Page 35 of Guess Again
“No record of a Callie Jones visiting us. Is Callie the full name?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, disappointment heavy in his voice.
“This girl went missing?”
Ethan nodded “Two days after she made a call outside of this clinic, she disappeared.”
“And you know for sure she visited our clinic?”
“No. But Idoknow that a seventeen-year-old girl from a small Wisconsin town one hundred fifty miles from here made a call when she was standing on the corner outside of this building. Two days later she disappeared. My hunch is that she was pregnant and traveled to Chicago to have an abortion. And her pregnancy may be directly related to her disappearance.”
“Lots of patients who come to our clinic don’t use their real names. Many women, especially teens, are scared their parents will find out. So they use aliases. This girl you’re looking for might’ve done that.”
“So Callie could have traveled to Chicago, used an alias, and had an abortion without her parents being involved?”
“Yes,” Cheryl said. “Parental consent is not required by law to have an abortion in Illinois. However, if this girl was a minor, defined as under the age of eighteen, she would have needed parental consent to undergo an abortion in Wisconsin back then.”
“But not here?”
Cheryl shook her head. “Not here in Illinois, no.”
The early pieces of the puzzle Ethan was constructing began to align. Callie Jones was pregnant and had come to this clinic, where her parents wouldn’t be notified, to have an abortion. She came all the way to Chicago so that her politician father and overbearing mother would not find out. Then, she made a call, possibly from this very building, to the prepaid cell phone she had purchased with cash. The phone that now sat in Ethan’s home. The phone Francis Bernard had somehow led him to.
“You said you worked as a nurse in 2015?”
“Yes sir. I’ve been here nearly twenty years. I was the head nurse back in 2015.”
“As head nurse, your role was?”
“Head nurse is also called Mamma Bear. Most women who come in here are struggling with their decision because of how stigmatized our society has made abortion. I helped the women, especially the younger ones, through the process.”
Ethan pulled his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped the top. He pulled a file folder from inside and opened it, then slid a photo of Callie across the desk.
“I know it was a long time ago, but have you ever seen this girl before?”
Cheryl pulled the photo closer and slowly placed her hand to her chest.
“Oh my God. That’s her.”
CHAPTER 32
Chicago, Illinois Saturday, July 26, 2025
“IKNOW THIS GIRL,” CHERYL SAID, HOLDING UP THE PHOTO OFCALLIE. “She came to our clinic. It was years ago, but I remember her.”
“How?” Ethan asked.
“Because . . .” Cheryl choked back tears. “She came back to thank me.”
“Thank you for what?”
Cheryl took a deep breath and stared at the photo. “This girl came in and was clearly in turmoil. She told me she didn’t want her parents to know she was pregnant, or that she was going to have an abortion. I could tell she was scared and unsure about her decision.”
“Her decision to have an abortion?”
“Yes. She told me she was a star athlete of some sort.”
“Volleyball.”
