My hands went numb.
“Don’t come closer,” she said quickly.
I froze.
“I won’t.”
Her chin shook. “I needed to know if you would come.”
“I would have crossed the world for you.”
“Then why did Dad say you left?”
The question hit hard.
“I needed to know if you would come.”
“What?”
Tara reached into the box marked MOM and pulled out envelopes tied with string.
“I wrote these every birthday,” she said. “Nine to eighteen.”
“I never got them.”
“I know.”
She opened one.
“Dear Mom,” she read, her voice tight. “Dad says you went back to America because you didn’t want me anymore. I don’t believe him, but I’m trying to.”
“I never got them.”
“No.”
She looked up. “That was my twelfth birthday.”
“Baby, I never left you. Yes, I left to work that day. But I came right back home, with all the ingredients for pancakes in my bag.”
“Then what did he tell you?”
I swallowed hard. “He told me you vanished from the garden.”
Her face changed.
“Then what did he tell you?”
“He called the police?”
“Yes.”
“He searched?”
“In front of everyone.”
Her jaw tightened.
“He came to see me that night.”
The words hit so hard I almost folded forward.
“Where?”
“Claire’s apartment.”
“He called the police?”
Claire.
Grant’s friend, the woman who brought me tea, passed out flyers, and hugged me while I shook.
“Claire had you?”
Tara nodded. “She came into the garden. She said you had an emergency and Dad had asked her to bring me. Everyone knew Claire, so no one stopped us.”
“And Grant knew?”
“He came that night,” Tara said. “I thought he was taking me home.”
“Claire had you?”
I pressed my fist against my mouth.
“What did he say?”
Tara’s eyes filled.
“He said you were gone.”
We sat in silence, surrounded by boxes and twenty years of stolen time.
Then Tara stood.
