Noah didn't need to see anything.
I already understood.
Lily had never escaped.
I had never left the village.
I'd been there the whole time.
Under the same land where the family had eaten on Sundays.
Under the same yard where the children had played.
Under the house of the man they called Grandfather.
The search lasted three days.
The police lights flashed each night against Harold's old house. Reporters arrived. More agents arrived. Then came people from the state forensic laboratory. The shed became the center of all that the people had ignored for fifteen years.
Margaret didn't talk.
He sat in Lily's room holding the pink fabric, passing her thumb over and over again over the three little white flowers.
The truth came out slowly.
And every part of it broke them even more.
The fabric was Lily's.
So were the other things found under the shed.
