Chapter 6
We left for Wisconsin that night.
Not all of us.
Lily stayed at the hospital under police protection with Harper and two officers outside her room.
Leaving her felt like cutting my own skin.
But finding Sophia mattered.
For Michael.
For the case.
For the truth Diane had buried alive.
Detective Monroe drove the lead car.
Michael and I sat in the back seat of an unmarked SUV.
He held the old photo of Sophia in both hands.
The highway lights slid across his face.
He looked like a man staring at his own childhood from the wrong side of a locked door.
“She used to sing to me,” he said.
“What song?”
“I don’t remember. Just the feeling.”
His thumb brushed the edge of the photograph.
“I remember hiding behind her skirt when Diane shouted.”
I listened.
“I remember Sophia smelling like vanilla soap. I remember crying when she left the room. Diane said I was too attached to help.”
His voice broke.
“Then the fire happened. Diane told me Sophia ran back for jewelry.”
“Jewelry?”
“She said Sophia was greedy.”
Of course she did.
Cruel people always make their victims look small before erasing them.
Clara Mills met us at a closed gas station near the Wisconsin border.
She was in her sixties, nervous, and wearing a coat too thin for the cold.
“I should have spoken years ago,” she said.
Detective Monroe asked, “Why didn’t you?”
Clara looked at Michael.
“Because Diane Bennett knew where my sons lived.”
Michael looked down.
Clara reached into her bag.
“I copied what I could.”
She handed us a folder.
Inside were transfer forms.
Medication logs.
Photos of Sophia over the years.
My throat tightened.
Sophia was older in each image.
Thinner.
But alive.
Michael touched one photo with shaking fingers.
“She was alive when I graduated college.”
Clara nodded.
“And when you got married.”
He closed his eyes.
“When Lily was born?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Clara.
“Does she know?”
“That she has a granddaughter? No.”
Michael made a broken sound.
Clara continued.
“She was told you wanted nothing to do with her. That you believed she had abandoned you.”
“No.”
“She never believed it completely.”
His head lifted.
“She asked for you every birthday.”
That nearly destroyed him.
The care home sat behind a line of pines two miles from the main road.
No sign.
No bright windows.
Just a long low building with security cameras and one guard at the front entrance.
Detective Monroe had warrants ready, but she wanted Clara to identify the wing first.
We moved fast.
Police at the front.
Two agents at the back.
Michael and I waited in the car until Detective Monroe called.
“Come in.”
Inside, the air smelled like bleach and old flowers.
A nurse argued at the desk.
A manager demanded to call an attorney.
No one stopped us.
Clara led us down a narrow hall.
Room 14.
She stopped outside.
“She may not understand at first.”
Michael’s face was pale.
I took his hand.
He looked at me.
I squeezed once.
He opened the door.
A woman sat by the window with a blanket over her knees.
Her hair was silver now.
Her face was lined.
But I knew her eyes from Michael’s face.
She turned slowly.
For a moment, she only stared.
Then her lips parted.
“Arthur?”
Michael shook his head, tears already falling.
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“Sophia, it’s me.”
Her eyes searched his face.
“My baby?”
He fell to his knees in front of her chair.
“Yes.”
Sophia touched his cheek with trembling fingers.
“Michael?”
He broke completely.
She held his face the way mothers do when they are counting years with their hands.
“My boy,” she sobbed. “My boy.”
I stood in the doorway crying so hard I could barely breathe.
Then Sophia looked past him at me.
“Who are you?”
I wiped my face.
“I’m Emma. Michael’s wife.”
Her eyes filled again.
“Wife.”
“And we have a daughter,” I whispered. “Her name is Lily.”
Sophia pressed both hands to her mouth.
“A granddaughter?”
Michael nodded.
“She’s beautiful.”
Sophia began crying softly.
Then her face changed.
Fear returned.
“Diane?”
“In custody,” Michael said.
Sophia grabbed his wrist.
“No. She always comes back.”
Detective Monroe stepped into the room.
“Not this time.”
But even as she said it, alarms sounded down the hall.
A nurse screamed.
A guard shouted.
Clara ran to the window and gasped.
A black car was speeding away from the back entrance.
Detective Monroe cursed into her radio.
Michael stood.
“What happened?”
May you like
A nurse rushed in, trembling.
“The records room,” she said. “Someone set it on fire.”
