“No. Amelia, please listen to me.”
“That isn’t remotely what happened.”
She nodded slowly.
“That’s what Robert said too.”
Then twenty-three years of memories crashed into me.
The calls I made to her father that went unanswered.
Birthday cards sent every year.
No reply.
Christmas presents.
Then one package returned because they had moved without leaving a forwarding address.
I remembered driving to their house one afternoon and finding strangers living there.
They had bought the property months earlier.
They didn’t know where the previous owner had gone.
I called relatives.
Friends.
Anyone connected to Claire.
Nobody knew where Amelia and her father had disappeared to.
Eventually I stopped asking because every “I don’t know” felt like losing her all over again.
But I never stopped wondering.
“I thought your father wanted us gone,” I said.
“I thought maybe he blamed us for something.”
“I spent years wondering whether I had said something wrong after Claire died.”
