I set my coffee down so quickly it sloshed across the floorboards.
“Oh my God.”
The baby wriggled, freeing one small hand. I crouched down, gently touching her cheek with two fingers, then moved my hand to her chest just to feel it rise.
She was warm. Calm. Breathing.
“Okay,” I whispered, though it felt like I was speaking more to myself than to her. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
I lifted the basket and carried her inside.
Five years earlier, my daughter had vanished at sixteen.
One moment, she was slamming cabinet doors because her father, Paul, had forbidden her from seeing a boy named Andy. The next moment, she was gone—so completely gone that it felt as if the world itself had swallowed her whole.
The police searched. Neighbors helped. Her photograph was taped to grocery store windows, gas stations, and every church bulletin board in town.
Nothing came back.
Not a single real lead. Not one answer.
Paul blamed me at first in private. Then he started doing it in front of others.
“You should have known,” he told me the week after she disappeared.
“I didn’t know she was leaving, Paul.”
