Chapter 1: The Call in the Twilight
The asphalt of Route 9 was warm beneath my tires, the setting sun bleeding a bruised purple across the horizon. It was a Tuesday, the kind of Tuesday that feels indistinguishable from the last hundred Tuesdays—quiet, rhythmic, ordinary. I was thinking about the tomatoes in my garden, wondering if the frost would come early this year, when the silence of the car was shattered by the shrill, demanding ring of my phone.
An unknown number. No name. No warning.
I usually let those go to voicemail, assuming it’s a telemarketer or a wrong number. But something—perhaps that old, dormant instinct from three decades of nursing—made my hand reach out and press answer.
“Ma’am?” The voice on the other end was male, tight, and rushed, like a man running out of air. “Ma’am, I found your daughter in the woods. She’s alive, but…” He trailed off, the heavy sound of his own breathing filling the static. “…but barely.”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, the leather groaning under the pressure. My knuckles turned the color of bone. “What woods?” I asked. My voice sounded strange to my own ears—detached, clinical, the voice I used to tell wives their husbands weren’t coming home.
