I hired a 16-year-old babysitter, and on her first day, she arrived late, disheveled, and wearing two different shoes. I thought, “This girl is going to burn my house down.” But my three daughters hugged her as if they had been waiting for her their whole lives… and that very same girl ended up keeping the secret that years later would give me back the only thing I lost to save my daughter. When I heard Ray’s voice, I felt the apartment shrink around me. Lucy stood right across from me, pale, her fingers clutching the strap of her purse as if the weight of her world depended on it. “What did you say?” I asked. On the other end of the line, a silence heavy with years stretched out. “Don’t sign anything tomorrow, Patricia. Not until you know the whole truth.” I laughed, but not because it was funny. I laughed the way a woman does when she has already cried far too much. “The truth? Now you want to talk to me about truths, Ray? Three months without answering my texts. Three months without seeing your daughters except on video calls whenever you happened to remember.” “It wasn’t like that.” “Then how was it?”