Chapter 4: Two Mothers
Nobody slept that night.
Thomas and I sat at our kitchen table until two in the morning, not saying much.
The coffee went cold.
He refilled it.
I watched the light above the sink flicker once and then hold steady.
"We have to call someone," he said finally.
"I know."
"Not the police.
Not yet." He turned the mug in his hands.
"A lawyer.
We need to understand what we're dealing with before we do anything that can't be undone."
I nodded.
But I kept thinking about Lily's face when she said *I didn't want it to be alone.* A four-year-old who had crossed a yard, found a small grave, and dug up the one thing she loved most.
Because she didn't want it to be alone in the dark.
That was Margot.
That had always been Margot.
The next morning I called a family attorney named Ruth Calloway, who a colleague had recommended two years ago for a different matter entirely.
I had never expected to use her number for this.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
"Are you certain it's your daughter?" she asked.
"I'm certain."
"Certainty isn't enough," she said.
"Not legally.
We'll need a DNA test.
Voluntary, ideally — which means we need the other family to agree.
If they don't agree voluntarily, we petition the court."
"They seemed—" I stopped.
*Cooperative* wasn't the right word.
*Resigned* was closer.
"They didn't run.
They let us in.
They showed us the photograph."
"That matters," Ruth said.
"It tells me they know exactly who she is.
It also tells me they've been waiting for this conversation for a long time." A pause.
"I want to meet with both families together.
Neutral location.
No police, no court orders — not yet.
Just a conversation with counsel present.
Can you ask them?"
I walked next door that afternoon alone.
Thomas offered to come.
I told him I needed to do it myself.
Carol answered the door before I knocked.
She'd been watching from the window.
"I thought you'd come," she said.
"Our attorney wants to meet.
All of us together.
No police.
Just a conversation."
Carol looked back into the house.
I could hear a television somewhere.
The ordinary sound of an afternoon.
"Lily knows," Carol said quietly.
"We told her last night.
After you left." She paused.
"She didn't sleep either."
"How is she?"
Carol's expression shifted — something complicated moving across it.
"She's angry," she said.
"Not at you.
At us." She pressed her lips together.
"She asked us why we never told her.
We didn't have a good answer."
"What did you say?"
"Daniel said we were afraid of losing her." Carol looked down at her hands.
"She said that wasn't her problem to carry." A long pause.
"She's right."
I stood there on that porch and looked at this woman — this woman who had fed my daughter breakfast for ten years, who had braided her hair and taken her to school and sat beside her when she was sick — and I felt something I hadn't expected to feel.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But something adjacent to it.
The recognition that grief had more than one shape, and that Carol was standing inside her own version of it right now.
"We'll come," Carol said.
"Whatever you need.
We'll cooperate."
I nodded.
I turned to leave.
"She asked about you," Carol said.
"This morning.
She asked what you were like."
I stopped walking.
"What did you tell her?"
Carol was quiet for a moment.
"I told her you never stopped looking."
I made it back to my own porch before my legs gave out.
I sat on the top step and put my face in my hands and stayed there until Thomas opened the front door and sat down beside me without saying a word.
That was enough.
That was all I needed right then.
Two days later, Ruth Calloway called.
"They've agreed to voluntary DNA testing," she said.
"Both Daniel and Carol signed the consent forms this morning." A brief pause.
"There's something else.
Daniel came to my office alone, before Carol arrived.
He asked to speak with me privately."
"About what?"
"He said there's something you don't know yet," Ruth said.
"Something about the day Margot disappeared.
He said it changes the picture.
He wouldn't tell me what it was — he said he'd only tell you directly." Her voice was careful.
"He seemed frightened."
"Of what?"
"I don't know," Ruth said.
May you like
"But he asked me one question before he left.
He asked whether a person could be both a witness and a suspect at the same time."
