“No,” my husband repeated.
“No one leaves until we tell Emily the truth.”
My hands began to shake.
“What truth?”
Emily hurried downstairs.
“Why is the door locked?”
Claire backed away from my husband.
“Ask him,” she said.
“Ask your father why he came to my foster home when I was seven.”
Emily stared at him.
“Dad?”
“I was trying to protect her.”
“From whom?” I demanded.
He looked at Claire.
“From the people who made Rachel disappear.”
The room went silent.
“You knew Rachel was alive?” My voice cracked.
“All these years, you knew?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Claire suddenly opened her purse and pulled out a faded envelope.
“My foster mother gave me this before she passed away,” she said.
“She told me to open it if I ever met the man in the photograph.”
Inside was a picture of my husband standing beside Rachel.
Between them was a little girl with three blue stars drawn on her wrist.
Claire.
Emily covered her mouth.
I turned the photograph over.
A date had been written on the back.
It was taken three years after Rachel disappeared.
Beneath the date was a message in Rachel’s handwriting:
“If my sister ever sees this, tell her that her husband knows why I couldn’t come home.”
My husband reached for the photograph.
Claire pulled it away.
Then Emily whispered, “Mom…
look at the name underneath.”
Beneath Rachel’s message, three words had been written in faded blue ink.
