Whatever Happened to Kelly Kilcher?

Part 4: I Almost Said Yes

Okay, so this is pretty nuts because I didn’t think anybody was reading my blog. 

A woman in Nebraska saw what I’ve been posting about Kelly Kilcher and contacted me. Her name is Eloise Fairbanks and she says that Kelly stayed on her farm for a night back in 1994. Apparently, while driving to California, Kelly got a flat tire. Eloise’s husband repaired the tire and Kelly slept in their guest bedroom. I know this sounds crazy, but on my weekend off, I drive out to Nebraska to meet with Eloise. Widowed now, she still lives on the same farm.

“I’ve thought about Kelly many times over the years,” Eloise says. We’re sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee.

“How’d she end up at your house?”

“Well, you can’t see it from here, but on the other side of the farm is Interstate 80. Elmer was out harvesting sweet corn and saw her there on the side of the road. Hair, makeup. Dressed to the nines, she was.”

“That sounds like Kelly.”

“Quite the sight watching her try to change a tire.” Eloise chuckles. “Elmer slapped on the spare for her and drove the car over to the house. It was getting late, so I put food in her belly while Elmer patched the tire.”

“And she was driving an old blue Nissan?”

Eloise nods as she opens a package of chocolate Hydrox. “Blue and rusty, just as you described. I couldn’t believe she made it all the way from California in that thing.”

“From California?”

“That’s what I said. She was on her way home… to Wisconsin.”

“Do you remember what month this was?”

“Well, like I told you, Elmer had just started harvesting sweet corn so it would have been late July or early August. Is that important?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “Very. The last time anybody saw her in Wisconsin was July 1st.”

“The night she fought with her beau,” Eloise says.

“She told you that?”

“She told me everything.” Eloise breaks a cookie in half and dips it into her cup. I cringe at the crumbs floating around in her coffee. “You must be the Scott she invited to go with her.”

My stomach drops. I can’t believe Eloise knows my secret. On the morning of July 2nd, Kelly called and asked me to go to California with her.

“Come with me,” she begged, sounding desperate—and a little crazy.

“I barely know you!” I told her.

“So what? I barely know you,” she countered back. “But I know you could use a fresh start—away from here.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Sure you can. Please?”

“Kelly… I have to finish school.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“What would I even do there?”

“Anything you want. You’ll figure it out. Listen, I don’t know if California’s right for me. But I know Wisconsin isn’t. And I know it’s not right for you either. In California, you can be whoever you want to be. You can be with whoever you want to be.”

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to jump in her car and never look back. I wanted to feel the wind in my hair as we drove down the highway into the unknown. But I just wasn’t ready yet.

“I never thought she’d go alone,” I tell Eloise. “When she stopped showing up to work, I figured she made up with Todd and they went together.”

“Do you regret not going?”

“Yeah,” I admit. “Sometimes. I wonder what my life would be like if I’d gone. Where I’d be now. What I’d be doing.” I pause to think as I sip my coffee. “I love the life I have. I’m married to a great guy. I have a fulfilling career. But there’s this whole other life that I didn’t get to have. I wasted too much time not pushing myself to ask the questions I didn’t want to know the answer to.”

“You can’t turn back the clock.” Eloise shakes her head thoughtfully.

“Tell that to my brain at three o’clock in the morning,” I laugh. I would never tell anyone this, but my secret wish is to go to sleep and wake up in 1994 and do it all over again. The right way this time. Because I know better now.

“Our son, Ernie, came out later in life. There’s no right timing for it.”

“I know it’s silly,” I sigh. “But it feels like I lost something I never had.” The thought lingers as I take another sip of coffee. “Did Kelly say anything about me?” I ask. “Was she angry?”

“Not at all,” Eloise assures me. “She was struggling and confused about a lot of things. Her life wasn’t going the way she thought it would either.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in your blog you mentioned that Kelly was accepted into Cosmetology school.”

I nod as I break down and eat a cookie.

“That was a lie,” Eloise says. “She sent out applications but never got accepted. She thought she could drive out there, get lucky, and find a job anyway.”

“Are you serious?”

“She had chutzpah, I’ll give her that.” Eloise grabs the coffee pot and refills our cups. “Coming from a small town, I think she thought she was unique. So when she got to Hollywood, she was shocked that…”

“Everyone looked just like her?”

Eloise nods. “The next morning, she came down without any of that makeup on. She was plain, sure. But there was this radiance emanating from within her. Not everybody has that, you know. I told her, ‘You’re so pretty. Why do you cover your face with all that makeup?’ She looked at me and said, ‘It’s who I am.’ She wanted to be colorful. She wanted to look larger than life.”

“It’s how she expressed herself.”

 “So when she saw a million other girls doing the same thing… California went from being her salvation to her own personal nightmare. She regretted going alone. She regretted taking the cash and running away.”

“Cash?”

“During the fight with her beau. All she wanted was his love—but he gave her a bundle of lettuce thick enough to choke a horse and told her to leave.”

“That doesn’t sound like Todd,” I say, reaching for my phone. “If anything, she was always complaining that he was holding her back because he was still in school.”

“Maybe the money was some kind of test?”

“Maybe,” I say, trying to make sense of this new information.

“Wherever it came from, it didn’t last long. Nobody would hire her as a waitress. And without a job, she couldn’t get an apartment. After a few weeks in a motel, and she was completely broke. She was devastated.”

“Hollywood and Cosmetology school were the only things she ever talked about.”

“When the money ran out, she had no choice but to return to Wisconsin.”

“That’s what she said?”

“That’s what she said, but when I asked if that was the only reason she was going back, she shook her head. I had a feeling there was more to it. People don’t go back to Wisconsin unless there’s something for them to go back to.”

Todd, I think to myself. But he says he never saw her again after she left for California.

“She was apprehensive about returning. Especially after that fight. She knew she’d made a mistake acting so impulsively. But she was tired of being strung along. She wanted some reassurances. Something concrete. I told her to give him an ultimatum.”

“Todd was always committed. She knew that. He was her biggest fan.”

Something about this conversation doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like we’re talking about two different people. Eloise furrows her brow. “Todd,” she repeats, rolling the name around on her tongue. “That name just doesn’t ring a bell.”

As Eloise tries to recall more of what Kelly told her, my phone dings—a text from Todd. Seeing his name feels like a punch to my gut. I already know what it’s going to say.

I never gave Kelly any money. I didn’t have any to give.

Eloise is adamant that the guy who left Kelly bereft was not named Todd. “And Kelly never mentioned anything about him being in school. I got the sense he was older and that he had conflicting interests—hence my suggestion to give him an ultimatum. Now that I think about it, giving her a stack of cash and telling her to leave…” Eloise trails off, staring out the window.

“Kinda sounds like a married man,” I say softly.

Eloise frowns.

If Kelly was involved with a married man, that could be the key to her disappearance. Regardless, one thing remains crystal clear—Kelly never made it back to Wisconsin.

© Scott Thomas Henry, 2025. All rights reserved.