up for the big fall.

I stayed home with Carly for about eight months, then went back to work. Brad was in the lower end of the management chain and he wasn't earning the kind of salary he would subsequently come to make.

We had gone out on a limb to buy a nice house in a suburban neighborhood and we needed the money. Carly was about 2 when I got a really good offer from the company I still work for.

When she was in grade school, we had an after-school day care that took care of her, but when she got into middle school, we gave her a key to the house and she would come home alone.

There were kids close to her age on one side of us and across the street, and an elderly couple on the other side who would look after her when she was home alone like she was. We figured it would be safe enough. After all, it was a nice neighborhood, right?

It wasn't like we were distant parents. We were there for her school functions, plays and academic awards events, and we did a lot of things at night and on the weekends as a family. We were close and loving, with a child that was making us proud.

Carly's disappearance changed everything.

There are two ways a couple and a family can go when something like that happens to them. Either it brings them together, as they seek comfort in each other, or it drives them apart.

Maybe if Brad and I had had other children, we could have focused our attention on something other than the huge void in our lives.

But Carly was our life, and every single day we had to come home to a silent, empty house, as empty as the hole in my soul, the place where my heart had been. And the consequences were devastating.

I went from an upbeat, bubbly person into a severe depression. My mood swings became the stuff of legend: angry one minute, morose the next, apathetic a minute later. There was no rhyme or reason to how they would come on me

And my husband? It was like someone had let the air out of a balloon. He went from this confident executive in the work place, a skilled and creative lover, a happy husband and father at home into a beaten man.

I guess it's the male thing, a father thing. Brad convinced himself that he had failed as a father, that he hadn't protected his baby from the disaster that befell her and it ate away his soul.

I'm sorry to say that I sometimes blamed him too -- when I wasn't blaming myself. It was totally irrational, but that's what happens when you are confronted by such a horrific event. You have to find some way to explain the unexplainable.

We beat ourselves up over the what-ifs. What if I'd picked her up from school that day on my way home from work, as I sometimes did when she had to stay late? What if I'd been a stay-at-home mom instead of a career woman? What if we'd chosen another house in another neighborhood? If, if, if.

It wasn't until much later that it became clear that there was little we could have done that would have prevented what happened. Carly was targeted specifically by a predator who lived a block or so away, a man we knew nothing about, and he'd have taken her later, if he hadn't gotten her when he did.

About the only thing that kept us going, or at least kept me going, was Roy Collins. Roy was the lead detective on the case, along with his partner, Diane Latimer. They never gave up hope that they would find Carly, bring her home to us and bring the person who took her to justice.

They were as good as their word; the only problem was it took them six long years, and by that time, Brad was long gone. He'd taken to drinking heavily, lost his job and then just wandered off. After three years, I finally filed for and was granted a divorce on the grounds of desertion.

Unlike Brad, who let his grief completely unman him, I finally got help. I went to see a therapist, who helped me deal with my anger and pain -- sort of. She put me on anti-depressant medication that smoothed out my mood swings and I threw myself into my work.

Work became my refuge, a place where I could go that wasn't filled with the terrifying business of cops and crime, a place where I could escape the reality of my life and the reminders of what I'd lost.

I drove myself and those around me hard and got a lot accomplished, although I had more than one supervisor tell me gently to ease off the throttle some, that I was driving away good people, turning friends into workplace adversaries with my relentless, humorless attitude.

We sold the house, and I bought a much smaller one in a neighborhood clear across town from the house Brad and I had shared.

In that way I settled into something approaching a normal existence.

Every so often, I'd get a call from Roy, keeping me apprised of the situation. I passed age 40 that way, waiting to get my baby back. If she was dead, I at least wanted her body back so there could at least be some closure.

As it turned out, it was just dumb luck that they caught the guy. Ralph Marzetti had quietly moved to another state about a year after Carly's disappearance, and apparently he moved a couple of more times after that. And everywhere he went, he left behind a missing girl.

The last time, he got careless, and snatched a 10-year-old girl off the street and tried to drive away with her. A bystander managed to get a good description of the vehicle and enough of the license plate number that they were able to get out an Amber Alert, one of the first ones in that area.

