Now she was here.
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“I knew one day you would come.”
I turned.
And there she was.
Older. Thinner. Pale. But Alice.
Daniel made this broken sound and ran to her. She dropped to her knees and grabbed him so hard I thought she might never let go again.
Now she was here.
Daniel pulled back just enough to look at her.
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She looked up at me with tears streaming down her face. “I wanted to come back.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
She flinched.
Daniel pulled back just enough to look at her. “Mom, what happened?”
Alice sat against the wall. “The day of the crash, I wasn’t just going into town. I was meeting someone who said he had information about your father.”
“Somebody knew the children’s names.”
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I frowned. “What information?”
“Before he died, he found out money was disappearing from a church charity. A lot of it. He also thought foster and adoption records were being altered. Kids were being moved faster when certain people signed off. He started keeping notes. He told me there were people in town I couldn’t trust.”
She kept going. “At first I thought grief was making him suspicious. Then after he died, I started getting notes. Calls with no one speaking. I would look outside and see a car I didn’t recognize. Somebody knew the children’s names. Their schools. My schedule.”
Then someone found her in the woods.
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Daniel whispered, “Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
“I was afraid,” she said. “And I thought if I kept quiet, maybe it would stop.”
She said the man she was meeting wanted her to bring whatever her husband had left behind. She did not bring it. She wanted proof first. On the way back, a car forced her off the road. Her car skidded. The tree came down. She got out before it crushed the front.
Then someone found her in the woods.
I asked, “Who?”
Daniel went still.
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Her face hardened. “Tom.”
I just stared at her. “Sheriff Tom?”
She nodded.
Tom had led search teams. He had sat in my kitchen drinking coffee. He had told the children, “We’re not giving up.”
Alice said, “He told me if I came back, the children would pay for it. I thought it was just a threat. Then the next morning I found a note in the chapel with a picture of Daniel getting out of your car at school.”
