Margaret collapsed into Daniel’s arms.
Noah had nothing to do with it.
I already understood.
Lily never escaped.
I had never left the city.
He had been there all this time.
Under the same ground where the family had eaten their Sunday meals.
Under the same court where the children had played.
Underneath the house of the man they called grandfather.
The search lasted three days.
Every night, police lights shone on Harold’s old house. Reporters arrived. More police officers arrived. Then the members of the state crime lab. The shed became the center of everything the city had ignored for fifteen years.
Margaret did not speak.
She sat in Lily’s room, holding the pink fabric, running her thumb over and over the three small white flowers.
The truth slowly emerged.
And each part of that truth broke them even more.
The fabric belonged to Lily.
Just like the other items found under the delivery.
A bracelet.
A bar.
A school book.
A silver necklace that Margaret had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
But it was Harold’s notebook that destroyed the family the most.
He had written it all down.
Not as a confession.
Not with guilt.
Like a routine.
Dates.
