I should have lied. The thought arrived too late. My father was breathing into the phone, waiting for an answer, and twenty-eight years of habit overruled the unease crawling over my skin. “I’m at Alder Creek Elementary,” I said. “There’s been some strange mix-up.”
Silence.
Not confusion. Not the ordinary pause of a man trying to understand why his adult daughter was standing inside an elementary school after dark. It was recognition.
I straightened in my chair.
“Dad?”
“What are you doing there?”
The fear in his voice had deepened.
I glanced at Wren. She was watching me without blinking.
“How did you know something was wrong?”
“I didn’t.”
“You called me.”
“Mara, answer the question.”
The old command in his tone usually made me defensive. Tonight it frightened me.
“There’s a child here.”
His breathing stopped.
I had not said her name.
“There are probably lots of children there,” he said, but his attempt at casualness was terrible.
“Most of them went home hours ago.”
“Mara.”
“One girl was waiting for me.”
The silence on the line became absolute.
I rose slowly from the chair.
“Dad, do you know Wren Ellis?”
A quiet sound came through the phone, halfway between a sigh and a curse.
There it was.
Proof.
“How do you know her?”
“Get away from the girl.”
His answer was so immediate that Ms. Dorsey looked up.
“What?”
“Do not take her anywhere. Do not bring her to your apartment. Leave the school and call me when you’re in your car.”
My heartbeat struck hard against my ribs. “Why?”
“Because you have no idea what you’ve walked into.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t do that over the phone.”
“You can start.”
“Mara, listen to me for once without arguing.”
The phrase cut through the confusion. I was six again, standing in a hallway after asking why my mother’s room had been emptied before the funeral. Listen to me. Stop asking questions. Some things are too difficult for children.
I looked at the photograph in my hand.
“Was Mom alive after the accident?”
No answer.
“Dad.”
“You need to leave.”
“The picture is dated eleven years after her funeral.”
He inhaled sharply.
My stomach turned.
“So you know about it.”
“No.”
“Then why are you scared?”
His voice lowered. “Whatever that woman told her daughter, it isn’t safe for you to believe it.”
“What woman?”
Another mistake.
He knew there was a woman.
I moved toward the corner of the office, putting several feet between myself and Wren so she would not hear every word.
“Celia Ellis?”
He remained silent.
“Who is she?”
“Mara.”
“Who is Celia?”
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
A humorless laugh escaped me. “That would be easier if I hadn’t just found a photograph proving my dead mother was alive.”
Across the room, Wren lowered her head.
My father spoke more softly. “Some things were kept from you because keeping them from you was the safest choice.”
“For whom?”
His hesitation answered more than his words ever could.
I closed my eyes. “Did you know this child might find me?”
“She was never supposed to.”
I opened my eyes.
“What did you say?”
The line crackled.
Then Daniel spoke with a weariness I had never heard from him.
“She should never have found you.”
The call ended.
For a few seconds I continued holding the phone against my ear.
Ms. Dorsey finally asked, “Mara?”
I lowered it.
Wren’s fingers had closed tightly around the paper star.
“Was that your dad?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know Mommy?”
“I don’t know.”
Wren looked toward the rain crawling down the office window.
“Yes, he does.”
I crouched beside her. “Why do you think that?”
Her voice dropped.
“Because Mommy gets scared when she talks about him.”
Before I could ask another question, someone knocked against the glass door at the end of the corridor.
Two uniformed officers entered with a woman in plain clothes. She introduced herself as Detective Lena Ortiz, a compact woman in her forties whose damp jacket and tired eyes suggested she had come directly from another call.
Her first attention went to Wren.
“You must be Wren Ellis.”
Wren nodded.
Ortiz crouched so they were eye level. Her voice became gentler without becoming childish.
“I’m Lena. We’re trying to find your mom. Is that okay?”
Wren’s mouth tightened.
“Did someone hurt her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see anybody take her somewhere?”
A long pause.
Then Wren nodded.
Every adult in the office became still.
Ortiz glanced briefly at me before returning her attention to the girl.
“Can you tell me about the person?”
“I didn’t see him good.”
“A man?”
Another nod.
“Did you know him?”
“No.”
“What did he look like?”
Wren glanced toward me.
My stomach knotted before she spoke.
“Like Mara’s daddy.”
Ortiz rose slowly.
“Who is Mara’s father?”
I answered because Wren could not.
“Daniel Bell.”
The detective studied me. “Does Mr. Bell know Celia Ellis?”
“I would have said no ten minutes ago.”
“And now?”
I handed her the photograph.
Then I told her about the phone call.
I left nothing out—not my father knowing there was a child before I had given him Wren’s name, not the warning, not his final statement.
Ortiz’s expression grew less neutral with every sentence.
“May I see your identification?”
I gave it to her.
She checked my name, handed it back, then examined the photograph beneath the fluorescent office lights.
“Who is the woman on the right?”
“My mother. Eleanor Bell.”
“Where is she now?”
“She died when I was six.”
Ortiz looked from the picture to me.
“When?”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
“And this photograph?”
“Dated eleven years after that.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Did you personally identify your mother’s body?”
“I was six.”
