I Looked Away

While camping in an Oregon forest park Madeline Buell leaves her daughter, Megan, sitting on a picnic table bench and walks the short distance back to their tent. As she grabs their jackets, a large group of people move along the trail between mother and child. A minute later, her view is clear again and... Megan is gone.

Garrett, a park ranger, arrives to help. He struggles to have compassion for the frantic mother. Last year the search for a missing child whose drunken parents also claimed to have looked away only for a moment ended with him finding the little boy's body.

Will this search also end in sorrow?

*This is a ~12000 word short story written in consecutive parts by 11 authors participating in Written Fireside.

Written Fireside is based on a popular round robin game in which one person sitting by a campfire starts a story, the person sitting at his or her side adds to it, then passes it on to the next person in line. The story builds as each part is added and ends when the story completes the circle around the flames, returning to the one who started it. The result is always entertaining, sometimes hilarious.
What would happen if all the storytellers were writers? In the summer of 2013, author Lori Connelly decided to find out, and Written Fireside was born.
In the mood for an interesting story? Well then, pull up a virtual camp chair and settle in for... I Looked Away.


Genre: Romance