It’s been over three weeks since Jennifer Dulos went missing. There are pictures of her on signs in town, a pretty brunette, smiling, with no inkling in her gaze of what would befall her. My stomach clenches every time I drive by the one posted on God’s Acre, named for the land on which the Congregational Church was built and New Canaan founded upon, and where the whole town gathers to carol on Christmas Eve. I pass that sign at least once a day, on my way to the grocery store, the pet store, or cutting through town to get to the Merritt Parkway. There’s another sign posted outside Waveny Park, where the police found Jennifer’s car parked on that fateful Friday.
New Canaan is a small and affluent town, oozing leafy charm. People move here for the schools and proximity to New York City, as well as the elegance of its countryside. Crime can happen anywhere and wealth is certainly no indicator of morality, but it has been very difficult for me to wrap my head around the violence many believe happened here in New Canaan, to a woman not so different from me in age and education, to another mother. It feels too close to the bone.
I didn’t know Jennifer, she had only lived here two years and my kids are older than hers, but the degrees of separation are small in a town this size. I know other moms who know her, and I know kids who know her kids from their school. I probably passed her a dozen times in the grocery store or walking my dog in Waveny. The hardest part for me has been thinking about how she would have been thinking about her kids. I bet she wasn’t even scared so much for herself, when her husband threatened her. She would have been terrified to leave them.
I’ve avoided Waveny since her disappearance, when the police and FBI swarmed the park, and news reporters were asking people questions. I know every trail through those woods, every stream where Charlie stops to drink, and the K9’s probably stopped to sniff, even the contours of the dirty pond they dredged, where a couple of mallards like to float. I’ve avoided the park because although no trace of her was found there, I still wouldn’t be able to help myself from looking for signs of her in the bracken, amongst the deer.
We’ve had a lot of rain here the last few weeks so if Jennifer had been brought here on May 24th, all traces would probably have been washed away by now. Waveny turns into a jungle of new growth in June, with trees unfurling their leaves into great canopies of green overhead. On the paths underneath it feels like you’re moving through swathes of pulsing green curtains, heat and humidity releasing the wild fragrance of honeysuckle and wet earth. If Jennifer is no longer alive, then I would like to think she is resting somewhere in that forest, safe at last in Mother Nature’s arms, and connected to her children through the very air they breathe.
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