“Did you see her after she died?”
I started to answer yes.
No sound came out.
My memories of the funeral had always been vivid: lilies, black fabric, adults touching my hair, my father’s hand locked around mine. But I could not remember looking at Eleanor in the coffin.
“No.”
“Have you seen her death certificate?”
“My father has it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
I swallowed.
“No.”
Ortiz handed the picture back.
She asked an officer to step outside and make several calls. Then she took Ms. Dorsey aside to review the school records while I returned to Wren.
The girl had resumed turning her paper star.
“Your mother gave you that?”
“She made it.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
I sat beside her.
“Did she give you anything else?”
Wren’s hands stopped.
That tiny reaction was enough.
“What did she give you?”
She reached into the pocket of her yellow raincoat and removed a folded square of paper.
“Mommy said I should only give this to you if she didn’t come back.”
My mouth went dry.
I took it.
The handwriting on the outside hit me almost as hard as the photograph.
For Mara. If necessary.
I knew those letters.
Eleanor had written my name that way on birthday cards, sandwich bags, permission slips. The capital M leaned farther than it should. The final a always curved underneath itself.
I unfolded the note.
There was only one line.
If Wren reaches you, Daniel has already lost control of what he tried to bury.
I reread it.
My father’s name seemed darker than the rest.
“When did your mother get this?”
“She had it a long time.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Mommy said Eleanor did.”
I folded the paper again because my hands were shaking.
Detective Ortiz returned.
“What is it?”
I gave her the note.
She read it once, then again.
“This is your mother’s handwriting?”
“I believe so.”
“You’re certain?”
“I haven’t seen it in years, but yes.”
Ortiz looked toward the officer returning through the door.
He approached us with his phone still in his hand.
“Daniel Bell’s residence is empty. Vehicle’s gone.”
“When did he leave?” Ortiz asked.
“Neighbor says less than half an hour ago.”
I checked the clock.
My father had apparently left his house around the same time he called me.
Ortiz turned to me. “Do not go home tonight.”
“My apartment?”
“Anywhere connected to you. We’ll have someone check it first.”
The speed with which my ordinary life was becoming evidence made me feel faint.
“Detective, are you saying my father abducted Celia?”
“I’m saying I don’t know what happened, and right now your father knows considerably more than he has told either of us.”
Wren tugged at my sleeve.
“Mara.”
She held out the paper star.
“There’s something on the back.”
I turned it over.
Six penciled words were written between the folded points.
The house where Mara was born.
I stared at them.
“What house?”
“Mommy said you would know.”
“I don’t.”
Wren frowned, as though this contradicted something she had been promised.
“She said Eleanor left you there.”
My skin prickled.
“Left me?”
Wren opened her backpack once more and searched beneath a reading workbook. She brought out a small brass key with a faded blue plastic tag attached.
An address had been written on the tag.
I recognized it instantly.
I had not spoken that address aloud in years.
It belonged to the first house I remembered—the house where I had lived with Eleanor and Daniel until my mother’s supposed death.
My father had told me it was sold and demolished shortly afterward.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mommy.”
“Has she taken you there?”
“Last week.”
I looked at Ortiz.
The detective was already reading the address.
“Wren,” she asked, “what did your mother do at the house?”
“She showed me where to hide if Grandpa came.”
The word made my blood cool.
“Grandpa?”
Wren pointed at me.
“Your daddy.”
I stood.
“My father is not her grandfather.”
Wren looked confused. “Mommy calls him that when she talks about you.”
Ortiz held out her hand for the key.
“What else happened at the house?”
Wren shifted in her seat.
“Mommy went downstairs.”
“The basement?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“A lot.”
“What was she doing?”
“I don’t know. She came back dirty.”
Wren rubbed her palms together as though remembering dust.
“She said there was something hidden down there.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
The detective pocketed the key carefully.
“Anything else?”
Wren nodded.
“She said if she disappeared, Mara had to find it before Grandpa Daniel did.”
A sensation like ice moved under my ribs.
Ortiz looked toward the officers.
“We’re checking that address.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“That was my childhood home.”
“That makes you emotionally involved and potentially a target.”
“It also means I may recognize something your officers won’t.”
Ortiz gave me a long look.
Before she could answer, one officer’s radio sounded.
He listened, then spoke quietly to the detective.
Ortiz’s jaw tightened.
“What?” I asked.
She ignored me for several seconds.
Then she said, “Your father’s vehicle was just picked up by a traffic camera.”
“Where?”
The officer showed her the screen.
She looked at the location.
Then at the address on Wren’s brass key.
“They’re less than two miles apart.”
My mouth went dry.
Ortiz closed her hand around the key.
“We leave now.”
Wren stood immediately and reached for mine.
I looked down at her fingers wrapped around my hand, then toward the dark windows where the rain had finally begun to weaken.
My father had spent twenty-two years telling me the house no longer existed.
Now he was driving toward it.
And somewhere beneath that house was something Celia Ellis believed he was desperate to find first.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Mother I Buried Was Alive in a Photograph, While a Child Carried the Warning She Had Written for Me
My Daughter Was Waiting for Me at School—But I Had Never Had a Child
Part 2 of 15
