Chapter 2 - The Daughter Damian Had Buried“Say it.”
Lucille looked at Damian.
Water moved around their shoes.
“Say what?”
“Say Avery is alive.”
Lucille swallowed.
“Damian…”
“Say it.”
Her eyes filled.
“Avery survived.”
Damian grabbed the vanity.
For one dizzy second, he thought he might fall.
Twelve years earlier, a state trooper had come to his father Victor’s house and told him a vehicle carrying eight-year-old Avery and Damian’s aunt Eleanor had crashed during a storm.
Eleanor died.
Avery was supposedly identified from remains inside the vehicle.
Damian begged to see her.
Victor refused.
“You don’t want that image in your head.”
Damian had listened.
He regretted it every day afterward.
Now Lucille was telling him the body had never been Avery.
“Where is she?”
“Damian—”
“WHERE?”
Lucille flinched.
“Not here.”
He stared.
“You tried to force Tessa toward a bathtub because she found this photograph.”
“It wasn’t only the picture.”
Damian’s eyes moved back to the hidden space.
There was something else inside.
He reached behind the cabinet again.
Lucille lunged.
“Don’t.”
Damian stepped away.
In his hand was a cream-colored envelope.
Postmarked Boston.
Six days earlier.
Addressed to:
LUCILLE HART — PERSONAL.
Damian opened it.
One page.
Lucille,
I’m done letting you decide when I’m allowed to know the truth.
You promised that when Tessa was old enough, you would tell Damian everything.
She’s nine.
I was eight when you took me away.
I have waited longer than you had any right to ask.
If you don’t tell him, I will.
Avery.
Damian stopped breathing.
Not an old letter.
Six days.
His daughter had written this six days ago.
“Tessa saw this?”
“No.”
Lucille answered quickly.
“She only saw the photograph.”
“Then why panic?”
“She would ask questions.”
“Yes.”
“And you would start looking.”
“That is generally what fathers do when they learn their supposedly dead child may be alive.”
Lucille looked away.
Damian lowered the letter.
“Who took Avery?”
Silence.
“I didn’t say kidnapping.”
Lucille’s face changed.
“You were about to.”
“No.”
Damian moved closer.
“You introduced that word.”
Her lips trembled.
“Who took my daughter?”
Lucille finally whispered:
“I did.”
Damian went still.
“From where?”
“Your father’s house.”
“After the crash?”
“There was no crash involving Avery.”
His stomach turned.
“My aunt died.”
“Yes.”
“But Avery was never in that car.”
“No.”
Damian pressed one hand against the wall.
“Where did you take her?”
“Virginia.”
“To whom?”
“My sister Marjorie.”
Damian stared.
“Why?”
Lucille’s eyes filled.
“Because Victor believed you weren’t safe.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
After his first wife Paige died suddenly from an aneurysm, Damian had collapsed.
He drank.
Too much.
He missed school pickup.
Forgot meals.
Once drove after drinking enough that Avery asked him why he was going so fast.
He hated remembering that year.
“I got sober.”
“Eventually.”
“I went to rehab.”
“Yes.”
“I came back.”
Lucille stared at him.
“That isn’t what Victor told us.”
Damian froze.
“What?”
“He said you left treatment.”
“I completed it.”
Lucille looked confused.
“He said you disappeared again.”
“I went to his house.”
Damian’s voice rose.
“I demanded Avery back.”
Lucille slowly shook her head.
“No.”
“I stood in his study and told him I would take him to court.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Lucille’s certainty began cracking.
“If that’s true…”
“It is.”
She looked genuinely shaken.
For the first time, Damian realized Victor may not have lied only to him.
He may have lied to everyone.
Damian pulled out his phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“The police.”
“Damian, wait.”
“No.”
“If you involve them without understanding—”
“You lost the right to decide what I understand.”
Then his phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A message.
STOP ASKING LUCILLE.
Damian’s pulse stopped.
Another message appeared.
ASK HER WHY SHE KEPT MY LETTERS.
Attached was a photograph.
A young woman stood on a Boston sidewalk.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
Damian’s eyes.
She held the same childhood photograph in one hand.
Damian stared until the room blurred.
Then another message arrived.
It’s me, Dad.
His knees almost gave way.
Avery was not an abstract secret.
She was alive.
Twenty years old.
Holding a phone.
Looking back at him through a screen.
Then the phone rang.
Damian answered.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
He could hear breathing.
“Avery?”
The breathing stopped.
Then a woman said:
“You sound the same.”
Damian closed his eyes.
“Avery…”
“She told me you’d pretend you didn’t know.”
Damian opened his eyes and looked directly at Lucille.
“Who told you that?”
“You know who.”
He did.
And suddenly the question was no longer only why Lucille hid Avery.
May you like
It was why Avery had spent twelve years believing her father knew she was alive—
and chose not to come.
Related Stories
