CHAPTER 2: The Photograph

From inside his jacket, Thomas pulled out a worn leather wallet. The room stayed silent while he searched through it, past cards and folded receipts, until he found a small photograph protected in cloudy plastic.
He held it beside Lena's wrist.
In the picture, a little girl with bright eyes sat on a picnic blanket, laughing at something beyond the camera. Around her tiny wrist was the same silver bracelet, polished and new, its clasp shaped like a crescent moon.
"This was my daughter," Thomas whispered. "Elise Vivian Reed. She disappeared eighteen years ago."
Lena stared at the child in the photograph. The shape of the eyes, the curve of the mouth, the stubborn little chin--they were not proof, and yet they were enough to make her chest tighten.
"My name is Lena," she said, almost defensively.
"What were you told about your parents?"
She swallowed. "That they left me. That nobody came back."
Thomas shook his head once, as if the sentence had physically hurt him.
"I never stopped coming back," he said. "I never stopped looking."