PART 5
“We found it when we were ten,” Callie said quickly, her words tumbling out faster now that the secret was finally visible on the table between us. “You’d taken the towels out for our birthday picture, like always, and afterward, when you went to make dinner, I noticed the stitching on mine looked different from the rest of the hem. I picked at it, just curious, and this fell out.”
“We read it together in my room,” Nora said. “That same night. We didn’t understand all of it at first, but we understood enough to know it was important, and we understood enough to be scared.”
“Scared of what,” I asked, my voice barely working.
“Scared it would hurt you,” Callie said. “And scared of what it said about waiting.”
I unfolded the letter with hands that weren’t entirely steady, the paper soft and worn from what I now understood had been eighteen years of careful, hidden handling.
PART 6
To whoever finds my daughters, it began, in handwriting that was careful, deliberate, clearly written by someone trying very hard to hold themselves together long enough to finish it.
My name is Marisol Vance. I am twenty-two years old, and I am leaving my daughters at Sable Point Beach because I have run out of every other option I know how to find.
