Summer Wells

_{Trigger Warning: This post talks about brutal violence and sexual assault against minors.}

_{This post details one hypothetical version of events and is for entertainment purposes only.}

This was the first current true crime case that I truly knew only the basest of details of before doing my reading and I intentionally tried to to keep it that way. I knew her name only from seeing headlines of YouTube videos about her disappearance but had not yet clicked on any to learn more. But her name started to pop up with enough frequency to register a bit more with each scroll-through and I decided to put my cards to the test. I also decided to go in as blindly as possible and save my research until after my cards had their say, and then come back to them for additional clarification as needed.

I did google her name but scanned the page of results just enough to pull out some personal information that would help me focus my mind while shuffling. I was hoping for her birthday, but couldn’t come up with that readily enough, so settled for her hometown which did pop up right away. So, all that I knew going into my read was that Summer Wells is a 5 year old girl who went missing in June in Rogersville, Tennessee and that both of her parents are vocal about wanting her back (I accidentally saw this but in fairness, I would have assumed as much anyway).

In the end, I didn’t really need to go back and forth between my cards and research. I admittedly haven’t dug too deep into the known information, but I listened to one seemingly thorough case summary after I put my cards down and it didn’t really share anything that sparked the need for additional spreads. So I’m just going to convey what my cards did to me and leave it at that. I may update this later as I am likely to follow her case from here on out and may at some point come back to my cards. And I should confirm at least that their family even does belong to a church…

Through irresponsible and immoderate actions, likely addiction-related, her father had recently experienced a bad turn of luck and found himself in a financial jam. He was anxious about being able to keep up with his obligations and this led him and his wife to be vulnerable to temptations that represented potential lifelines out of this predicament, no matter how unsavory.

The family are all members of a church and one of the key figures of it was privy to their predicament and did have an unsavory proposal for them. Which was the “opportunity” to sell their daughter to a less-than-holy religious group he belonged to, and probably was the leader of. He may have presented it to them as though Summer had been divinely chosen for this honor so would be serving God’s will by being a part of their requisite rituals. He promised the parents she would be treated as such, but to compensate for their sacrifice and cooperation all the same, he’d pay them a meaningful sum of money. They were initially reluctant, but were swayed when told it would be a temporary arrangement and Summer would ultimately be returned to them. Basically, the parents thought they were “renting” her out. I pulled an inordinate number of 6’s and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was meant to be a six-day or -month arrangement. Or perhaps, the cards were just making crystal clear it really was a deal with the devil, which, incidentally, was also a card I pulled a few times in my readings on this case. But regardless, it was a devil’s hand the parents shook and they sacrificed their daughter as their escape route from the financial crisis of their own making. They did this despite not being naive to the fact that she would be subjected to sexual assault and that it wouldn’t make it any better for her that it was disguised as a religious rite sanctioned by God himself. I don’t even know if the men who took her actually bother to pretend there is a religious component to their depravity behind their own closed doors.

There were three main men behind her abduction and I believe they are Summer’s father, the aforementioned church figure, and a younger member of the church. Her parents and the church figure planned out the abduction in a way that would give her father a solid alibi, but the younger man helped carry it out. It was one or both of the church figures who went to get her, but I am inclined to think both did. Summer was familiar with at least one of them enough to go to them without hesitation and they were able to snatch her before she caught on she was in danger. The actual abduction was the first and last thing that happened as the parents expected it to. I pulled multiple cards about plans going astray, but in short, it wasn’t long before they realized they too had been betrayed and they are now stuck not knowing what to do or how to get their daughter safely back. The church figures hold over them the threats of revealing their complicity and of killing her to ensure they remain quiet, and so far they clearly have. It’s possible, bordering on probable, that they were never even given the money they were promised for handing over their daughter to them in the first place. It’s improbable, bordering on impossible, that there was ever any true intention of returning her to them again.

I will say that I initially read the mother to be ignorant of the plan and guilty only of negligence. But in the end, I think I was inserting what I wanted to be true in my interpretation of the cards and they ultimately made it harder to give her the benefit of the doubt on this.

