The letter in front of me was proof that my daughter had tried to leave a path back to me.
Felix had erased it.
“What else was in the unit?” I asked.
Detective Collins exchanged a glance with Officer Phil.
“A train ticket.”
My head lifted.
“To where?”
“Portland, Oregon.”
“Date?”
“The night Nana disappeared.”
I stared at them.
“Was it used?”
“We’re trying to verify that. Records from ten years ago are incomplete.”
“But she may have gone to Portland.”
“She may have intended to.”
I stood again.
“Then we go there.”
Collins’s expression tightened slightly.
“We’re already contacting agencies in Oregon.”
“No. I mean me.”
“Mrs. Harrison—”
“My daughter could have been there for ten years.”
“Or she may have changed trains. Used another name. Left the city.”
“Then I’ll search every city.”
“Running to Portland without a confirmed lead could make this harder.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Harder than what? Sitting in a guest room while strangers decide whether my daughter deserves another search?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s what everyone has said for ten years. Wait. Be patient. Let professionals handle it.”
I picked up the photograph of Marisol.
“And where did waiting get us?”
Detective Collins remained silent.
I pointed at Nana’s letter.
“My husband had this the entire time.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
I looked at her.
“You go home at night knowing where your family is.”
The words were unfair.
I knew that immediately.
But grief had stopped caring about fairness.
Collins absorbed the blow without flinching.
Then she spoke softly.
“My older brother disappeared when I was fourteen.”
The room went still.
I looked at her.
“They found him six months later,” she continued. “Alive. He had run away because our father was abusive. My mother had no idea.”
I lowered the photograph.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
She closed the folder.
“That is why I took this case.”
For the first time, I saw something beneath her controlled expression.
Not pity.
Recognition.
“I won’t ask you to stop searching,” she said. “But give us forty-eight hours before you go to Portland. Let us speak to Marisol first.”
“You think you’ll find her?”
“I think she has been moving between shelters and temporary jobs. People in that situation often leave traces without realizing it.”
“And if she has Nana’s bracelet, she knows something.”
“Yes.”
That single word restored a small piece of hope.
I nodded.
“Forty-eight hours.”
Detective Collins stood.
Before leaving, she allowed me to photograph Nana’s letter.
I stared at the image on my phone long after the officers left.
Please know I didn’t leave because of you.
For ten years, I had needed those words.
Now that I had them, they hurt almost as much as the silence.
That evening, the news aired footage of Felix being led into the courthouse.
His hands were cuffed.
His suit hung badly on him.
Reporters shouted questions.
“Did you threaten your daughter?”
“Do you know where Savannah Harrison is?”
“Did you destroy evidence?”
Felix stared straight ahead.
Then one reporter called out my name.
“Did you lie to Natalie Harrison for ten years?”
Felix stopped walking.
For one second, he looked toward the cameras.
His face changed.
Not into regret.
Into fear.
The clip replayed three times.
I noticed the same thing every time.
He wasn’t afraid of prison.
He was afraid of what else the police might find.
I called Detective Collins immediately.
“Felix knows more.”
She was silent for a moment.
“What makes you say that?”
“I know his face.”
“Mrs. Harrison—”
“He looked terrified when they asked whether he lied to me.”
“He has many reasons to be frightened right now.”
“No. This was different.”
“What do you think he’s hiding?”
“I don’t know.”
Then I remembered something.
A moment so small I had dismissed it for years.
Three days after Nana vanished, Felix had returned home late.
His shoes were muddy.
Not city mud.
Red clay.
I had asked where he’d been.
He said he had searched near the river.
But the riverbanks near us were dark soil, nearly black.
Red clay came from farther south.
Near the old quarry road.
My mouth went dry.
“Detective.”
“Yes?”
“You searched his storage unit.”
“Correct.”
“Did you search the old quarry?”
There was a pause.
“No.”
“Felix came home with red clay on his shoes three days after Nana disappeared.”
“Are you certain?”
“I washed them myself.”
“Why wasn’t this in your original statement?”
“Because I believed him when he said he’d been searching.”
Collins’s voice sharpened.
“Which quarry?”
“Westbridge. Off Route 9.”
She ended the call less than a minute later.
The police searched the quarry through the night.
At dawn, Detective Collins called again.
My hands shook so badly that Claire had to take the phone and place it on speaker.
“We found a vehicle,” Collins said.
I couldn’t speak.
“What kind?” Claire asked.
“An older blue sedan registered to Carla Wynn.”
Felix’s mistress.
The car had been hidden beneath a collapsed wooden structure at the edge of the property.
Its plates had been removed.
The interior had been stripped.
But inside the trunk, investigators found something that belonged to Nana.
Her shoulder bag.
The same brown leather bag she carried out of our kitchen the morning she vanished.
I pressed both hands over my mouth.
Claire began crying beside me.
“Was she in the car?” I forced myself to ask.
“No.”
“Was there blood?”
“We found no visible signs of violence.”
Relief and terror collided inside me.
“Then why was her bag there?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“What else did you find?”
“A bus schedule.”
“To Portland?”
“Yes.”
“And a photograph.”
My breathing slowed.
“Of what?”
Collins hesitated.
“Ofyou
