I covered.S. my mouth.
“Oh, God.”
For sixteen years, I had imagined every possible horror.
Hospital rooms.
Roadsides.
Graves.
Locked houses.
But there she was.
Alive after she disappeared.
I turned the photograph over.
In blue ink were two words.
Still here.
I knew the handwriting immediately.
Gia’s.
Dana whispered, “I should have turned it in. I didn’t know.”
I couldn’t answer.
Then I noticed faint writing beneath those words.
Almost rubbed away.
I held the photograph toward the sunlight.
A date.
August 3, 2009.
More than a year after Gia vanished.
My daughter had survived at least another year.
The realization broke something open inside me.
Not relief exactly.
Not grief either.
Something in between.
I looked at the porch in the picture.
White railing.
Blue door.
A hanging fern.
Then I noticed the edge of someone’s hand resting on Gia’s shoulder.
No face.
Just a hand.
“Do you know where this was taken?”
Dana shook her head.
“No.”
Then she removed the bag and set it beside me.
“You should have this.”
I ran my fingers across the crooked handle.
“I can’t.”
“It belonged to her.”
I looked at Dana.
“No. It was hers.”
For sixteen years, I had frozen Gia at seventeen.
I kept her toothbrush.
Renewed her library card.
Repeated the same physical description.
I had preserved the girl who disappeared because she was the only version I still knew.
But the photograph proved something terrifying and wonderful.
My last words had not been the final chapter of her life.
Dana and I exchanged phone numbers.
She promised to help identify the thrift store.
That evening, I called the police.
