“What did she say to you?”
“She helped me find a book about a boy who follows a map.”
“Did she tell you who she was?”
“No.”
“What else did she say?”
Silas looked at the woman in the photograph.
“She said she had been hoping I would come back.”
Daniel slowly lowered himself into a chair.
The room went silent.
Elena had not merely returned to Cedar Rapids.
She had already spoken to her son.
And as Daniel began reading the final lines of her letter, I saw his hands start to tremble.
Whatever Elena had written was not only an explanation for why she had come home.
It was something Daniel had never known about the night she disappeared.
October 14.
The date circled three times in blue ink.
Daniel noticed.
“Mom?”
She did not answer.
He placed Elena’s letter on the table and read aloud.
“‘I came to the house on October fourteenth after I was released from the treatment center. I had a letter from my doctor, a place to stay, and a plan for supervised visits. I believed I was ready to speak to you.’”