He was caught and they managed to save that girl unharmed. I was grateful for that, although in my irrational mind I questioned God about why that family got lucky and mine didn't. But, like I said, I wouldn't wish that kind of hell on anyone who didn't deserve it.

At any rate, when they arrested him, he started rambling about, "the others." It didn't take them long to put all the pieces together. Eventually, they got Ralph to tell them where the bodies of his victims -- there were eight in all -- were located.

I guess he had some small sliver of compassion, or perhaps he just fed off the notoriety, but whatever the reason, he gave the cops detailed directions on how to find his victims. The man was maddeningly organized and they had no trouble finding Carly.

He'd disposed of the victims in a variety of ways, each one different from the others. He had stuffed Carly's body, what was left of it, into an old steamer trunk and buried it in some woods in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

At times, I almost wish she'd stayed missing, after the medical examiner told me what he did to her. I won't go into the gory details, but simply say he raped her repeatedly, tortured her over several days then used a knife on her in some really sickening ways.

I still occasionally have nightmares about it. I can't even begin to imagine the horror my poor little girl endured at the hands of that monster. Under the circumstances, I actually take comfort in the fact that death was probably a welcome relief.

After Ralph was arrested, I started to see a lot more of Roy Collins, as he was preparing evidence for the trial, and that's really where this story begins.

At the time of Carly's disappearance, Roy was in a pretty rocky marriage, and, no, he wasn't married to his partner. Diane was -- and still is -- quite happily married to an insurance salesman and has two children.

Roy and his wife split up not long after my divorce was granted, but nothing happened until after the memorial service we had for Carly after her body was found.

We had resisted having a service for her when she was missing. I guess we were holding out that one-in-a-million hope that was still alive, even though I knew in my heart that she wasn't.

It was in the middle of spring when we were finally able to lay her to rest, after the medical examiner had done all she could do, and we needed the service for some sense of closure.

I managed to locate Brad, and he looked like an old man. He was still drinking, and, in fact, I could smell liquor on his breath at the service, which just infuriated me. He couldn't even stay sober long enough to honor his daughter's memory.

One thing that did please me greatly was the turnout from her old friends from school. Even though six years had passed, and these kids were seniors preparing for proms and graduation, they turned out in force to remember Carly. It gave me great comfort to know she hadn't been forgotten.

Roy and Diane were there, along with a fair representation of their fellow cops, and it was Roy that I leaned on at the graveside service. He held me and let me cry uncontrollably after Carly's casket was lowered into the ground.

As he did, I felt the first stirrings of arousal that I had felt in years. It actually shamed me to think that I could have those feelings on such an occasion. But my therapist said that wasn't unusual, that my emotions were so out of whack that day and that sexual arousal was part of that emotional equation.

That was especially so because Roy Collins is very easy on the eyes. He's a little taller than average and lean, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He's got the bluest eyes of any man I've ever seen, and they are his way of expressing whatever he's feeling in his heart.

I had always found him attractive and always looked forward to his infrequent visits, even before Brad left me.

You have to understand, my sex life with Brad quickly dwindled to nothing after Carly was taken. We had one very memorable coupling on Christmas night that year, in which we took out a lot of our rage on each other's body.

But as the next year progressed, neither one of us was in the mood very often, and the more Brad drank, the less he was able to perform. And the less he performed, the more frustrated and the more estranged we became from each other.

I learned the hard way that Brad's dazzling ways and confident personality were fraudulent. He was Mr. Everything when things were going good, when he had a lovely wife, a doting daughter and a fast-track career, but he couldn't cope when things went bad. He was weak at the core, a front-runner who didn't have the stuff to stand with me in a crisis and rebuild our lives.

Anyway, as things progressed toward Ralph Marzetti's trial for Carly's murder, I began to see a little more of Roy, and I began to find myself more seriously attracted to him.

I fought it for awhile. I didn't think I had the capacity to love somebody after losing Carly; in fact, I didn't think I deserved it. There was still a gaping hole in my soul where my heart had been ripped out and shredded by Marzetti.

I didn't think it could ever be filled, and, really, I didn't want it to be filled. I thought it would dishonor the memory of my daughter if I was to love somebody again.

Looking back on it, I realize that such an attitude was my way of expressing my self-pity, much like Brad did with his drinking.

