CHAPTER 3 — THE WOMAN WHO NEVER HAD A DAUGHTER
CHAPTER 3 — THE WOMAN WHO NEVER HAD A DAUGHTER
Officer Daniels stared at the photograph for several long seconds before slipping it into an evidence bag.
"No one leaves alone," he ordered. "Lock the entire building down."
The grocery store became a crime scene within minutes.
Uniformed officers flooded the entrances.
Detectives arrived.
Customers were interviewed.
Security cameras were seized.
Yet when investigators reviewed the footage from the previous ten minutes, something impossible appeared on the screen.
The black SUV had never parked across the street.
It simply...
appeared.
One frame showed an empty curb.
The next frame showed the SUV already sitting there.
No arrival.
No approach.
Nothing.
Then, after the phone call, it disappeared just as strangely.
The cameras skipped nearly fourteen seconds.
Every camera in the parking lot had glitched at exactly the same moment.
One detective muttered quietly,
"Professional."
Lily hadn't spoken another word.
She sat beside me in the office, clutching my sleeve as if letting go meant dying.
A child psychologist was called.
She introduced herself gently.
"My name is Dr. Rachel."
No response.
"Can I sit beside you?"
Silence.
She tried toys.
Coloring books.
Juice.
Nothing.
Finally she asked one simple question.
"Who taught you that Emma is your mommy?"
Lily slowly lifted her head.
"The nice lady."
"What nice lady?"
"The lady who cried."
Everyone in the room looked at one another.
"What did she look like?" Dr. Rachel asked.
Lily frowned, concentrating.
"She smelled like flowers."
"What color was her hair?"
"Yellow."
"Did she tell you her name?"
Lily nodded.
"Anna."
The detectives immediately wrote it down.
"Anna what?"
"I don't know."
"What did Anna tell you?"
Lily whispered,
"If I ever got scared... I had to find Emma."
My heart began pounding again.
"Did Anna know me?"
"She showed me your picture."
The detective carefully slid the photograph from the evidence bag onto the table.
Lily nodded instantly.
"That's Mommy."
"No," I said softly. "That's me."
"Yes."
She smiled for the first time.
"My mommy."
An hour later, Detective Sarah Monroe arrived.
Unlike the uniformed officers, she didn't waste time with comforting smiles.
She carried a thick file.
"Emma Carter?"
"Yes."
"I need to ask you something."
She opened the folder.
Inside were dozens of photographs.
Every single one showed me.
Walking my dog.
Leaving work.
Buying coffee.
Jogging.
Visiting my father's grave.
Standing outside my apartment.
Some were months old.
Some looked recent.
One had clearly been taken only yesterday.
I felt sick.
"I've never seen these."
"I know."
She looked directly into my eyes.
"Whoever left Lily with you has been following you for a very long time."
"Why?"
"We're trying to answer that."
She turned another page.
There was a map of the city.
Red circles marked places I'd visited during the past year.
Every circle had dates.
Times.
Notes.
Someone hadn't just watched me.
Someone had studied my life.
Detective Monroe asked the question I had been dreading.
"Emma... have you ever donated eggs?"
I blinked.
"What?"
"It's a routine question."
"No."
"Surrogacy?"
"No."
"Given birth?"
I almost laughed.
"I'm thirty-four. I've never been pregnant."
She watched me carefully.
"I had to ask."
Lily interrupted quietly.
"Mommy cries at night."
The room froze.
I looked at her.
"What did you say?"
"You cry."
"I don't."
"Yes."
"You sit by the window."
"You miss the baby."
My breathing stopped.
Nobody knew that.
Three years ago...
I'd lost a pregnancy at eleven weeks.
Only three people had ever known.
Me.
My doctor.
And my fiancé.
The fiancé who had died six months later in a car accident.
I had never spoken about the miscarriage again.
Never.
I stared at Lily.
"Who told you that?"
She looked confused.
"I saw you."
"You've never seen me before today."
"Yes, I have."
"When?"
She pointed toward the ceiling as if trying to remember.
"The house with the blue door."
Every muscle in my body locked.
My apartment building had a blue front door.
Detective Monroe slowly closed the folder.
"Emma..."
She spoke carefully.
"I think this child has been inside your life before."
"But how?"
"I don't know."
She stood.
"But I think someone has been preparing this moment for years."
Just then, another detective rushed into the office.
"We got something."
Monroe turned sharply.
"What?"
"The fingerprint on the envelope."
"It matched?"
The detective swallowed.
"Not exactly."
"Explain."
"It belongs to someone who officially died six years ago."
Silence.
"Who?"
He handed her the report.
Monroe's face drained of color.
"No..."
"What is it?" I asked.
She looked at me slowly.
"The fingerprint belongs to Anna Sullivan."
"The woman Lily mentioned?"
"Yes."
"But that's impossible."
"Anna Sullivan disappeared six years ago."
"And?"
"They found her body in Riverside Park."
The same park.
The same place where someone had photographed me.
The room suddenly felt ice cold.
Then Lily whispered one sentence that made every detective in the room stop breathing.
"Anna isn't dead."
May you like
She looked toward the office window.
"She told me she'd come back for me."
