For several seconds, none of us spoke.
The clock on the wall suddenly seemed deafening.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“What happened?” I whispered.
Mom closed her eyes.
“When you were seven,” she said, “the three of you disappeared.”
Leila frowned.
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“You weren’t gone for long. Maybe forty minutes.”
I stared at her.
“I don’t remember that.”
“I know.”
Mom’s voice trembled.
“That was the problem.”
She reached into the wooden box and pulled out the final letter.
“Nora remembered.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened when we were seven?”
Mom looked at both of us.
“You three had been playing outside. Nora came running into the house screaming that Leila had fallen into the old quarry.”
Leila’s face went pale.
“The quarry?”
Mom nodded.
“The abandoned one behind your grandfather’s property.”
I felt something cold move through me.
“But Leila was never there.”
“Exactly.”
Mom swallowed.
“When I got outside, Nora was standing at the edge of the quarry. She was hysterical. She kept saying she’d heard Leila calling for help.”
Leila shook her head.
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“You wouldn’t,” Mom whispered.
“Because Nora found you before I did.”
She pointed toward the letter.
“That’s what she wrote about.”
My hands began to shake.
I unfolded the paper again.
There were only a few lines left.
I read them aloud.
“Mom doesn’t remember what happened after we found Leila.”
I stopped.
Leila grabbed my wrist.
“Keep reading.”
I did.
“But I do.”
My heart began pounding.
“There was someone else at the quarry.”
Mom covered her mouth.
I looked up.
“Someone else?”
She nodded slowly.
“Nora said there was a man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“But she wrote his name.”
Mom’s eyes filled with tears.
“That’s what I’ve been afraid of.”
I looked back at the letter.
The handwriting became shakier near the bottom.
I continued.
“He was standing behind Amara.”
My breath caught.
“Amara?”
Leila whispered.
“That’s you.”
I knew.
My eyes raced over the next sentence.
“He told me not to tell Mom.”
Silence.
Then:
“He said if I told anyone, he’d come back for us.”
Leila suddenly stood up.
“No.”
Mom flinched.
“No, no, no. That’s impossible.”
I looked at her.
“You knew?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mom.”
Her eyes met mine.
And that’s when I noticed something I’d never noticed before.
She wasn’t just crying.
She was terrified.
“I knew there had been someone there,” she whispered.
“Then why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because the police searched the quarry.”
She shook her head.
“They found nothing.”
“No footprints?”
“Nothing.”
“No man?”
“Nothing.”
I looked at the letter again.
“Then why did Nora remember?”
Mom stared at the floor.
“Because Nora was the only one who saw him.”
Leila sat down slowly.
“But why would she write all this and hide it for ten years?”
Mom’s expression changed.
“Because she didn’t want you to remember.”
My skin prickled.
“What?”
“She thought forgetting was safer.”
I looked at Leila.
Neither of us spoke.
Then I noticed something.
The final page had writing on the back.
Tiny writing.
So faint I almost missed it.
I turned the paper toward the light.
There was one last sentence.
My voice barely came out.
“Mom didn’t know he was still watching us.”
Leila froze.
Mom’s face went white.
“What?” she whispered.
I read it again.
Then again.
And suddenly something clicked.
The letters.
The necklaces.
The envelopes.
Nora hadn’t just prepared us for adulthood.
She had been preparing us for something else.
Something she believed would happen when we turned twenty-one.
I looked inside the box again.
Under the velvet pouch was another piece of paper.
This one wasn’t in Nora’s handwriting.
It was typed.
There were only three words.
HE KNOWS.
Leila backed away from the table.
“Mom…”
Mom stared at the paper.
Then someone knocked on the front door.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Nobody moved.
The knocking stopped.
A few seconds passed.
Then my phone buzzed.
I looked down.
Unknown number.
One message.
Happy birthday, Amara.
My blood turned cold.
A second message appeared.
You finally opened it.
Leila saw the screen.
Her face drained of color.
Then my phone buzzed one last time.
There was a photograph attached.
I opened it.
And screamed.
It was a picture of the three of us.
Nora.
Leila.
Me.
We were seven years old.
Standing beside the quarry.
But that wasn’t what terrified me.
In the background, half-hidden behind the trees, stood a man.
Watching us.
And beneath the photograph was a timestamp.
Taken ten years ago.
The room went completely silent.
Because Nora had died ten years ago.
And someone had taken that picture on the day she died.
Mom suddenly whispered:
“He wasn’t supposed to still be alive.”
I stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
She looked at the front door.
Then at us.
And finally at the wooden box.
“There is one more thing Nora never told you.”
“What?”
Mom’s voice broke.
“The man at the quarry wasn’t a stranger.”
She reached into the box with trembling fingers.
And pulled out an old hospital photograph.
On the back, in Nora’s handwriting, were four words:
HE IS OUR FATHER. :::