I shut the lid before I could keep looking. Some memories still weighed too much, and that one had never been the one people assumed.

That evening, Helen stopped by with dinner. She watched Ava babble happily across the living-room floor. “She feels safe here,” she said quietly.

After Helen left, I sat beside Ava while she struggled to roll onto her stomach. When she finally managed it, she looked up at me with the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

Without thinking, I kissed the top of her head. The instant I did, tears filled my eyes. I wasn’t supposed to love her. She wasn’t my child. She never had been.

That night I lay awake wondering where Sabrina was. Had she been injured? Was she hiding somewhere? Or had something happened that made returning impossible?

None of those possibilities gave me any comfort.