Mistaken Identity
Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope
1
THE EXCHANGE
Colleen Cerak woke up with a start to the sound of the phone ringing. Her eyes could barely focus as she tried to make out the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was nearly two in the morning, Wednesday, May 31. When she finally reached the phone, she thought she recognized the voice on the other end as a man identified himself as the Grant County coroner. The same man had called five weeks earlier, telling her that Whitney, her eighteen-year-old daughter, had died in an accident along with three other Taylor University students and a university employee. That call also came late at night. Why would the coroner call me in the middle of the night now? she wondered.
"The county chaplain is monitoring this call," the coroner told her. Then he asked what struck Colleen as a very strange question. "Are you alone?"
"What? Yes. I mean no," she said. "Carly, my daughter, is home with me."
"Would you please ask her to listen in on this conversation?"
If she hadn't been so asleep, Colleen might have asked why it matter ... read full excerpt from: Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope ebook
