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76 BACKPACKER 03.2014 emailed her mother every day of her trip, and who wrote, I love you, Daddy Poo, in the last letter to her father? A girl who recorded three songs for her dad before leaving home, to help him cope with her traveling so far away from him? Paul got her to sing, he says, because he wanted a piece of her that he could listen to while she was gone. “I loved this girl from her bows to her toes,” he says, “probably to the point that it hurt her brothers.” When you love someone that much, is it better to believe she abandoned you than to imagine she’s gone forever? Do you ever stop searching? Paul and Connie returned to Nepal for a third time exactly three years afer Au- brey disappeared, in April 2013. If noth- ing else, they wanted to remind police and military ofcials that they had not given up. In meetings with witnesses, they learned of reports that put soldiers near the Namaste teahouse on the day Aubrey departed. Te news lent credence to an earlier lead, initially deemed unreliable, that three men had been seen attacking a woman near Namaste, then dumping her body in the river. But news about these leads, like so many others, faded when the Saccos returned to Colorado. So they were shocked when, three months later, they received news that Aubrey’s killers had been caught. On July 31, 2013, Dawa Lama, a Nepali man from Langtang, phoned to tell them that the police had arrested three men, and that they’d confessed to murdering Aubrey. Te next night, I went to the Sacco’s home, a brick colonial in an afuent neighborhood of Greeley. Aubrey’s paintings—oils and pastels, landscapes and self-portraits—hang prominently in the Italian-tiled foyer. We sit at a picnic table and parse a conversation the Saccos had with U.S. Ambassador Patrick McNeil hours earlier. According to McNeil, an undercover Nepali police ofcer met a man who told him that he had murdered Aubrey. Te ofcer befriended the man, who later implicated two accomplices. Te Nepali newspaper Repub- lica reported that one of the suspects had Aubrey’s camera. News circulated that pieces of Aubrey’s clothing were found in another suspect’s home. All three were handcufed and marched out of Langtang, and the news quickly spread to the AP, CNN, and news outlets around the globe. Te morning afer Dawa’s call, Paul’s phone rang at 5:20 a.m. It was a Colorado re- porter, who asked, “How does it feel to know your daughter was murdered?” P O P U L A R G U I D E S to the fve stages of grief have made everyone an armchair psycholo- gist. But as any therapist will tell you, the real thing is much more complicated. Over the three-plus years since Aubrey vanished, the Saccos have experienced it all—ofen simultaneously. Anger? Paul cringes when he recalls storming in on the French Ambassador in Nepal Aubrey (in Darjeeling, 2010) and Paul (in his Greeley home, 2013) shared a love for music. P H O T O B Y A U B R E Y S A C C O ( L E F T ) ; H E S H P H O T O and screaming, “Our embassy helped you [when the French girls were assaulted]. Why can’t you help us?” Depression? “Men, all their lives, are supposed to solve their little girl’s problems,” says Paul. “To feel as helpless or out of control as we have at times, it makes you want to commit suicide.” Would the news fnally end this awful cycle? Tere’s no chance to fnd out. Like so many times during the search for Aubrey, the truth changes. On the morning of August 1, Ambas- sador McNeil calls again. Taking a deep breath, he says, “Tis is, in many ways, disappointing. [Te Nepali police inspector] had doubts about this ... boaster. Tey had questions [so they took him to Langtang]. But he changed his story, nam- ing people who didn’t exist. Based on no physical evidence, [the police] don’t feel that they have any basis to keep the men.” Te three suspects are re- leased afer 28 days in custody. I expect the latest turn of events to devastate the Saccos. But they’ve been through this so many times—these leads that dead-end—that they’ve become inoculated against big emotional swings. When the call ends, the house becomes eerily quiet. Te summer air hangs still. Paul goes out to keep an appointment. Connie walks into Aubrey’s room, where the clock is frozen on the date she was supposed to come home. Connie, who has a sof, introspective demeanor compared to her daughter’s exuberance, confdes that she ofen waits for Paul to go to bed and then walks into the backyard. Tere, she stares into the sky and talks to Aubrey. She says, “Where are you?” and “How are you?” and waits for a re- sponse. She ofen gets a feeling that Aubrey can hear her. But one night she saw two eyes and a