I caught her arm.
“Where did you get that bag?”
She pulled away. “Excuse me?”
“I made it for my daughter. She disappeared 16 years ago.”
Her expression changed.
I pointed to the bottom. “There’s a crooked row right there. I tried to fix it and made it worse.”
She examined the stitches.
“What was your daughter’s name?”
“Lila.”
The woman went still.
“You know that name,” I said.
She introduced herself as Beth and led me to a bench near the railing.
“I bought the bag from a thrift store outside Richmond in the spring of 2010,” she said. “There was something inside it.”
She opened the bag and removed a clear plastic sleeve containing a folded note and a photograph.
“I kept the note because it felt too personal to throw away,” Beth explained. “Six years ago, the lining tore, and I found the photograph trapped inside. I searched online, but I only had a first name and no hometown.”
My hands shook as I removed the picture.
It was Lila.
She looked 18 or 19. Her hair was shorter, and she was thinner, but she was smiling.
On the back, in her handwriting, were the words:
Still here. Still trying.
Beneath them was a date: August 3, 2009.
More than 1 year after she disappeared.
For 16 years, I had imagined hospitals, roadsides, and graves. But there she was, alive and smiling long after she left me.
I unfolded the note.
Mom,
I can’t come home yet. I’m trying to be brave for both of us. I know you probably think I hate you, but I don’t. I’m scared you’ll never forgive me when you learn the truth.
Lila
“For both of us,” I whispered.
Then I remembered her nausea, the oversized sweatshirts she wore despite the heat, and the foods she suddenly couldn’t tolerate.
“She was pregnant.”
I called the police that evening.
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