Chapter 2: Placed
The detective who came to Lily's room was a quiet woman named Officer Reyes.
She sat across from me with a notepad and asked me to walk her through everything I remembered about Nora.
I told her what I knew.
Which wasn't much.
Gone at age two.
Sick, my parents had said.
Gone quickly.
Officer Reyes wrote something down, then looked up.
"We pulled your family's records going back thirty years." She paused.
"There is no d*ath certificate for a child named Nora in your parents' names.
No hospital record.
No burial permit."
I couldn't breathe.
"What does that mean?"
She didn't answer that directly.
Instead she said, "We also found something at the house during the search."
She slid a photograph across the table.
It was old.
Faded at the edges.
A little girl, maybe two years old, sitting in a garden I didn't recognize.
She was wearing a yellow dress.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting:
*Nora.
Placed.
Do not contact.*
My hands were shaking so badly I had to set it down.
Marcus put his arm around me.
I couldn't feel it.
"Placed," I said.
"What does that mean?
Placed *where?*"
Officer Reyes closed her notepad slowly.
"That's what we're trying to find out.
But I need you to prepare yourself." She looked at me steadily.
"Because whoever has been raising Nora — they may not know who she really is."
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May you like
What they uncovered next about Nora — and what it meant for Lily — was more devastating than anything I had imagined.
Click the link below to read the full story.
