Chapter 3

Eighteen years passed.

A lifetime.

I lived in a medicated haze. The pills kept the sharp edges of Emily's memory soft, distant.

But she was always there, a ghost in the back of my mind.

Mark was a good husband. Patient. Caring. Long-suffering, everyone said.

He managed my "illness." He made sure I took my pills.

Ethan grew up. He was a kind boy, then a kind young man.

He was pained by my "delusions," I knew. He tried to be understanding.

Sometimes, I'd see a little girl with blonde hair in the park, and the ache for Emily would surge, so strong it stole my breath.

Then the guilt would come, for Ethan. My living, breathing son.

I was known in our small suburban town. "Poor Sarah Thompson." The woman with "issues."

The whispers followed me.

Ethan tried to protect me from them. He was a good son.

Today was Ethan's wedding day. He was marrying a lovely girl named Olivia.

I was in my bedroom, getting ready. My hands trembled as I tried to fasten my necklace.

I felt a familiar sense of dread, a deep, hollow ache.

It always got worse on big family occasions. Like a part of me was missing.

Of course, a part of me *was* missing. Emily.

I reached for my prescription bottle on the nightstand. My morning dose.

My clumsy fingers knocked it. The bottle skittered across the polished wood and disappeared under the bed.

"Damn it," I muttered.

I got on my hands and knees, feeling under the dusty bed frame.

My fingers brushed against something small, metallic, and cold. Not the plastic pill bottle.

I pulled it out.

It was a locket. A small, tarnished silver locket, heart-shaped.

My breath caught.

I knew this locket.

My fingers, shaking, fumbled with the clasp. It sprang open.

Inside, there should have been a tiny photo.

There wasn't. It was empty. But I knew.

This was the locket I gave Emily for her fifth birthday.

The day she disappeared.

Memories, sharp and vivid, flooded back, cutting through the medicinal fog.

Emily's laugh, like wind chimes.

Her favorite blue dress with the white Peter Pan collar.

The way she clutched this very locket, her eyes shining. "Thank you, Mommy! I love it!"

Her small hand in mine.

The fog in my mind burned away. The medication, the years of doubt, the doctors' words – they all receded.

Emily was real.

This locket was proof.

She was real. And Mark knew.