Chapter 2

"Exit 42?" I asked. My voice sounded remarkably steady, carrying just the right tremor of lingering shock. I leaned against the counter, pouring hot water into Miller’s mug. "That’s barely thirty miles south of here."

"She didn't know where she was, Clara," Miller said quietly, shaking his head. "No identification on her. Just forty dollars in cash, that old jacket, and a laminated photocopy of her middle school student ID card tucked inside the lining. When the state troopers ran the name, it lit up the national registry."

"Did she say where she's been?" I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the kettle. "Did she say who took her?"

"She’s in shock. Memory’s fractured," Miller sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Troopers tried questioning her at the station, but she completely shut down. Kept repeating your names. Eleanor, Arthur, Clara. The doctor who checked her over said trauma can wall off large chunks of the past. Dissociative fugue, retro-grade amnesia... all that medical jargon. She remembers bits and pieces. Scraps of dark rooms, long highway rides, voices. But she remembered home."

Miller looked up at me, his eyes softening with profound remorse.

"I have to tell you, Clara... I carried the guilt of this case for ten years. When she first went missing at fifteen, we made assumptions we shouldn't have made."

I knew exactly what assumptions he meant.

Back then, Daisy had been the wild one. Moody, artistic, prone to screaming matches with Mother over curfews and boyfriends. She had an appetite for drama, scribbling furious poems in her notebook and threatening to run away to New York or Los Angeles. When she vanished on that rainy Friday night after a high school bonfire, her bedroom window left unlocked and a hundred dollars missing from Father’s wallet, Miller’s predecessor had labeled her a voluntary runaway.

*She’ll be back when the money runs out,* the deputies had told us.

They hadn't set up roadblocks. They hadn't mobilized the state search dogs until five days had passed, by which time the autumn rains had washed away every scent, every footprint, every trace of struggle from the Blackwood Ravine.

And I had helped them believe it.

Back then, I had softly told the deputies about Daisy’s secret journals, about her wild talk of hitchhiking to the coast, steering their gaze as far away from the town borders as possible.

"You did what you thought was right, Thomas," I said smoothly, offering the sheriff a sad, forgiving smile. "Nobody blames you."

"Your family went through hell," Miller muttered. "First Daisy disappears. Then two weeks later, the Lin girl skips town, and the whole neighborhood felt cursed."

A cold prickle tapped at the base of my skull.

"Maya Lin," I murmured.

"Yeah. Daisy's shadow," Miller said, taking a sip of his coffee. "Strange kid. Always lurking behind the fence, staring into your yard. Remember how she claimed she saw Daisy running into the woods that night? Swore up and down she heard screaming by the old reservoir?"

"Maya was prone to hysterics," I said, my tone flat, carefully neutral. "She had an overactive imagination."

"Well, her aunt didn't think so. Packed the girl up and shipped her off to family in Chicago before November even hit," Miller said, shaking his head. "People in this town were ready to tear each other apart back then. But now... look at her."

Miller turned his head toward the den.

Through the French doors, the girl was whispering something to Mother. Mother smiled through her tears, nodding vigorously, pulling the girl's head down onto her shoulder.

"It’s a miracle, Clara," Miller whispered. "A genuine, honest-to-God miracle. You kept this family together for ten years. You deserve this peace more than anyone."

"Thank you, Thomas," I said, holding his gaze with the serene grace of an angel. "We’ve waited so long."

***

By midnight, the house had finally settled into an uneasy, breathless quiet.

Sheriff Miller had departed with promises to return the following afternoon with the county social worker to finalize the paperwork and schedule a formal medical follow-up. Father, exhausted by the emotional deluge, had fallen asleep in his recliner, his breathing heavy and rattling. Mother had painstakingly escorted the girl upstairs to the second floor, into the bedroom that had remained frozen in amber for a decade.

I stood in the darkened hallway upstairs, barefoot, watching from the shadows near the linen closet.

The door to Daisy’s old room was cracked open by three inches. The yellow light from the bedside lamp spilled across the floral runner.

Mother was bustling inside, smoothing the dust ruffle on the twin bed, opening drawers that had not been opened in years.

"I kept everything, Daisy," Mother was saying, her voice thick and trembling with maternal fervor. "Your sketchbooks. Your winter sweaters. Clara wanted me to donate them, but I told her no. I told her, my Daisy will need her clothes when she walks back through that door."

"Thank you, Mom," the girl replied.

The voice was unsettlingly accurate. It possessed Daisy’s slight nasal cadence, the soft dip at the end of every sentence.

"Get some sleep, darling," Mother whispered, kissing the top of her head. "I'm right down the hall. Daddy and I are right here. You’re safe now."

Mother pulled the door half-shut and shuffled down the corridor toward the master bedroom, her footsteps slow and worn out by sheer relief. She didn't even notice me standing in the alcove.

I waited until Mother’s bedroom door clicked shut.

I waited until the floorboards ceased their groaning, until the grandfather clock in the downstairs foyer chimed a single, solemn stroke for half past twelve.

Then, with silent, measured steps, I walked over to Daisy’s door and pushed it open.

The girl was not sleeping.

She was standing in the center of the room, her back turned to me, looking at the corkboard pinned to the wall above the desk. The board was covered in ten-year-old memories: faded ticket stubs from the Oakhaven cinema, dried corsages from the freshman dance, and photographs of a smiling fifteen-year-old girl with wild chestnut hair.

She still had the mustard corduroy jacket on. She hadn't taken it off.

"You should change," I said quietly, stepping inside and letting the latch click shut behind me. "That jacket has mildew on the hem. You'll catch a chill."

The girl didn't startle. She didn't flinch.

Slowly, deliberately, she turned around.

The frail, trembling demeanor she had worn in front of Miller and my parents had vanished. Her shoulders were squared. Her chin was lifted. In the amber glow of the bedside lamp, her hazel eyes were steady, sharp, and chillingly clear.

"You kept my room just the way it was," she said. Her voice lacked the cracked, weeping cadence from the foyer; it was cool, measured, perfectly controlled. "Did you do that for Mom, Clara? Or did you do it to convince yourself I was never coming back?"

The air between us seemed to drop ten degrees.

A lesser woman would have stammered. A guilty woman would have panicked.

I didn't. I held her gaze, crossing my arms over my chest, letting the sweet, benevolent mask of Saint Clara slip just enough to reveal the steel beneath.

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