Part Two

For six weeks I told myself the case was finished and the paperwork was just catching up.

Then I sat down with my own timeline at two in the morning and understood that the five words carved into my daughter’s back had never been meant for me at all.

Chapter 1 — The Word “Too”

Emily started sleeping at my house on Tuesdays.

It began as a practical thing. Her follow-up appointments were on Wednesday mornings and I lived eleven minutes from the hospital, and she was not supposed to drive yet.

Then it became a Tuesday thing, and then it was most of the week, and neither of us ever said out loud that it had changed.

She slept in her old room. She put a lamp on the floor by the door instead of on the nightstand, and I never asked why, but I know the answer is that a lamp on the floor throws light under a door and tells you whether someone is standing on the other side of it.