A sunflower.
My knees nearly gave way.
Dad used to carve little wooden flowers for Laura and me when we were children.
Laura’s favorite had always been a sunflower.
But there was something even more disturbing.
I had seen that exact little wooden sunflower only once after Laura disappeared.
It was in Dad’s hand.
That night.
The night Laura vanished.
I had never understood why he had been holding it.
I had never asked.
Or perhaps I had been too afraid to ask.
Now the same charm was sewn into Laura’s old sweater.
“How did Dolly get it?” Sophie asked.
I stared at the little wooden flower.
“I don’t know.”
Those three words had controlled my life for forty years.
For forty years, I had lived with questions that had no answers.
But suddenly, one of those answers might be standing inside my daughter’s school.
And I wasn’t prepared to let another day pass.
