The name written beneath those words was Gloria. My sister. The woman who had sat beside me at every anniversary of Penelope’s disappearance, who had held me through fifteen years of vigils, who had cried with me on every birthday my daughter never got to have. I read the name three times, certain I had misunderstood. Then I looked up at my husband, and the color had drained completely from his face. He was not surprised the way I was surprised. He was surprised the way a person is when a secret they have buried for years is suddenly clawing its way out of the ground.

“Marcus,” I whispered. “What do you know?” He backed against the kitchen counter, shaking his head, but his eyes had gone wet and panicked. “I didn’t know she took her,” he said. “I swear to you, I didn’t know that part.” My whole body went cold. That part. There was a part. Fifteen years of grieving beside this man, and he was standing in our kitchen admitting there was something about the day our daughter vanished that he had never told me. The letter trembled in my hands, and I kept reading, because Penelope’s words were still spilling down the page, and they were about to explain everything.