15. Miles
I’ve been searching for every Madelyn I can find from Alabama for hours. Three hours of dead ends, outdated profiles, and yearbooks that all start to blur together until my eyes burn. I’m about to give up when a tiny high school in a town called Hillsboro catches my attention.
I click the link and am met with a picture of Maddie.
She’s younger, dressed in a red and black marching band uniform, a silver flute tucked under her arm. Standing beside her is some shaggy haired football player with his arm wrapped around her waist, grinning as he holds a large trophy above his head.
Underneath the picture reads “Hillsboro Quarterback and senior, Austin Crawford and friend, Madelyn Bohr smiling after winning state championships.”
Who the fuck is this?
The mere image of seeing this stupid fucking jock with his arm around what’s mine has me seething.
And the fact they just address her as this guy's friend, not even including her title like they did for him, just pisses me off even more.
Maybe this is the guy Maddie was telling me about, the guy from her past. I need to find more information.
Opening up a new tab, I type in the Austin guy’s name in the search engine to see what I can find. There’s literally nothing here. It’s all quarterback, state championships, quarterback, more football, some kind of football camp. Just a bunch of useless bullshit.
I slam my hand against the desk. “Fuck!”.
At least I didn’t come up empty. I found my little princess. She thinks she can hide from me.
She should know better by now. I will always find her.
I type Maddie’s full name in the search engine, along with the name of the town, and find a link from a news media that immediately catches my attention.
What’s this? A house fire?
On Friday May 26th, 2020 authorities responded to a call about a house fire on Highway 377.
The home is reported to be owned by a local man by the name of Jeffrey Bohr (44).
Bohr lived in the home with his daughter, Madelyn Bohr (18), and his late wife Melinda Bohr, who passed away in June of 2017.
Authorities reported that a body was found inside the home, but the name of the victim has yet to have been released.
What the fuck? There’s no way this could be my Madelyn. I mean, how many Madelyn Bohr's live in the small town of Hillsboro, Alabama? I open up a new tab and search the town again. Population 513. Alright, so the chances of there being more than one Madelyn Bohr are slim.
I click back on the news media link and keep reading.
At this time, the whereabouts of Jeffrey and Madelyn Bohr are still unknown. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
I don’t know what to make of any of this.
Is this what she’s been hiding from me? The fact there was a house fire?
The article mentions a body, but if Maddie’s here, then whose body was it?
Her father’s? Someone else’s? And if her father died in that fire, why has she spent months acting like she’s terrified of someone finding her?
Questions keep piling on top of each other until I can’t separate one from the next, the craving for a cigarette hits me so hard my hands actually twitch.
I push off the bar stool and head for the fridge, grabbing a beer before stepping out onto the balcony to light a cigarette.
With a quick twist, I pop the top and take a deep swig, finishing half the bottle in one go.
I’ll need to restock soon. At the rate I plan to drink tonight, what’s left in the fridge won't survive until morning.
Standing on the balcony, I stare out over the town.
From here, I can just make out the school in the distance.
I wonder if Maddie is asleep. I pull my phone from my pants pocket and check the time.
It’s past midnight. She’s definitely asleep.
I’ve been digging through her past for almost four hours now.
Shit.
I light my cigarette and take a deep drag, letting the smoke settle deep into my lungs. The nicotine hits almost instantly, loosening the knot that’s been slowly tightening in my chest ever since I found that article.
Nothing quite compares to that first drag—always making everything feel a little more complete.
It’s like a cigarette after anything—eating, jacking off, or having sex.
It always adds something, making it feel sweeter.
But after getting shitty news, the cigarette doesn’t sweeten anything.
It just makes the burn a little easier to handle.
I rake a hand through my hair and lean against the balcony, staring out over the sleeping city as I try to make sense of everything.
I’m not sure what to do with all this new information.
Should I confront Maddie now that I know this much?
The thought dies almost as quickly as it comes.
The second she realizes I dug into her past, she’ll look at me as a threat.
What I did could be unforgivable, and I’m not ready to lose Maddie altogether.
She’s already putting space between us and I can’t fucking stand it.
Maybe she’ll run from me too.
I know I shouldn’t keep looking into her past, but the itch to know more about her has never been more apparent. I need to know everything there is to know about her. Sure, I may be going about it the wrong way, but she won’t open up to me and I see no other way other than to find out on my own.
I take one last long drag of my cigarette before ashing it out, draining the rest of my beer before heading back inside to keep researching.
Opening the last beer I had left in the fridge, I grab the laptop off the kitchen counter and walk over to my bed.
After stripping down to my boxers, I slide under the covers, and balance the laptop on my thighs.
Now that I know Maddie’s full name and her parents’ names, it should be easy to find more information on her.
Born and raised in the small town of Hillsboro, Alabama, lived in the same house her entire life, and has had one phone number since twenty seventeen.
I don’t see any relatives, other than a woman named Winona Graves, who I’m assuming is her aunt, considering her mother’s maiden name is Graves.
I look further into her mother’s death to find it was ruled as a suicide by form of hanging.
Jesus, Maddie was only thirteen. I can’t even begin to imagine losing your mother at that age.
I dive further into the news article and find something that seriously fucking disturbs me. Maddie is the one who found her mother.
According to the report, she got off the school bus, walked into the house, and found her mother hanging from the living room ceiling fan.
I lean back in my chair, staring at the screen.
Why the fuck would she do that, knowing her thirteen-year-old daughter would find her?
I clench my fists and try to calm myself down.
I can’t possibly sit here and be pissed off at a dead woman for leaving her daughter, but seriously, what kind of fucking mother?
The medical examiner noted fresh bruising across her mother’s body in addition to the ligature marks around her neck. Well, that’s fucking suspicious. I wonder where those could have come from? A previous accident, maybe? I don’t buy it.
It takes me the better part of an hour, but eventually I break into the Hillsboro police department’s database and find the Bohr file. That bitch is packed full. Multiple police reports on domestic abuse, but one particular report catches my eye. Child abuse and child endangerment.
Jesus fucking christ.
I click on the report and read as fast as my eyes will let me.
“What. The. Fuck.”
At fifteen, Maddie filed a police report against her father after he hit her.
Apparently he only hit her the one time, but it was enough for her to report it, as she fucking should.
I find myself hoping to whatever fucking god is out there, that it really is his body that was burnt to a fucking crisp.
This report was made in June of 2020, exactly two years after her mother’s passing.
Suddenly, the idea of suicide doesn’t seem as likely.
If Maddie’s father was physically abusing her mother, it’s possible that he could have murdered her.
A sick and twisted thought crosses my mind that maybe he even tried to kill Maddie.
I slam the laptop shut, tossing it onto the other side of my bed, and watch as it bounces off and crashes onto the floor.
I could care less if it’s broken, I just can’t read another word of this shit.
I need to talk to her.