Mr. Thomas stepped closer.
“We’ve called the police. They’re checking the grounds. Her purse is gone, and her phone is off. Because she’s eighteen, there’s a possibility she left by choice.”
“Her purse is gone?” John asked.
I grabbed that detail and twisted it into the only story I could survive.
“Then he planned it.”
“Mom,” Liam whispered. “Stop.”
But I did not stop.
The next morning, I saw Natalie in the school parking lot talking to an officer.
Mitchell was missing too.
Before John could stop me, I stormed toward her.
“Where did your son take my daughter?”
Natalie turned slowly. Her face was pale, but her voice remained calm.
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“They’re in love, Camila.”
I stepped closer.
“Don’t you dare say that.”
Liam grabbed my arm.
“Mom, please.”
Natalie looked at my son with pity.
That only made me angrier.
“You think you’re better than me,” I snapped.
Natalie’s expression softened in the worst possible way.
“No, Camila. Just louder when you’re afraid.”
John caught my wrist.
“Enough.”
People were watching.
But I did not care.
“My daughter is gone,” I said. “And your family did this.”
Natalie did not answer.
She only looked at Liam again.
For eleven months, I lived inside that sentence.
My daughter is gone.
The police searched the school, the woods, the river, the roads near the gym.
Weeks later, they told us Livia had contacted authorities. She was safe. She was an adult. She did not have to disclose her location.
That should have comforted me.
It did not.
Because knowing she was alive did not tell me why she chose to stay gone.
After prom night, Liam changed.
He stopped laughing.
He locked his bedroom door whenever he was inside.
If I knocked, he answered through the wood.
“Please, Mom. Just don’t come in.”
I thought it was grief.
So I respected it.
Or maybe I respected it because some part of me was afraid of what I might find if I pushed.
Around Christmas, John tried to say what I refused to hear.
“Camila, she was eighteen.”
I looked up from Livia’s empty stocking.
“Don’t.”
