PART 3
My heart sank.
“Why?”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain. We discovered her there three nights before the end of camp.”
I looked back at Mia.
She immediately looked away.
That frightened me more than anything the director had said.
Because Mia wasn’t a rebellious child.
She wasn’t the kind of teenager who sneaked out for fun, broke rules to impress friends, or laughed when adults confronted her.
If she had done something wrong, there was usually a reason.
“What was she doing inside?” I asked.
The director hesitated.
“She was looking through a locked cabinet.”
“A locked cabinet?”
“Yes.”
I felt my face grow warm.
“Did she steal something?”
“No.”
“Did she damage anything?”
“No.”
“Then what did she do?”
The director took a slow breath.
“She found something.”
My confusion deepened.
“What?”
“That is precisely the problem.”
She reached into a folder she was carrying and pulled out several printed photographs.
She handed them to me.
I looked down.
The first photograph showed a small wooden cabin.
The second showed a group of children standing near the lake.
The third showed an older man sitting alone on a bench.
I looked up.
“What am I looking at?”
“The photographs were inside the locked cabinet.”
I stared at her.
“And Mia found them?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she look for them?”
“She claims she wasn’t looking for them.”
The director paused.
“She says she was looking for a first-aid kit.”
I blinked.
“A first-aid kit?”
“One of the younger campers was injured. Mia said she couldn’t find a counselor, so she went looking for supplies.”
That sounded exactly like something my daughter would do.
“But why was the first-aid kit inside the staff office?”
“It wasn’t.”
I frowned.
“Then why did she go there?”
The director’s expression changed.
“She says she heard someone crying.”
A chill ran through me.
“Someone crying?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
I stared at the photographs again.
There was something strange about them.
The children in the pictures were smiling, but the photographs looked old.
Very old.
I turned one over.
On the back was a handwritten date.
July 14, 2009.
I looked at the director.
“What does this have to do with Mia?”
The director didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she said, “Your daughter became obsessed with finding out who the children in those photographs were.”
“Why?”
“Because she recognized one of them.”
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
“Who?”
The director looked toward Mia.
Then she lowered her voice.
“Her father.”
Everything inside me seemed to stop.
I looked at my daughter.
Her father had been dead for six years.
Mia had been seven when he died.
She remembered him, but her memories were scattered—his laugh, the way he made pancakes on Sunday mornings, the smell of his jacket, the way he used to carry her when she fell asleep in the car.
But there was something else.
Something I had never told her.
Her father had attended this exact camp when he was a teenager.
I had known that.
I just never imagined it mattered.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered.
The director studied my face.
“You knew?”
“I knew he went here when he was young.”
“But you didn’t know what happened here.”
“What happened?”
The director looked down at the photographs.
“That is what your daughter was trying to discover.”
I felt a knot forming in my chest.
“What exactly did she find?”
The director hesitated.
Then she said something that made my blood run cold.
“She found a name written behind one of the photographs.”
“What name?”
“Your husband’s.”
I stared at her.
“My husband’s name?”
She nodded.
“Daniel.”
I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
Daniel.
My husband’s name.
The man who had died six years earlier.
The man whose past I thought I knew.
The director handed me another photograph.
This one showed five teenage boys standing in front of a wooden sign that read:
PINE RIDGE SUMMER CAMP — 2009
Four boys were smiling.
One was looking away.
The boy standing at the far left was unmistakably Daniel.
I felt tears burn my eyes.
But something was wrong.
There was a sixth person in the picture.
Someone whose face had been scratched out.
I looked closer.
“Who is that?”
