Part 2: 

Inside was a photograph of a girl standing near a roadside sunflower field. She wore a yellow sleeveless dress, her collarbone bare in the sunlight.

For one impossible second, I thought I was looking at Lily.

Patrick grabbed the photo from me so quickly I barely had time to react. He stared at it without blinking.

“Mom,” he whispered. “That’s her.”

Behind the photo was a folded note.

I should have slowed down. I should have looked more carefully. But grief does strange things to the mind. I saw that girl, older and taller, and for a moment I saw the daughter I had buried in my heart become real again.

The note said:

“She is alive. Bring $40,000 if you want the truth.”

A phone number was written beneath it.

“Call now.”

I did not stop Patrick from dialing. I needed to hear someone say Lily’s name too.

He put the phone on speaker, his hands shaking.

A man answered on the second ring. His voice was low and calm, almost rehearsed. He said he knew what had happened to Lily. If we wanted the truth, we had to bring forty thousand dollars in cash to the Pine Crest Motel the next afternoon.

Patrick could barely speak.

“Is she okay?”

The man paused just long enough to make the silence hurt.

“She’s alive.”

That was all Patrick needed.

He broke down right there in the destroyed garden, clutching the photograph. I wrapped my arms around him, but I was crying too. Neither of us was thinking clearly anymore.

After that, Patrick carried the photograph from room to room like it might disappear if he set it down. He said maybe someone had taken Lily that day. Maybe someone had found her and kept her. Maybe she had only recently learned who she truly was.

I listened because I wanted to believe him.

I did not tell my parents at first. I wanted one hour to hope with my son.

It lasted less than twenty minutes.

My mother came in from the yard, saw the photograph in Patrick’s hands, and went completely still.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

My father said nothing for nearly a full minute.

By noon, the four of us sat around the kitchen table with the photograph placed in the center. Patrick refused to let anyone doubt.

“What if someone took her that day?” he demanded. “What if she couldn’t get back? What if she only found out later?”

My mother cried softly and kept touching the edge of the photograph. My father stared at it for a long time before finally saying:

“It looks like her.”

By evening, we had built entire stories around one picture and one note. We were not foolish. We were grieving. There is a difference, but when hope is involved, the distance between the two becomes dangerously small.

I barely slept that night.

Patrick did not sleep at all.

Around two in the morning, I found him sitting at the kitchen table with the photograph.

“I keep trying to remember if her left eyebrow always sat a little higher when she was thinking,” he said.

“Patrick…”

“What if she’s been waiting for us?”

The next morning, cold daylight forced us to look again.

My mother was the first to say it.

“Where is Lily’s birthmark?”

Everything inside me went still.

I took the photo from Patrick and looked closer.

Lily had a small crescent-shaped birthmark near her collarbone.

The girl in the photo did not.

Patrick saw my face change.

“What?”

I did not answer fast enough.

“What?” he repeated.

I turned the photo toward him and pointed.

For a second, he only stared.

Then he shook his head.

“No. Maybe it’s the angle.”

“It isn’t.”

“Maybe makeup covered it.”

“Patrick.”

“Maybe the picture was edited.”

His voice kept rising. I think he felt the truth coming and hated me for seeing it first.

Then he looked from one face to another, and realization finally reached him.

He folded in on himself and covered his mouth with both hands.

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