An Empty Palace
Greg Porter was a man of wealth and esteem, yet like so many of them, he was cold and unfeeling. He had come from a humble beginning and worked his way up the corporate ladder. Now he was the king. Though to most, the American Dream was a cruel unreachable joke, to him, it was a triumphant, beautiful reality. A testament to his work ethic, his ingenuity. His fortunes in technology had endowed him a wonderful life. The dream, to him, was a truth, sweet and divine. Its flavors were rich, mirroring his status in life – full of money, luxury, and power. It was a joyful life, but it did not last. That joy was taken from him, one night, twelve years before.
It was a hot summer evening, the cocktail party was well underway. The girls were upstairs, safely locked away. Greg called them his babies, though they were five and six years of age. Cindy and Katherine could talk, walk, and even write simple words by sounding them out on the alphabet, like cat and machine. They were intelligent, fast-learners, as prodigious in mind as their father and mother. When the guests began to flood in, Greg instructed them to stay put in their room while father shmoozed with the Silicon Valley elite. Genius programmers and start-up wunderkinds were the stars of the evening. It was a night to remember.
When the final guest had gone, Greg and his wife climbed up the stairs to kiss their daughters goodnight with their martini-singed lips. They opened the royal blue door to the big pink bedroom, where the girls slept on mahogany bunk beds. Their heights were penciled on the wall, and plush ponies adorned the carpeted floor. To their stark, unbridled terror, Greg and Mindy saw that the girls were gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found.
They searched for hours, frantically calling friends, neighbors, and all the guests. They called the police. A search team went out. They searched through every nook and every cranny of this gargantuan house. Nothing. Soon the desperation came. Through pleas on TV and news outlets, they called out for the safe return of their adorable daughters. Sympathy was gained for these poor rich folk. But money and publicity did no good in the arena of missing children. Weeks turned to months, and months turned to years. Greg and Mindy’s marriage went through so much turmoil. Blame was thrown, words were said, and soon a once vivid romance had been sullied with traumatic resentment. Now, Greg was alone.
His mansion, with its royal Spanish architecture, its tropical trees and wild turkeys and geese, six bedrooms, eight baths, a sauna, a spa, and a personal movie theater; from the stateliness of its elegant kitchen to the palatial splendor of its chandelier-laden dining room, had become barren. Marvelous and enviable as it was, it now brought Greg nothing but bitter resentments and unbearable anguish. There was no more glory in his achievements. Only nothingness. Often he would spend days quietly wandering from one corner of the house to the next, listening to the sound of his footsteps echoing across the empty estate. On other days, he’d sit for hours at a time, staring down at the marble floors until he fell asleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night. He would order cheap pizzas and eat it in his theater, while he spent the rest of the evening dispassionately watching marathons of tawdry TV and infomercial drivel.
His once-proud house had become a hell. An inhospitable box. Quiet and desolate. Unable to further withstand the anguish, Greg decided to sell the mansion, but to his surprise, there was little interest in buying the home where the infamous Porter girls had disappeared. Consequently, he purchased a newer property, elsewhere, three cities away. It was modern, slick, more comforting, and closer to the city, and not out in the middle of nowhere like the damned old one. Much time went by before he began to rent out his palace to any guest that wished to stay there a few nights. He charged two thousand a night. He donated all the money he made to missing child organizations, hoping to raise awareness of his story.
One day they will come back," he often muttered to himself. He wondered what the girls must be like. Seventeen and eighteen. Young women, ready to take on the world. Greg hoped that wherever they were, they were safe and happy and that when they were ready, they would return to their father and explain this ordeal to him. He wouldn’t be angry, he thought. He’d be just so happy to see them again. He’d have their old home, their old room, with all their toys and princess dresses, ready for their return. He simply couldn’t wait for that day to arrive.