Page 38 of The Girl from Widow Hills
The porch light flickered in my peripheral vision, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“What?” I said, though I wasn’t sure if any noise escaped at all. My throat felt dry, and the air turned cold and empty.
The detective’s eyes latched on to mine.
“His name,” I said. “What did you say?” I had to make sure I was hearing it right. That I was exactly where I thought I was, in the present. That the dream or the nightmare wasn’t rising up and overlapping.
“Sean Coleman. Fifty-two years old. You know the name?”
My ears started ringing. It was a name forever tied to mine. In every article, every news story. Too common a name to turn up on its own in a search, but add Sean Coleman and Arden Maynor, and there he would be. His hand reaching into the grate. Circling my wrist. I’d heard the story a thousand times.
His photo beside mine in the news broadcast. The hero, looking off to the side. He looked so young then.
The moment I’d been found was played over and over again. That woman reporter, interviewing my mother as the news came in.
In that moment, she was every mother, and I was every child. It aired again on the five-year anniversary in every special broadcast, and again on the ten-year. It played to emotions; it was the video that people remembered the most.
But there was another clip, one that hadn’t endured quite as long. It was a little grainy, a little disorganized; you couldn’t see our faces. But it was the moment that counted.
Sean Coleman, the man who had found me.
Bennett was there now, standing just inside the living room, listening.
Four walls closing in, and nowhere to go, no way to escape.
The past had found me. It was here. It was time.
“Yes,” I said. “I know the name.”
TRANSCRIPT OF LIVE REPORT—WTKY CHANNEL 3
OCTOBER 19, 2000, 7:43 P.M.
DON MULLER:Welcome to the viewers who are just tuning in. We’ve got Emma Lyons on the scene, and what you’re about to see is some pretty dramatic imagery. Emma, can you tell us what we’re looking at?
EMMA LYONS:Don, right now we’re just beyond the perimeter set up by the rescue operation. We’ve got a pretty clear shot through the trees to that clearing, where the activity is happening. Fred, if you zoom in there . . . Don, let me know if you can see that all right? Can you see the man near the ground?
DM:Yes, we can see him.
EL:The man in the green shirt, with his back to us—he’s the one, we believe, who found Arden Maynor. Look closely. Over his shoulder, there’s a hand holding on to the fabric of his shirt. That, we believe, is the hand of six-year-old Arden Maynor, trapped under the grate. Her hand is gripping the back of his shirt. She’s alive. And not only that—it seems she’s conscious.
DM:Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
EL:I almost can’t believe it myself, Don. It’s miraculous.
DM:What’s the scene like there, Emma?
EL:You can absolutely feel the excitement in the air. There’s an energy in the crowd. But they still have to find a way to get her out.
DM:Can you fill us in a little on anything you’ve heard about the ongoing rescue operation?
EL:Of course. They’re being very careful. They don’t want to do anything to disturb her. The lid to the drainage pipe there is sealed pretty good. We hear the man who found her fastened a belt around her to hold her close. They’re reinforcing those safety measures right now, so that she remains safe, first of all. They’re going to have to stay like this for a while, until they figure it out—the best way forward. This access point is actually not one that’s mapped on the city system, but something older, from the original system, back when this area was a mining community. So there’s a bit of confusion over how best to reach her. They’re about to begin drilling through the surrounding earth, to see what they’re dealing with.
DM:Do they know who it is, Emma? The man who’s holding her up?
EL:We haven’t gotten official word, but several of the local folks we’ve been interviewing tell us he’s from the adjoining town. A thirty-two-year-old by the name of Sean Coleman.
