His brow furrowed.
“A little girl?”
“She would’ve been sixteen. Dark hair. She had a small scar above her left eyebrow.”
He stared at me.
Then his face changed.
Not recognition.
Pain.
A deep, almost ancient pain.
“I remember…”
He closed his eyes.
“I remember a girl crying.”
My heart stopped.
“What was her name?”
Silence.
Then he whispered:
“Grace.”
The sponge fell into the bathwater.
I stumbled backward.
“No.”
Lucas opened his eyes.
“Grace?”
I reached beneath my blouse and pulled out the locket I’d worn beneath my clothes for twenty years.
My father’s locket.
Inside was the photograph I had refused to throw away.
I opened it with trembling fingers and held it toward him.
Lucas stared.
His breathing became uneven.
“Where did you get that?”
I could barely speak.
“My father gave it to me the night before he disappeared.”
Lucas reached toward it.
His fingers touched the photograph.
