Part 2: Before my husband passed away, he asked me to deliver a sealed letter to a woman I'd never met — after she read the first line, she looked at me and asked, "Did he tell you everything?"

Catherine made a small sound.

“Helping?”

I looked at her.

“You didn't know?”

She shook her head.

“My husband told me Zane was only the stranger who stopped at the accident.”

I returned to the letter.

Daniel knew why Rebecca had run.

Catherine did not.

Catherine's head snapped up.

“What?”

I kept reading.

Rebecca had disappeared at sixteen.

For years, Catherine believed her daughter had simply run away after an argument.

That was what police initially believed too.

But Daniel found a letter hidden beneath Rebecca's mattress.

She had been involved with a twenty-four-year-old man named Owen Pierce.

He worked occasionally with a youth music group.

Charming.

Older.

Controlling.

Rebecca wrote that Owen threatened to hurt Catherine if she tried to leave him.

So she disappeared.

Not because she wanted to leave her family.

Because, at sixteen, she believed going away would keep them safe.

Catherine covered her mouth.

“No.”