Her profile picture was twenty years old, but I knew it was her immediately.
Same smile. Same tiny scar near her eyebrow from when we crashed my father’s fishing boat at sixteen.
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone.
The profile hadn’t been active in months, but there were family photos. A husband. Two daughters. Christmas pictures in matching pajamas. A whole life that kept going without me.
I stared at one post for almost an hour before I finally sent a message.
“I found your letter today.”
Nothing else.
I honestly expected silence.
Instead, three dots appeared almost instantly.
Then:
“You finally got it?”
My chest tightened.
Rachel told me she mailed that letter after waiting outside my apartment for three hours in 1991. My mother answered the door and told her I’d moved to Chicago and gotten engaged.
I never moved to Chicago.
I never got engaged.
Then Rachel sent one last message that made me physically sick.
“I came back the next morning because something felt wrong. Your mother offered me money to disappear.”