“Check anyway.”
By midnight, the police had Clara’s planned route and the description of her car.
The following day, they found it below a river bridge. The parking brake had failed after Clara pulled onto the shoulder. Divers recovered no bodies, but years later the court legally declared all three dead.
Gwen’s letter gave us the first place Clara might have stopped.
“We’re going there,” I told Jackson.
“Not until you take your medication,” Jackson said, picking up my coat.
“I’ve already lost 40 years.”
“Then don’t collapse before you get an answer. I’ll drive.”
The motel had long since become an apartment building. An elderly woman in the lobby studied Clara’s photograph.
“I remember her. Her son had a fever, and she kept trying to call her husband.”
I showed her Gwen’s picture.
“Did this woman come?”
“Yes. They argued. Your wife wanted to go home and hear the truth from her husband.”
“I’m the husband. What did Gwen say?”
“She said you’d already left town with another woman.”
A sharp pain tightened across my chest.
“That was a lie.”
Jackson quickly pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
“I need one more answer.”
I turned back to the woman.
“Did Clara leave willingly?”
“Yes, but she looked dizzy when she got into the car.”
PART 2
After my breathing steadied, Jackson drove me to Sarah’s house.
I placed Gwen’s photographs on her table.
“Clara saw these.”
The color drained from Sarah’s face.
“She thought we were together?”
“She left believing it.”
Sarah brought out records proving every photograph had been taken during documented work meetings.
She looked at me.
“I told you to explain enough to Clara.”
“I couldn’t expose your case.”
“You could’ve protected me without shutting your wife out. You left an empty space, Andrew. Gwen filled it.”
On the drive home, I watched the road pass in silence.
I had mistaken loyalty for innocence.
Clara had asked for reassurance, and I’d answered with silence that Gwen later turned against us.
Back home, I unfolded Aria’s crayon note again.
“She carried this guilt.”
“We don’t know that,” Jackson said.
“A child who writes this doesn’t forget it.”
My purpose changed.
I still wanted the truth, but first I had to find my daughter before she spent another day believing she had destroyed our family.
Three days later, Jackson found a school counselor whose records matched Clara’s maiden name, the town, and Aria’s age.
