My Daughter Disappeared at 17 – 16 Years Later, I Saw the Bag I Knitted for Her on a Stranger’s Shoulder

“Gia wouldn’t.S. have donated it.”

The words came out too sharply.

Dana looked at me.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“No,” she said gently. “You knew her when she was seventeen.”

That sentence hurt.

Because she was right.

I knew seventeen-year-old Gia.

I knew how she drank coffee.

What songs she played too loudly.

How she rolled her eyes when I asked where she was going.

But I knew nothing about the woman she might have become.

Dana looked apologetic.

“I’m sorry.”

“What else did you find?”

She stared at the bag.

“A folded piece of paper.”

My fingers went cold.

“What did it say?”

“I don’t remember all of it.”

“Yes, you do.”

She looked at me.

“I remember part.”

I waited.

“It said something about not wanting to go home.”

My chest tightened.

“I think the words were, ‘I can’t go back yet.’”

Suddenly, Gia was standing in my doorway again.

Green tank top.

Cream bag.

That stubborn expression.

“Was her name on it?”

Dana looked away.

“You said you’d heard Gia’s name.”

She rubbed the strap nervously.

Then she said, “There was something else.”

“What?”

“The lining tore years ago. When I tried fixing it, I felt something hidden inside.”

I could barely breathe.

Dana opened the  bag.

She moved aside sunglasses.

Sunscreen.

A wallet.

A paperback.

Then she reached into a narrow inner pocket and pulled out a clear plastic sleeve.

Inside was a photograph.

My hands started trembling before she even passed it to me.

Gia.

Older.

Not much older.

Maybe eighteen.

Maybe nineteen.

Her hair was shorter.

Her face thinner.

She was sitting on the steps of a porch with her knees pulled toward her chest.

And she was smiling.

Really smiling.