Chapter 1 - The Girl on the Corner
The little girl on the sidewalk looked like a stranger.
Then I saw the silver heart hanging from her neck.
And suddenly, the daughter I had buried in my heart ten years ago was staring back at me.
It happened on a crowded Saturday afternoon in downtown Chicago.
My eight-year-old daughter, Sophie, was walking beside me while I checked the time for the third time in five minutes.
We were late.
Again.
I had a charity luncheon at the Langham, two donors waiting for me, and a speech sitting unopened in my handbag.
Sophie had other priorities.
She was carrying a turkey sandwich she had begged me to buy from a deli around the corner.
“Mom, slow down.”
“We’re already fifteen minutes late.”
“My legs are shorter than yours.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Then Sophie stopped.
So suddenly that her hand slipped out of mine.
“Sophie?”
She wasn’t looking at me.
She was staring across the sidewalk.
A girl sat against the brick wall beside a shuttered convenience store.
At first, all I noticed were the clothes.
An oversized gray sweatshirt.
Dirty jeans.
A sneaker with a broken lace.
Then she lifted her face.
My stomach tightened.
There was a dark bruise across one cheek.
A smaller one near her jaw.
Her lower lip was cracked.
She looked about twelve.
Thin.
Cold.
Hungry.
Sophie stared at the sandwich in her own hands.
“Mom.”
I knew that tone.
“No.”
“She hasn’t eaten.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She keeps looking at my sandwich.”
I glanced toward the girl.
She immediately lowered her eyes.
Something about that should have stopped me.
Instead, I looked at my watch.
“Sophie, we can tell someone at the restaurant. Maybe they can call a shelter.”
“But she’s hungry now.”
“Sophie.”
My daughter crossed the sidewalk before I could catch her.
“Sophie!”
She crouched several feet from the girl.
The homeless child stiffened.
Sophie slowly extended the sandwich.
“You can have it.”
The girl stared at her.
Then at the sandwich.
“No.”
Her voice was barely audible.
Sophie pushed it closer.
“I’m full.”
I almost laughed despite my irritation.
Sophie had spent the previous ten minutes telling me she was “literally starving.”
The girl hesitated.
Then she accepted it with both hands.
“Thank you.”
The words hit me strangely.
A tiny ache passed through my chest.
Familiar.
Impossible.
I pushed the feeling away.
I walked quickly toward Sophie and took her arm.
“That’s enough.”
Sophie looked up at me.
“Mom.”
“You cannot approach strangers like this.”
“She’s a kid.”
“We don’t know who she is.”
The girl shrank against the wall.
I lowered my voice.
“She could be part of something dangerous. Someone could be watching her. You have to think before you run toward people.”
Sophie’s expression hardened.
“She was hungry.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you don’t.”
That hurt.
Mostly because she was right.
I turned toward the girl.
For one brief second, our eyes met.
Hazel.
Green around the center.
My heart gave a strange, violent beat.
Then the girl looked down.
I told myself it meant nothing.
Millions of people had hazel eyes.
“Come on,” I said.
I took Sophie’s hand.
We had gone only three steps when the girl spoke behind us.
“Thank you.”
I stopped.
Not because of the words.
Because of the voice.
There are things your mind forgets before your body does.
A smell.
A laugh.
A tiny hand inside yours.
A toddler calling for you from another room.
I turned.
The wind lifted the girl’s dark hair away from her neck.
Sunlight struck something silver.
A heart-shaped locket.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
My hand flew toward Sophie’s chest.
Her pink coat was open.
Around her neck hung an identical silver heart.
My vision blurred.
The two necklaces had been custom-made years ago.
One for my first daughter.
One matching piece I had kept in a velvet box until Sophie was born.
No store carried them.
No company had mass-produced them.
The jeweler who made them had retired years ago.
There could not be another.
I stepped toward the girl.
She recoiled immediately.
“Please don’t.”
My hands began trembling.
“Where did you get that necklace?”
Her fingers closed around it.
“I’ve always had it.”
I felt the ground shift beneath me.
“What do you mean, always?”
She swallowed.
“It’s mine.”
“Does it open?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
Inside the locket were three engraved words.
Three words I had chosen while sitting beside my newborn daughter’s crib.
Always with you.
I dropped my handbag.
Sophie jumped.
“Mom?”
I barely heard her.
Ten years disappeared.
I saw police cars in my driveway.
Detectives searching our property.
Missing posters taped to streetlights.
My husband Daniel standing in the kitchen with both hands against the counter because he could no longer hold himself upright.
I heard myself screaming Lily’s name until my throat bled.
My first daughter had disappeared at two years old.
One afternoon she had been playing at a family gathering.
Then she was gone.
No body.
No confirmed sighting.
No ransom demand.
Nothing.
I spent years searching.
Private investigators.
Television interviews.
Reward money.
Psychics I didn’t believe.
Strangers calling at three in the morning because they thought a girl in a grocery store looked like mine.
Every lead ended the same way.
Not Lily.
Eventually, even Daniel stopped saying her name.
Our marriage broke under the weight of it.
But I never stopped looking.
Not really.
I crouched in front of the girl.
She pressed herself harder against the wall.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her breathing became shallow.
I kept my hands where she could see them.
“What’s your name?”
She hesitated.
“Emma.”
My heart sank.
Then I saw something behind her left ear.
A tiny crescent.
A birthmark.
My daughter had been born with it.
The doctor had joked that someone had kissed the moon onto her skin.
My knees hit the pavement.
“Oh, God.”
The girl flinched.
I reached toward her face, then stopped.
“Can I?”
She stared at me.
Slowly, she nodded.
My fingers brushed dirt from her cheek.
Her eyes.
My eyes.
My mother’s eyes.
I began crying before I could stop myself.
“Lily.”
Her face changed.
Not recognition.
Fear.
“Don’t call me that.”
My heart cracked.
“Why?”
“That’s not my name.”
“It was.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“It was your name when you were little.”
“No.”
Sophie had moved beside me.
“Mom, what are you saying?”
I couldn’t take my eyes from the girl.
I pointed toward the locket.
“Open it.”
Her fingers tightened around it.
“Please.”
After several seconds, she pressed the tiny clasp.
The silver heart opened.
I didn’t need to read it.
I knew.
But Sophie leaned closer.
Her lips moved silently.
Always with you.
I covered my mouth.
A sob escaped anyway.
The girl stared at me.
Her own eyes were beginning to fill.
I whispered, “I put that around your neck when you were eighteen months old.”
She shook her head.
“Stop.”
“I searched for you.”
“Stop.”
“For ten years.”
Her breathing broke.
“I said stop!”
People were staring now.
I didn’t care.
I had waited ten years for this child.
I would kneel on that sidewalk forever if I had to.
“Lily,” I whispered. “Look at me.”
She did.
Something flickered behind her eyes.
A memory.
Maybe only a fragment.
She stared at my face.
Then at Sophie’s necklace.
Then back at me.
Her cracked lips trembled.
“Why do I know you?”
I couldn’t breathe.
I held out my hand.
“I’m your mother.”
She stared at it.
Then she slowly looked into my eyes.
A tear rolled down her bruised cheek.
May you like
And with a voice so small it nearly disappeared beneath the traffic, she whispered one word.
“Mom?”
