Chapter 2 - Seven Months of Lies
I called 911 with one hand and held Claire with the other.
Emma refused to let go of her mother.
Within minutes, sirens filled the alley behind the restaurant. Paramedics rushed through the kitchen. Police sealed the building. Employees clustered near the dining room, whispering and crying.
Vanessa’s car was gone.
So was Vanessa.
Detective Lena Ortiz arrived while paramedics lifted Claire onto a stretcher.
“How long was she back there?” Ortiz asked.
“Seven months,” Claire whispered.
The entire kitchen went silent.
Ortiz crouched beside her. “Who kept you there?”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Vanessa. Sometimes Lucas.”
Lucas Reed was Vanessa’s restaurant manager.
He had worked there for nine years.
He was also the man who had comforted me after Claire disappeared.
He had brought casseroles to our house. He had driven Emma to school when I couldn’t get out of bed. He had sat beside me in the police station and told officers Claire had seemed “emotionally overwhelmed” before vanishing.
I looked around the kitchen.
“Where is Lucas?”
Nobody answered.
Ortiz immediately sent officers to his apartment.
At the hospital, doctors told me Claire was dehydrated, malnourished, anemic, and dangerously weak, but stable. Emma sat beside her bed, holding her hand as if someone might take her away again.
Claire kept watching the door.
Every time footsteps passed, her shoulders tightened.
I finally asked the question eating through me.
“Why did you think I knew?”
Claire stared at me.
“Because Vanessa showed me messages from you.”
“What messages?”
“She said you wanted me gone.”
My stomach twisted.
Claire swallowed.
“She showed me texts where you said Emma was better off without me. That you were tired of my anxiety. That you wanted a clean break.”
“I never wrote any of that.”
“I know that now.”
Her voice cracked.
“But after weeks locked in the dark, you start believing things you would never believe in daylight.”
I took her hand.
“Claire, I searched for you every day.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Then why did the police stop?”
I froze.
“They didn’t. They said the case had gone cold, but—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Vanessa told me you signed something. She said you asked them to stop looking.”
Before I could answer, Detective Ortiz entered carrying a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a phone.
Claire’s phone.
Ortiz set it on the table.
“We found this hidden inside Vanessa’s office wall.”
May you like
Then she looked at me.
“And it contains messages sent from your number that you say you never wrote.”
