Because grief makes people forgive things they shouldn’t.
Weeks turned into months.
I called the detective every month. I kept a binder with maps, notes, names.
Mark hated that binder.
“You’re torturing yourself.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“She’s gone.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You have to let her rest.”
“She isn’t resting until I know where she is.”
He looked away.
I should have seen it then.
The truth was already sitting in our house.
A year passed.
Last Tuesday marked exactly one year since Sophie disappeared.
The house felt frozen in time.
Mark’s shirts still hung in the closet. Sophie’s cereal box still sat in the pantry.
And the red tackle box still sat like something sacred on the floor.
Denise called while I was pulling donation bags.
“If I don’t do something, I’m going to scream,” I told her.
“Call me before you break.”
“I think I already did.”
Then everything changed in a single movement.
My elbow hit the tackle box.
It fell.
The lid snapped open.
Lures scattered across the carpet.
And I saw something I was never meant to see.
A false bottom.
Mark had joked about it once.
“Extra-special bait.”
My hands shook as I pulled it open.
Inside:
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