“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.
I covered 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.
