I screamed until my throat burned. Grabbed the plate right out from under his knife and threw it against the wall behind him. Ceramic sprayed across the floor. He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t flinch.
“Where did she GO?”
“How would I know? She’s grown.”
“She’s my DAUGHTER.”
“And this,” he said, finally lifting his eyes to mine, “is my house. Try to remember that before you break anything else.”
I didn’t sleep that night. Sat on the edge of Piper’s bed calling and calling, listening to the same recorded voice tell me her mailbox was full. I thought about leaving him. I really did. Then I thought about the mortgage in his name, the checking account he’d opened “for both of us” that only he could actually access, my small paycheck that barely covered groceries and wouldn’t cover a security deposit on a studio anywhere in this town.
So I stayed. God help me, I stayed. But I didn’t remain entirely passive.
So I stayed. God help me, I stayed.
For weeks I chased ghosts. Contacted every friend Piper had ever mentioned. Called shelters two states over, hospitals, anyone who might know anything. I filed a missing persons report with Detective Marsh, who was kind and honest and didn’t lie to me about the odds.
“She’s an adult, ma’am. If she doesn’t want to be found, there’s only so much we can do.”
“She wouldn’t do this. Not without telling me.”
“I hear you. I’ll keep the file open.”
Her phone went silent entirely in the third week, after hundreds of unanswered calls. That was the part that finished something inside me. It was as if my only child had fallen off the face of the earth.
One evening, I made myself ask. “Dalton. The account my dad left for Piper’s college. Is it still there?”
