I closed my hand around the locket.
“Dad found out about it?”
“I told him.”
That surprised me.
“You told him?”
“I knew he’d be angry. I didn’t realize he’d panic.”
Part 5
The night before my thirteenth birthday, Anna went to my father.
She told him she couldn’t keep lying to me.
“He refused to let me tell you,” she said. “So I told him I wasn’t asking permission anymore.”
That sounded exactly like the Anna I remembered.
“What did he do?”
“He told me that if I told you the truth, I’d never see you again.”
“And you still planned to tell me?”
“Yes.”
That night, Dad fired her.
He ordered her out of the house and told her never to contact me again.
By the next morning, she’d been removed from my school’s approved pickup list.
Her calls stopped going through.
Then I learned that the apartment she’d been living in belonged to one of Dad’s relatives.
She was forced to leave.
Her phone had been part of Dad’s family plan.
He had it disconnected.
Suddenly, her disappearance made sense.
She hadn’t abandoned me.
She had been erased.
