My sister disappeared fourteen years ago… And then, when we were sorting through our deceased grandfather’s things, her underwear with embroidered flowers fell out from under his mattress 😨
Almost three weeks had passed since the grandfather’s death before our family finally decided to sort through his house.
The grandfather’s name was Robert. He had lived in this house for more than forty years and threw away almost nothing. In the closets lay old newspapers, boxes of medicines, letters, photographs, and clothes he had not worn for decades.
That day I went there together with Uncle Mark. Mom was also supposed to help, but she was delayed at work.
— Let’s first take out the bed, said the uncle. — The mattress will have to be thrown away anyway.
We went into the grandfather’s bedroom. The room was very dusty. The curtains barely let in the light.
We took hold of the mattress from both sides and lifted it. And at that moment something fell to the floor. At first I did not even understand what it was.
A small piece of pink fabric. I bent down and picked it up. It was women’s underwear. Old, faded, with small embroidered flowers on the side.
— What is this now? asked the uncle in surprise.
But I was no longer listening to him. I was looking at the embroidery.
I was only four years old when my older sister Laura disappeared. I almost did not remember her alive, but at home we had dozens of her photographs.
And in several photographs, Laura was wearing clothes on which she herself had embroidered exactly such flowers. Mom had taught her. One petal always came out a little longer than the others.
I had seen this pattern hundreds of times.
— This is Laura’s, I said quietly.
The uncle first chuckled.
— You cannot know that.
— I can.
He looked at the fabric once more. And his face changed. Fourteen years ago Laura was sixteen. She disappeared in July. That day she told mom she was going to meet a friend, left the house around four in the afternoon, and never returned.
The police searched for her for several weeks. They checked the forest, the river, the bus stations. They put up photographs. They interrogated the neighbors. But they found nothing.
The grandfather at that time helped more than anyone. He went with volunteers on searches, printed notices, and even offered money to anyone who would report any information.
And all this time, Laura’s belonging lay under his mattress.
— Put it back, the uncle suddenly said.
I looked at him.
— What?
— Don’t touch it anymore. Let’s call the police.
Now I noticed that he was scared too. Twenty minutes later mom arrived. When she saw the find, her hands began to tremble. She looked at the small flowers for a few seconds, then sat down right on the edge of a chair.
— I embroidered this together with her, she whispered.
After that we touched nothing else in the room. I could not imagine that that evening something so terrible would be revealed about our family that we would remain in complete shock. 😳😰 The continuation of the story can be found in the first comment 👇👇
The police arrived that same evening. The house was sealed. The investigators took the mattress, the clothes, and several boxes from the closet.
But the most important thing they found two days later. Behind the old closet in the bedroom, a wooden panel was discovered that differed from the others.
When it was removed, behind the wall was a small hiding place. There lay photographs of Laura, her school bracelet, an old comb, and several letters.
One of them changed everything. It was written by Laura herself.
In the letter she wrote that the grandfather forced her to keep some “family secret” and threatened that if she told anyone, mom would suffer greatly.
But this was not yet the most terrible thing. The investigators checked the phone records, the old witness testimonies, and the grandfather’s documents.
And it turned out that on the day of Laura’s disappearance, a neighbor had seen the grandfather’s car near an abandoned house several kilometers from the city.
Fourteen years ago no one had attached any significance to this. The grandfather told the police that that day he had not left the house at all.
A week later, the investigators came to that abandoned house.
Behind it was an old well, long closed with wooden boards. When the boards were removed, human remains were found inside. The examination lasted almost a month.
It was Laura.
The investigation reconstructed the events of that night. Laura was going to tell her mother that the grandfather had abused her for many years. She threatened him that she would no longer stay silent.
The grandfather tried to stop her. A quarrel began between them. He hit the girl, and she lost consciousness.
Frightened by the consequences, he took her to the old house and hid the body in the well. And then he returned home and, the very next day, together with everyone else, began searching for the “missing granddaughter.”
For fourteen years he participated in the search for a person whose fate he had known from the very beginning. But one thing, for some reason, he could not throw away. That very pink underwear with the small flowers.
Perhaps he had hidden it as a reminder. Or perhaps he was simply afraid that someone would find it in the trash. The grandfather died without ever confessing.
