“Man,” she answered. “Definitely a man. He told me something…” Her voice trailed off.

We walked another block and I counted my steps, trying to keep my mind busy so I didn’t end up interrogating her.

“What did he tell you?” I asked. “The man. Do you remember?”

“He told me that he had a Christmas present,” she said slowly. “For you.”

I swallowed, tried to picture the scene in front of the house. The warm December day almost a decade earlier. The Santa we’d set up in the middle of the yard. Laughing and joking with my daughter. Listening to her suggestion about needing more lights. Taking her seriously and running in to grab them. And leaving her. Alone.

“A present.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I can’t remember what else he said. But he asked if I could come help get it from the car.”

“Elizabeth, why did you even talk to him?” I asked. “You never did that kind of thing, talk to strangers. I don’t see—”

“He was a police officer,” she said abruptly. “Or dressed like one. He had a uniform like yours. I remember thinking that. That his uniform was just like yours. So it was okay to talk to him.”

The knot in my gut hardened into something felt more like a sharp stone. I felt the questions bubble up inside of me.

“But it wasn’t a police car,” she said. “It was parked at the curb, on the other side of the driveway. We were walking to it and I realized it wasn’t a police car and I stopped.” She was breathing hard. “I was going to say something…and then it just goes black. And I can’t remember anything after that. I can’t even see his face.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No,” she said, shaking her head, tears streaming from her eyes. “It’s not okay. Why can’t I remember? Everyone wants me to remember and I can’t.”

I was torn. She was crying and I knew the only way to get her to stop was if I ended the questions. But it was the most I’d learned about the moment she’d disappeared and I was selfish. I needed to know more, even if it was hard on her.

“Maybe he did something to you,” I said. “He might’ve hit you. He might’ve used drugs. There are plenty of explanations.”

“I don’t know,” she said, the words ragged as she spit them out. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. What’s the very next thing you remember?” I asked. “The very next thing after that?”

She wiped hard again at her eyes, like she was angry with them, like her eyes had somehow betrayed her. “Being cold.”

“Like you were outside?”

She shook her head. “No. I was in Minnesota. And not like I woke up or something. That’s just the next thing.” She closed her eyes, her lashes wet with tears, her eyelids pink and puffy. “Like there’s this giant black spot in my memory that I can’t see. I was outside in the driveway. In Minnesota. I got out of a minivan. I was with the Corzines. And I think I’d been there for awhile. It wasn’t my first day with them.” She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “And I asked where my parents were.”

A chill ran through me and I felt the goosebumps prickle my skin. We could’ve been standing in Minnesota right then.

“That’s when they told me about the fire,” she said, her voice soft. “The explosion. It had supposedly burned down the house.” She looked at me with almost dry eyes but I could see the tears beginning to pool. “And both of you.”

Sobs choked her voice and tears flooded her eyes. I stepped to her and put my arms around her, feeling her body shake against mine. She buried her face against my shoulder and we stood there on the street corner for a few minutes, me holding on to her, trying to keep my own eyes dry as my daughter’s tears soaked through my shirt. After a few minutes, her sobs subsided and she pulled away, straightening herself. I didn’t want to let her go and my hands fell to my side.

She didn’t say anything and we started walking again. She sniffled a couple of times and she lifted her arm to wipe her shirt across her face. The sleeve of her t-shirt brushed against me and I noticed that she was in closer proximity to me than she had been before. It wasn’t much but I would take it.

Elizabeth cleared her throat, then spoke again. “It’s, like, all patchy after that,” she said, her voice heavier, but quieter than before. “There are snippets that I can remember. Kids in school, going to a park, stuff like that. But all in Minnesota. With the Corzines. There was nothing else from here until I found those papers in the closet and then it just sort of came in flashes.”

She was referring to the adoption papers she’d accidentally found in the Corzine home. Papers that had triggered her running away from their house and the cross-country chase she’d led me on before finally catching up to her in a San Diego warehouse.

We walked in silence for a few minutes.

“So you knew. You knew that you were with a family that wasn’t really your family. Did you wonder about us at all? About your other parents? I mean about things other than the fire.” I hated asking the question, but I needed to know.

She squinted like she was trying to remember. “There would be moments, I guess. Just these really quick…moments. And the memories were like shadows. Like I could see them but I couldn’t make them out. And they were fast, kinda like the way things flash in dreams, and they scared me.” She shook her head. “And I just didn’t want to have the dreams anymore. So I told myself not to have them.”

I didn’t say anything, just listened. We rounded the corner into our neighborhood.

“But I think I always knew that something wasn’t right,” she said. “The fire thing was weird and I didn’t understand it. And when I first asked about it, no one could tell me anything and they didn’t want to talk about it. So I just stopped asking. I mean, I had a good life in Minnesota. I liked my family. I had friends. I did okay in school.” She shook her head again. “But there were just days where I felt…out of place, I guess. Like you’re eating your favorite food or something and you know you love it, but it just doesn’t taste right and you don’t know why. But you don’t say anything because everyone will look at you weird if you say you don’t like it or it doesn’t taste good.” She sighed. “That sounds lame.”

“No,” I said. “It really doesn’t. It makes sense.”

We were on the opposite side of the street from the house and as we got closer, Elizabeth stopped, staring across the street.

“Right there,” she said, pointing to the space just past our house. “The car was right there.”

I pictured a car there. It would’ve been impossible to see, hidden from all of the windows at the front of the house. And it would’ve been easy to move quickly out of the neighborhood, with easy access to the cross street in order to get away.

She looked at me, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him take me.”

I looked at her, really looked at her. I took her gently by the arms and pulled her closer. She dropped her gaze.

“Look at me,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Look at me.”

Slowly, she lifted her head. Her eyes were still puffy, her nose bright red, her complexion mottled from the flurry of tears. But she had never looked more beautiful, at least not to me. Because I was holding her. My daughter.

“Stop apologizing,” I said. “You did nothing wrong. Do not say I’m sorry again to me or to anyone else. You did nothing wrong.”

“But it feels like…”

“I don’t care what it feels like. You did nothing wrong, Elizabeth. Nothing. Do not apologize.” I shook her gently, trying to make her understand. “Someone took you against your will. You did what you had to do to protect yourself and that was block out the bad stuff.” I locked my eyes with hers. “You have nothing to apologize for. Do you understand me?”

She stared at me, her eyes still cloudy with tears.

“Do you understand me?” I asked again.