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 That was seven weeks ago.
Bills quickly piled up, forcing Steve Henry to return to New York to his job building transit trains. His wife stayed behind in Florida to look for Stepha, 22.
"I don't want to think the worst," Steve Henry said. "I want my daughter alive. I don't entertain a thought to say the worst happened to her because I want her back home alive.
"We have to go through this each day," he went on. "It's hard. Very, very hard."
Their experience echoes those of families elsewhere dealing with the endless questions about what happened to their missing loved ones. But the anxiety often goes beyond the grief typically associated with such tragedies.
In the case of the Henrys, Sylvia had to put her bank job in New York on hold while she helps with the search. She lives more than 1,000 miles apart from her husband and their other daughter. Her day consists of handing out fliers, praying and reading the Bible and talking to news media and police.
There's also the financial burden of committing so much effort to finding a missing loved one.
Dave Holloway estimates his family spent nearly $15,000 the week his daughter Natalee disappeared during a 2005 high school graduation trip to Aruba. His first cell phone bill after her disappearance was $2,500, although the cell phone company reduced it to about $1,600.
The family has spent tens of thousands of dollars for lawyers on unsuccessful wrongful death lawsuits against suspects. Although police arrested several men early in the case, including three with whom Natalee was last seen leaving a bar, they were released.
There's also the emotional toll. Holloway said he no longer hunts, or swims or tinkers in the yard as much as he did before his daughter's disappearance.
"You get up thinking about it in the morning. It enters your mind all day long until you go to bed at night," Holloway said. "There's not an hour that goes by that it doesn't cross your mind. You think maybe today will be the day."
Although Natalee Holloway's disappearance received much more attention than Stepha Henry's, there are similarities.
Both disappeared during a Memorial Day weekend. Both were to have caught a plane home the day they disappeared, and both were packed and ready to go. Henry and her 16-year-old sister, Shola, were visiting relatives for the holiday.
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 Stepha was last seen at her relatives' home getting into a black sedan with a man. She spoke to her mother on the phone that night, saying she was going to a nightclub. She was seen in a promotional video taken at the club that night.
"I knew that something was wrong because of the expression on her face," Steve Henry said of the video. "She wasn't happy about something. But I can't say what it is. This is why I'm so eager to find out what happened to my daughter."
Across the United States, tens of thousands of families are coping with the disappearance of a relative. There are nearly 51,000 active cases of missing adults, according to the National Center for Missing Adults. For children, about 2,200 are reported missing a year, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said.
Their families deal with the pain in many ways.
John Walsh, whose 6-year-old son disappeared from a Florida mall in 1981 two weeks before his head was discovered, has made a career of child-protection advocacy and as host of the TV show "America's Most Wanted."
"The not knowing drives you crazy," Walsh said. "If your child is murdered and the remains are found, that ends that chapter in your life. The not knowing is the really, really horrible torture."
The rest of Adam Walsh's remains were never recovered, and no one was ever charged in the case. "It's like a mortal wound that scabs over but never heals," John Walsh said.
Beth Holloway, Natalee's mother, is writing a book about her ordeal.
This fall, HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins, will publish "Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith."
Dave Holloway said he sometimes spends hours on the phone at his insurance office in Mississippi pursuing tips or leads in the case. But he can't allow himself to be totally consumed by it.
"You have to go back to work and take care of your family and all the other things before this happened," said Holloway, who divorced Beth long before Natalee's disappearance and is remarried.
When Steve Henry thinks about his missing daughter, he said he misses the sisterly bickering over clothes that once filled his home as he tried to watch television. Now, he said, the home is eerily quiet: Shola doesn't say much or venture into her sister's room, and her mother is in Florida looking for answers.
[Associated Press;
by Marcus Franklin] |
