Still, one question remained.
“What about Emily?”
Mark looked frightened.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Then find her.”
He shook his head.
“What if she doesn’t want to hear from me?”
“That should be her decision.”
For the first time, Mark looked at me differently.
“You really think I should contact her?”
“I think she deserves the chance to decide for herself.”
We spent several weeks gathering old documents and searching through the information Mark still had.
Eventually, we found Emily.
She was twenty-two and living less than an hour away.
Mark stared at her photograph for several minutes.
“She looks happy,” he whispered.
“Then don’t take that away from her,” I said. “Just tell her the truth.”
Mark wrote her a letter.
He didn’t blame Claire.
He didn’t demand forgiveness.
He simply explained who he was, what had happened, and why he had never stopped thinking about her.