Where had she gone after the shelter?
Had she given birth?
Did she raise the baby?
Was my daughter still alive somewhere, now thirty-three years old?
Or was there a young person walking through the world carrying Gia’s eyes, Gia’s laugh, maybe even that same stubborn tilt of the chin?
I no longer had the luxury of mourning only the seventeen-year-old girl who walked through my front door.
The photograph had changed that.
Gia had grown older.
She had lived experiences I knew nothing about.
She had become somebody beyond the daughter preserved in my memory.
And if there was even the smallest chance that woman—or her child—could still be found, I knew what I had to do.
I would keep looking.
But this time, I wouldn’t be searching only for the girl who left home.
I would search for the woman she became.
And if I found her, I already knew the first words I wanted to say.
