I drove toward the address with one hand gripping the steering wheel and the other pressed against the Polaroid on the passenger seat, as if my touch alone could keep Daniel from disappearing again. Harold kept calling, his name flashing across my phone again and again, but I could not answer because every second spent explaining myself felt like another second stolen from my son.
The rain thinned as I left the main road, and the landscape changed from open highway to narrow county lanes lined with mailboxes, sagging fences, and houses that looked ordinary enough to hide anything. That was the cruelest part, I thought; evil did not always live in locked basements or abandoned buildings, sometimes it kept toys in the yard and wind chimes on the porch.
The address led me to a small white house with blue shutters, a muddy truck in the driveway, and a red tricycle tipped over near the steps. For a moment, I just sat there staring, because nothing about the place looked like the answer to twenty years of screaming into silence.
Then I looked down at the photograph again, at Daniel’s frightened little face trapped inside that square border, and the old mother inside me rose with such force that fear had no room left. I got out of the car holding the Polaroid so tightly that the edge bent beneath my thumb.
Before I could knock, the front door opened.
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