Sophie stood beside me silently.
For nearly forty years, I had wondered whether Laura had walked out of our lives carrying that little sunflower.
Now I was holding it again.
The past wasn’t gone.
It had just walked into my kitchen wearing my granddaughter.
“I need to meet Dolly.”
Sophie swallowed.
“I figured you were going to say that.”
The next afternoon, I went to Sophie’s school.
My hands shook the entire drive.
I had imagined finding Laura thousands of times.
In some versions, she was alive and happy.
In others, she had been injured and couldn’t come home.
Sometimes I imagined discovering that she had spent years trying to find us too.
But I had never imagined meeting a stranger wearing a janitor’s badge who somehow possessed the sweater my sister wore the night she disappeared.
Sophie led me toward a hallway near the gym.
A woman was pushing a cleaning cart.
She looked to be in her late thirties.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
Something about her face made me stop.
Not because she looked exactly like Laura.
She didn’t.
But there was something in the shape of her mouth.
The way she tilted her head.
A familiarity I couldn’t place.
Sophie called out.
“Dolly?”
The woman turned.
