My daughter had vanished at sixteen.
Nothing came back. Not one real lead. Not one answer.
Paul blamed me first in private, then like he wanted an audience.
« You should have known, » he told me the week after she disappeared.
« I didn’t know she was leaving, Paul. »
« Yeah, you never know anything until it’s too late, Jodi. »
He said worse after that, enough that I started believing him.
« You should have known. »
***
By the third year, he had moved in with a woman named Amber and left me in the same quiet house, with Jennifer’s room shut tight at the end of the hall.
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