Dolly wiped her face.
“She doesn’t live here.”
“Where?”
“I can tell you.”
“Why didn’t she come herself?”
Dolly looked down.
“Because she’s afraid you hate her.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Hate her?”
“She thought you did.”
“She disappeared!”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t know.”
My voice cracked.
“I spent my entire life wondering whether she was dead.”
Dolly flinched.
I immediately regretted my tone.
None of this was her fault.
I sat back down.
“Tell me what happened.”
Dolly took a long breath.
Then she told me the story that had been hidden from me for almost forty years.
Laura hadn’t been kidnapped.
She hadn’t been killed.
She had run away.
There was a boy.
His name was Nathan.
I remembered him vaguely.
He was eighteen.
My father hated him.
