Chapter 6 - NORA HAD BEEN SEARCHING FOR US TOO
Nora did not come with us.
That was difficult.
Necessary.
She went home with Ruth.
Not Lydia.
Ruth had become the first person Nora trusted enough to question the story she had been given.
The next morning, Nora agreed to another meeting.
No Michael this time.
Just me, Nora, and Dr. Lee.
She sat across the room.
“I found myself online six months ago.”
I stopped breathing.
“How?”
A college student entered the bookstore looking for local missing-person books.
Nora helped her search.
One result contained an old article about long-term missing teenagers.
Nora’s photograph appeared.
Sixteen.
Turquoise cover-up.
She stared at herself.
At first, she believed it was coincidence.
Then she saw the name.
Nora Vance.
Her stomach turned.
She went home and asked Lydia.
Lydia said the article was part of an old delusion.
That “Nora” was a girl Nell had identified with during psychiatric treatment.
But Nora had spent years privately remembering fragments.
My voice.
Michael grilling hamburgers.
Her bedroom wall painted gray after she begged us not to choose pink.
Her grandmother’s sewing machine.
“The yellow sun,” I whispered.
Nora nodded.
“I remembered Grandma making fun of it.”
My eyes filled.
“She said it looked like a fried egg.”
Nora laughed unexpectedly.
One second.
Then cried.
That tiny laugh was the first glimpse of my daughter I recognized emotionally.
Then Nora explained the postcard.
She used a library computer to search us.
Found Michael’s business address.
Not our house.
She was afraid Lydia monitored personal mail.
She printed one recent picture of herself from the bookstore’s social-media page.
Mailed it anonymously.
“Why Michael?”
She looked down.
“Because if you were really alive…”
She struggled.
“I thought seeing me might destroy you.”
My chest hurt.
“So you thought your father would handle it better?”
“Yes.”
Michael would be heartbroken to know she still thought of him as “father” somewhere inside herself.
Then Nora whispered:
“I watched old interviews.”
“What interviews?”
Our media appeals.
Eight years of them.
She watched me beg for information.
Watched Michael offer rewards.
Watched my mother hold the turquoise fabric from a similar garment and explain the crooked sun.
“Grandma was alive?”
“For five years after you disappeared.”
Nora closed her eyes.
My mother died without knowing what happened to her granddaughter.
I hated Lydia in that moment with an intensity that frightened me.
Then Nora asked:
“Did Grandma think I ran away?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“Never.”
She cried silently.
Then:
“Lydia told me you were angry because I left.”
“I was never angry at you.”
“I left my phone.”
“I know.”
“I followed her.”
“I know.”
Nora looked up sharply.
“You know?”
I told her about the traffic video.
About Lydia pointing toward the parking lot.
About the shuttle.
“You were trying to get to me.”
Nora’s mouth trembled.
“I thought she said you got hit by a car.”
There it was.
The missing sentence.
Lydia approached Nora near the ice cream stand and said:
“Your mom was hit in the parking lot. Come quickly.”
Nora followed.
The shuttle door closed.
Lydia gave her water.
Nora remembered feeling dizzy.
Then very little.
It had begun with a mother’s worst fear used against her daughter.
Then Nora said:
“There’s something else I remember.”
“What?”
“A man was driving.”
“Peter?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
The driver was not Lydia’s brother.
Nora remembered him because he had a distinctive burn scar on his right hand.
Police records showed Peter Mercer had no such scar.
May you like
Someone else had helped take my daughter.
And Lydia had hidden his identity for eight years.
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