Chapter 1 - The Locket I Buried Twenty-Two Years Ago
The little girl looked at the food before she looked at me.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Not the mud on her pale pink dress.
Not her bare feet.
Not the dirt smudged across one cheek.
The food.
She stared at the untouched roast beef, buttered rolls, and miniature desserts on the table as if she were trying not to hope.
“I’m so hungry… can I eat?”
My fiancée recoiled.
Veronica Hayes covered her mouth with one manicured hand.
“How disgusting!”
The girl’s shoulders folded inward.
Every guest at our engagement dinner was watching.
I should have asked security to help her.
I should have ordered someone to bring her food.
Instead, embarrassed by the attention and annoyed that our carefully planned evening had been interrupted, I pointed toward the ballroom doors.
“You have to leave.”
The girl turned.
And the necklace around her throat swung forward.
A silver heart.
Scratched along one edge.
Tiny blue stone missing from the clasp.
I stopped breathing.
“Wait.”
She froze.
I reached toward the pendant.
“Where did you get this?”
The girl grabbed it protectively.
“My mom gave it to me.”
My hands began to shake.
I knew that locket.
I had bought it in Chicago in 1998 for my daughter, Emily, on her seventeenth birthday.
Emily had been dead for twenty-two years.
At least that was what I'd believed.
“Can I see it?”
The girl hesitated.
Then she let me open it.
Two photographs were inside.
One was Emily at seventeen.
The other showed Emily years older, holding a newborn baby.
My knees almost gave out.
Then the girl pushed her fingernail beneath the interior lining.
A tiny folded paper slipped into her palm.
She placed it in mine.
I unfolded it.
Three handwritten lines.
Dad,
If Maisie ever finds you, Veronica lied.
Do not let her take the child.
—Emily
I looked up.
Veronica was standing six feet away.
Her face had gone completely white.
May you like
And suddenly I understood why my fiancée hadn't asked who the starving child was.
She already knew.
