Monica Fast Horse texted her 26-year-old daughter on a Thursday evening in August to ask when she would be home. It wasn’t fear that drove her to it, it was simply what they always did: they checked in with each other.

​

Fast Horse and her daughter Jenna Charging Crow lived together in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, along with another one of Fast Horse’s daughters and Charging Crow’s five-year-old daughter, Jenelle. Fast Horse, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, helped raise her granddaughter, and Charging Crow served as primary caretaker for her mother as she dealt with the medical complications of end-stage kidney failure.

​

Earlier in the week, the pair had been excitedly preparing outfits for Jenelle’s upcoming first day of kindergarten. Fast Horse said she remembered Charging Crow’s amazement that her daughter was going to be starting school in a matter of days, and was also looking toward her own first day at a new job at Wendy’s.

​

That Thursday evening, Charging Crow went to her friend’s apartment, about a three-minute drive away. She was supposed to be out just a few hours, so all Charging Crow wore on her feet were slippers,, according to Fast Horse.

Jenna Charging Crow with her daughter, Jenelle. Photograph: Courtesy of Monica Fast Horse

But as the night went on, Fast Horse’s curiosity became concern.

 

By the next day it had morphed into fear.