PART 2:
By the time dawn began creeping across the horizon, Chicago still felt impossibly far away. Every mile seemed to punish me with another memory of Sarah. I kept seeing her at five years old, running through sprinklers with wet hair plastered to her cheeks, and at six, asleep against my shoulder during a Fourth of July fireworks show.
I thought about the morning I left for Minneapolis. Sarah had been standing in the kitchen wearing unicorn pajamas when she asked whether I would bring her back a snow globe, even though it was only April. I kissed the top of her head and promised I would, never noticing the way her eyes drifted nervously toward the staircase or the tired shadows beneath them.
I hadn’t noticed anything.
When I finally arrived at Chris’s apartment complex in Lincoln Park, the sun was rising behind the buildings, painting the sky a dull shade of gray. Chris stood near the entrance holding two cups of coffee. He looked exhausted. His shirt was wrinkled, his face was unshaven, and dark circles hung beneath his eyes.
“Where is she?” I asked immediately.
“She’s sleeping,” he replied.
I started toward the building, but Chris stepped into my path.
“Jamie,” he said quietly, “before you see Sarah, there’s something you need to understand.”
I looked at my brother and noticed his grip tightening around the coffee cup until the cardboard bent.
“This wasn’t an accident,” he said. “And somebody tried to cover it up.”
He led me upstairs, but instead of taking me directly to Sarah, he brought me into his apartment. That was when a different kind of fear settled over me. It wasn’t the panic that had followed me down the interstate. It wasn’t the desperate fear of a father racing toward his injured child.
This fear felt heavier.
It felt permanent.
The apartment smelled of black coffee, antiseptic ointment, and the lavender detergent our mother had always used. On the couch, a small pink blanket was folded neatly over the armrest, and near the door sat Sarah’s shoes, one tipped on its side with dried mud still clinging to the sole.
“She woke up twice during the night,” Chris said. “Both times because of nightmares. She kept asking for you.”
My throat tightened.
“Where is she?”
“In the guest room,” he answered. “But listen to me first.”
Part of me hated him for delaying. Another part understood exactly why he was doing it.
Chris opened a folder resting on the kitchen table.
The first photograph showed Sarah lying in a hospital bed. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, she looked much younger than eight years old. A strip of white gauze covered her forehead, scratches marked her cheek, dried blood lingered along her hairline, and a dark bruise shaped like fingers spread across her left shoulder.
I grabbed the back of a chair to steady myself.
“Who did that?”
“The doctor said she needed stitches in her forehead and arm,” Chris replied. “She also had bruises on both shoulders and one on her hip. The injuries are consistent with someone grabbing and shoving her.”
“Shoving her into what?”
Without answering immediately, Chris slid another photograph across the table.
It was my kitchen.
Broken ceramic pieces were scattered across the tile floor. I immediately recognized the shattered vase Melissa had purchased from an expensive gallery and never let anyone forget the price of. Blood stained the white grout, and a long smear stretched across the floor where someone had clearly attempted to wipe it away.
My stomach turned.
Then Chris showed me the next image.
It was the garage.
The concrete floor contained a dark stain near the door leading into the house. Thin reddish streaks extended across the floor toward the driveway, creating a trail that was impossible to ignore.
Drag marks.
My knees nearly gave out.
“Carolyn said she found Sarah in the driveway.”
“She did,” Chris said quietly. “She was sitting beside the side gate.”
“She was barefoot.”
Chris nodded.
“In April.”
The silence that followed felt unbearable. Looking at those photographs, I realized something that terrified me more than any injury report ever could.
Whatever had happened inside my house that night, it hadn’t ended where it started.
Someone had moved my daughter afterward.
And somebody had tried very hard to make sure no one ever knew the truth …
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