Brad crawled into a bottle to escape his grief, while I built an emotional wall around myself to escape mine. It wasn't quite as self-destructive as what Brad did, but it was still a symptom of the same issue.

Still, when Roy called me at work one afternoon and asked me to have dinner with him, I accepted.

We went to a steak house, and I found I enjoyed being in Roy's company. We talked about our work, about our backgrounds, about our families, and before I knew it I was sharing stories about Carly.

Incredibly, it was the first time I had talked about her life to anyone other than my immediate family, and even then the conversations had been framed by her death.

It had been a taboo subject with everyone, I guess, because my reactions were so unpredictable. Sometimes, I angrily changed the subject, other times I dissolved into tears, other times I simply walked away.

But I started telling Roy about what she was like as a little girl, and when it dawned on me what I was doing, I almost laughed. Almost.

"No wonder you're such a good detective," I said, smiling at him warmly. "Is this how you interrogate suspects?"

"You always catch more flies with honey than vinegar," he said with a smile. "But, seriously, you do need to start learning how to talk about Carly. She was a real person, and you do yourself no favors by holding everything in."

"I know, but, it's just...." I was starting to lose it again, and I really didn't want that. "She was a really good kid, and it's just not fair."

"Ally, think of this way," Roy said gently. "God needed an angel, and he needed a good one, so he took Carly to be with Him. She's in heaven now, where there's no more pain. She's an angel now, and she's watching over you."

Believe it or not, I had never thought of it that way, and I did feel myself relaxing for the first time in a long time.

When Roy walked me to my door, he gave me a light kiss on the lips, and asked if he could see me again, to which I said yes.

When I got in bed that night, I felt strange. I was really aroused from the closeness of Roy's body, but more than that, I felt an emotional bond that I realized had been there all along. I was falling for Roy Collins, and I think he was falling for me.

My mind wasn't ready to accept it, however, even though I did take care of my physical needs with my fingers, and I imagined Roy's lean body taking me.

But when I finished, I cried bitterly, in shame and frustration. I just couldn't accept with my mind what my heart was telling me, that I needed to love somebody again and that I would never heal emotionally until I did.

We dated quite a few times over that summer, and we started to get a little more intimate, even making out on my sofa a few times when I had him over to the house for dinner. But each time it looked like we might be heading for sex, I pulled back.

That was until the day I was called to the stand in Ralph Marzetti's trial for Carly's murder. Because I was being called as a prosecution witness, I was unable to listen to the early testimony, for which I was grateful. I was spared the clinical description of what she went through.

I was upset that there was even a trial to begin with, that Marzetti had pled not guilty by reason of mental defect. Mental defect, my ass!

I felt a chill race through my body as I walked into the courtroom and came face-to-face with my daughter's killer. I stared at him with as much venom as I could muster and he leered back at me and licked his lips in such a way that it completely unnerved me.

That was bad enough, but when his lawyer -- a woman, for Christ's sake -- started her cross-examination, I felt like I was being raped.

She started off gently, sympathetic, but gradually she started boring in on me, asking me about my career, about the times Carly often came home from school to an empty house, about allowing her to walk home through those damned woods.

She was good. Without directly accusing me, she insinuated that I'd been a neglectful mother for allowing Carly that kind of freedom. It was utter bullshit, and I was completely wrecked when I left the stand. I did notice a look of sadness and compassion on the lawyer's face as I bolted from the courtroom in tears, but it really didn't matter by then. She'd done her damage.

Roy met me outside and just held me. I was in no condition to drive anywhere, because my emotions were in such turmoil. Roy suggested that we go get something to eat and have a drink.

Now, I've never been much of a drinker, especially after my experience with Brad, but I had several stiff ones -- double Crown on the rocks -- at the pub around the corner from the courthouse, and the liquor just inflamed my raw emotions.

It was dark when we left the pub. Roy was going to drive me home, but suddenly I couldn't wait. Something overwhelmed me, and I pulled him to me and I kissed him -- hard. I clamped my lips on his and slid my tongue into his mouth with a power and passion I hadn't felt in years.

There was an alley right there by the pub, and I pulled Roy in there, dragged him behind the dumpster, and begged him to fuck me right then, right there. I guess my out-of-control passion had been transferred to him, because he kissed me back with equal lust.