Then the room starts to spin.
It’s a photograph. A girl standing outside Saltspray Cove Youth Camp. The pastel-colored buildings glow behind her, cheerful and immaculate, just like in the brochures and the website.
The girl looks a little older than I remember.
Her hair—once long and untamed—has been cut to just below her shoulders. She’s also thinner, her face sharper, but there’s no mistaking my daughter.
Sadie.
Dizziness sweeps through me, my breath coming fast and shallow.
Coco whines softly, pressing her fluffy head against my leg.
I turn the photograph over.
Two words are written on the back, the ink slightly smudged.
She’s alive.
TWO
The mug slips from my hand and breaks on the floor. Coco manages to escape to the living room area before the shards scatter and hot coffee splashes over my ankles, staining the white tiles. I don’t feel the pain or the heat. I can’t feel my feet at all.
All I feel is my heart beating loudly in my chest, so loud it seems like it could break my ribs.
It’s her. It’s my daughter in that photo. Is she really alive?
As I allow this to sink in, a sudden chill spreads through my body, pressing against my skin, chilling me from within.
My eyes sting as I bend down, my hands sweaty as I hold the photo between trembling fingers. The edges bend a little under my grip, and panic rises that I might damage it, as if it’s fragile evidence I can’t afford to taint or destroy.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I turn the photo over again to have another look. Tears blur my vision, so I blink and try again. Slowly, she comes into focus—her heart-shaped face, her black hair, and the pale scar in the middle of her forehead from when she fell in kindergarten at five.
I remember that day clearly. I picked her up and saw a big pink scrape on her face.
My little girl was always so brave. But seeing her hurt made me ache. I confronted the carers for not telling me or covering the scrape. I moved her to a new place the very next week.
Over the years, the wound healed, and the scar faded, but not enough for a mother to forget it’s there.
This girl in the photo is definitely my daughter.
Getting to my feet, I hold my breath and bring the photo close to my face to read the rest of the text, even though it wobbles before my watery eyes.
She’s alive. Don’t go to the police if you want to keep it that way.
“She’s alive,” I whisper, barely making a sound as Coco returns to the kitchen, sniffing the spilled coffee.
My throat dry and my breathing shallow, I stare at the words, letter by letter, forcing myself to believe them. Repeating them feels like it might make them real, less likely to disappear.
There’s something else in the envelope. A yellow sticky note with more writing. It looks like it was once stuck to the photo and detached.
I take it out and read the words on it. They hit me hard and turn the rest of my world upside down.
Your husband knows more about her disappearance than you do.
I sink to the floor as my legs give out. Even when my knees hit the tile, I ignore the pain.
While Coco runs to the balcony doors and barks, asking to be let out, coffee seeps into my shorts, warm and sticky, but I hardly notice.
