We remained on the bench for a while.
I kept the photograph open on the phone.
Every time the screen dimmed, I touched it to bring the image back.
I was afraid of losing even that small view of her.
The woman sat beside me with the bag resting against her hip.
I wanted to ask another question every few seconds.
Instead, I tried to listen to what she was telling me.
I had to remind myself that the woman wasn't responsible for the sixteen years I had lost.
She hadn't made my daughter disappear.
She hadn't been there when I stood in the kitchen with a folded towel and said something cruel.
She was simply the person who had walked past me carrying an object I recognized.
I had grabbed her arm before I had even introduced myself.
I had demanded answers from someone who had no reason to trust me.
When I thought about it, I felt ashamed.
“I'm sorry I grabbed you,” I said.
She looked surprised.
“You were upset.”
“That doesn't make it right.”
She gave a small nod.
I appreciated that she didn't insist it was nothing.
I didn't want to be told that everything I did was understandable simply because I was hurting.
I had used that excuse for myself often enough.
The woman adjusted the bag on her lap.
I could see the small flaw in the knitting.
The misplaced stitch had stretched slightly over the years, but it was still there.
I had made that mistake at the kitchen table one evening.
I remembered the yarn catching around my finger.
I remembered pulling at the loop and considering whether to start over.
I remembered my daughter coming into the room and asking when the bag would be finished.
I had told her soon.
She had smiled and said she wanted to use it for the beach.
At the time, I had felt pleased.
Now the memory hurt in a way I couldn't explain.
The bag had survived years I knew nothing about.
It had passed through hands I couldn't identify.
It had traveled somewhere beyond the reach of every search I had joined.
And somehow, it had returned to my sight.
I looked at the brass keychain.
“Did the person who gave you the bag explain where it came from?”
The woman considered her answer.
“I was told a little.”
“What were you told?”
She took a breath.
“I don't want to confuse what I know with what someone else said.”
I nodded.
That was fair.
I had learned the difference between a fact and a possibility the hard way.
For years, I had wanted every rumor to become a lead.
I had learned that wanting something to be true did not make it true.
“Then tell me what you know firsthand,” I said.
She seemed relieved by the question.
She explained the circumstances in which she had obtained the bag, being careful to separate what she had personally seen from what she had been told.
I listened.
Some details were clear.
Others weren't.
I asked her to repeat a few things because I was afraid my mind was moving too quickly.
She answered as best she could.
I wrote down the information in my phone.
My fingers kept hitting the wrong letters.
I had to correct the same word twice.
The woman waited while I finished.
When I looked up, she was studying me.
“What?” I asked.
“You've really been looking for her all this time.”
It wasn't a question.
I nodded.
“Every year.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I can tell.”
I didn't know what to say to that.
The notebook I had kept for the investigation was at home.
The toothbrush had stayed in the bathroom for nine years.
Twice, I had gone to the library to keep my daughter's card active.
I had held on to things that other people would have discarded without thinking.
I had kept her name alive in conversations long after others had stopped saying it.
None of those things had brought her home.
But they had kept me from pretending she had never existed.
“I never stopped,” I said.
The woman nodded again.
I looked at the photograph.
“Does she know I'm still searching?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
The woman didn't answer immediately.
I watched her face.
There was no point pretending I could bear any answer.
If my daughter knew and had chosen to remain silent, I would have to live with that.
If she didn't know, I would have to wonder how many chances we had lost because neither of us could reach the other.
I wanted to ask whether my daughter had ever mentioned me.
I wanted to ask whether she remembered the house.
Whether she remembered the kitchen.
Whether she remembered the green tank top and the argument.
Whether she remembered the last thing I said.
I couldn't bring myself to ask all of it at once.
The woman looked at me carefully.
“I don't want to guess about what she knows.”
I understood.
It was the right answer.
I hated it anyway.
For years, I had filled empty spaces with guesses because there had been nothing else to fill them with.
I had imagined that my daughter was angry.
I had imagined that she was afraid.
I had imagined that she was waiting for me to find her.
I had imagined that she had forgotten me.
Every possibility had seemed convincing at one time or another.
None had given me the truth.
I pressed my lips together.
“Then we won't guess.”
The woman gave a small, tired smile.
“No.”
“We'll work with what we know.”
It was the first useful decision I had made in a long time.
I asked whether I could keep a copy of the photograph.
She showed me how to save it.
I checked that it had appeared on my phone.
Then I opened it again.
My daughter's face filled the screen.
I had spent years looking at old pictures, trying to remember how her face would change as she grew older.
I had wondered whether she still had the same eyes.
Whether she had kept her hair long.
Whether she smiled the same way.
Now I had a recent image.
I could see the lines around her eyes.
I could see that time had passed.
I could see that she had lived a life beyond the day I last saw her.
The photograph did not tell me whether that life had been happy.
It did not tell me why she had disappeared.
It did not tell me whether she wanted to see me.
But it told me something I had nearly stopped allowing myself to believe.
She had been alive.
Three weeks earlier, she had been alive.
I looked up at the woman.
“Thank you for showing me.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I didn't know what it meant when I bought the bag.”
“I believe you.”
And I did.
At least, I believed that she was trying to tell me the truth as she understood it.
That was enough for the moment.
I put my phone away, though I wanted to keep looking at the picture.
The woman lifted the bag from her lap.
The keychain tapped against the strap.
I flinched at the sound.
She noticed.
“Would you like to look at it?”
I nodded.
She held it out.
I didn't take it from her immediately.
I ran my fingers over the knitted surface, touching the uneven handle and the small flaw near the bottom.
The yarn had softened with use.
The bag had been carried and handled and exposed to years of weather I knew nothing about.
I had made it for a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted to spend a weekend at the beach.
I had never imagined that I would see it again after she left.
For a moment, I felt as though I were touching a piece of the past that had somehow survived without me.
Then I let go.
I didn't ask the woman to give it to me.
It belonged to the life my daughter had lived after leaving home, and I had no right to take it simply because I recognized the stitches.
I had spent too many years confusing love with the belief that I was entitled to know everything.
I wasn't going to make that mistake again.
The woman slipped the strap over her shoulder.
We stood together beside the bench.
I saved her contact information so we could speak again.
Before we parted, I asked one final question.
“Can you tell me how to reach her?”
She looked at me.
“I'll help you with what I can.”
I nodded.
I didn't ask her to promise more.
For the first time in sixteen years, I had something to work with.
It wasn't an ending.
It was a beginning I was afraid to trust.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: I Took My Daughter’s Recent Photograph Home, Set It Beside the Old Ones, and Realized I Had Been Waiting for the Wrong Kind of Return
The Last Thing I Said to My Seventeen-Year-Old Daughter Was Something I Would Spend the Rest of My Life Wishing I Could Take Back
Part 6 of 12