However, if she is innocent of being actively involved in it, she is at least guilty of misrepresenting the events leading up to Summer’s disappearance to make herself look better. There are probably a few things that wouldn’t reflect well on her, if known, but most especially that she drank heavily throughout it and that her overall negligent behavior the day of the abduction (not an anomaly) led to Summer being vulnerable.

The mother also knows the dominant church figure particularly well. This man likely has a touch of the charisma and ability to manipulate others that are often found in cult leaders. She thinks she’s in love with him and fantasizes about marrying him instead, but while it is possible that they were actually having a sexual affair (and I think they were), it is unlikely that he returned her emotions to any degree. Whether he was indeed sleeping with her or not, she was simply a chess piece in his larger game, and seeding her fantasies of a potential future together made it easier for him to move her in service of his aim. Again, I believe that she is hiding a few facts about the events before Summer’s disappearance, including something to do with him. The mother harbored a bit of jealousy towards Summer, perhaps at least partially because she sensed this man’s interest in her daughter even before it was explicitly expressed or had manifested into a tangible crime. If she doesn’t know for sure who took Summer, and this is a highly dubious “if”, she has started to strongly suspect this man. Either way, she is torn between her “love” for him and her daughter.

At this point, neither parent knows Summer’s whereabouts or if she’s alive. Summer is likely being held and well-hidden by the secondary younger accomplice somewhere deep in the woods. She does know that her parents betrayed her, which, of course, was against the agreed-upon plan so that she could theoretically come home at some point without her finger pointed at them. The men shared her knowledge with the parents, so they don’t know what they fear more at this point, her death or her being found alive and articulate. They’d probably lie and say the former. I think they both do lean towards suspecting her life was taken as it is the likelier outcome, statistically/logically speaking. I don’t know what the men tell them, but they don’t trust them anymore anyway, so what they say has no correlation to what they believe.

For what little it’s worth, I do think the parents regret their choice and miss Summer. And they would want her to come home if she didn’t represent such a threat to their own freedom. I think some of the emotions they’ve expressed in interviews are genuine, they are just clearly not divulging their role in why she’s gone. I think guilt and anxiety are weighing particularly heavy on the mom and they are, rightfully, taking a huge toll on her.

Most significantly though, while I am far from certain that I’m not just seeing what I want to see, especially as it seems against the odds, I do feel like the cards are suggesting that, though there will be at least one moment where her life hangs dangerously on the precipice, she is still alive and is likely to be found before it’s too late. But her final outcome has yet to be determined. The younger man who is her primary “caretaker” at this point is struggling under the weight of the decision he’s faced with. He isn’t eager to give up their “shiny new toy” and he also has just enough of a conscience to be unsure that he’s capable of going so far as killing her, despite it being their intentions. So her life is currently in a state of limbo. However, her outcome card in the spread done specifically focusing on the end of this journey for her was The Fool, and I really want to believe that means she’ll be given the chance to start a new life once this is all over. I don’t think the church figure would struggle with the same choice, so though I don’t know why he wouldn’t take it out of the younger man’s hands, that he hasn’t yet might be the only sliver of “good luck” in this case. The cards do suggest that it is also possible she may be further sold into a broader trafficking scheme.

There is a mother figure that is the source of Summer’s strength in the times she isn’t able to completely withdraw into herself to escape her current reality. I initially assumed this was her own mother, but came to believe there was another woman in her life who she did have a genuinely loving bond with and this is who she thinks of and whose arms she imagines comforting her. I think both women being represented in the readings was largely why I was initially giving her biological mother the benefit of the doubt; I was initially attributing both the positive and negative energies to her and trying to figure out how both narratives emerging could be true of one woman, until the cards made it more abundantly clear that there are two involved.

But I do, of course, hope Summer is still with us and will be given the chance for a second start to life, and if there are protective energies out there in this world, that there are enough wrapped tightly around her to carry her through the nightmare she’s experiencing. And I hope that despite being hurt by all the evil, she can still feel she is loved by many people who want her back in better hands. She is 5 years old, and love and safety are all she should know. And I hope when (fingers crossed) she returns she will be placed with people who are capable of providing her true familial care and protection. (This is not to say that every parent who has lost a child doesn’t hold true love for them or does share in some blame, I just think hers don’t and very much do.)