When I showed her what I’d found, Claire took my hand as if steadying both of us. Then, quietly:

“At seventeen… I was taken by someone who knew my family’s routines. I was kept where help couldn’t find me. One night I escaped—through a fence—those wires… that’s the scar. My family moved. We changed everything. I stopped being the girl you wrote letters to and became a name no one could follow.”

She wasn’t dramatic. She was steady. And in the steady, I could hear what it cost her to say it.

6) The Letter That Arrived Too Late