She Heard a Stranger's Name Outside a Convenience Store

CHAPTER 3 - THE HOUSE WITH YELLOW CURTAINS

Evelyn drove with both hands tight on the wheel.

Hazel sat in the back beside Oliver, because he had refused the front seat and refused to let go of his faded green backpack. She had given him one of her spare sweatshirts from soccer practice, but he still wore the wet gray hoodie underneath, as if removing it might strip him of the last thing that belonged to his mother.

No one spoke for the first few miles.

Then Hazel leaned over and whispered, "I like your freckles."

Oliver didn't smile, but some of the fear left his face.

Evelyn heard it in the mirror and nearly cried.

At home, the yellow kitchen curtains glowed against the gray morning. Oliver stopped in the doorway as if he'd reached the edge of a trap.

"You can leave if you want," Hazel told him. "After soup."

Evelyn shot her a look. Hazel shrugged. "He should know."

That, more than anything, made Oliver take one step inside.

While Hazel heated tomato soup, Evelyn found an old photo box in the hall closet. Her fingers shook so badly she almost dropped it. She sat at the kitchen table and spread photographs across the wood.

Leah at sixteen, laughing on a dock.

Leah at twenty-three, holding a newborn wrapped in a hospital blanket.

Leah exhausted, defiant, beautiful, one hand over the copper pendant at her throat before she had placed it around the baby's neck for the picture.

Oliver stood very still.

"That's my mom," he said.

Evelyn nodded, unable to speak.

Hazel set down three bowls and slid one toward him. "Told you."

He didn't touch the soup. He stared at the baby in Leah's arms.

"My mom said if I got found, I had to check one thing first."

Evelyn looked up. "What thing?"

He finally opened the backpack.

Inside were two shirts, a broken toy car, crackers in a napkin, and a sealed white envelope. On the front, in Leah's unmistakable slanted handwriting, were four words:

Only if Evelyn comes.

Evelyn reached for it, but Oliver pulled it back.

"She said I could only let you read it if you promised not to call the police first."

Evelyn's phone was already in her coat pocket with missed calls from an unknown county number.

And before she could answer, someone knocked at the front door.

When Hazel peeked through the curtain, her face went pale.

"Mom," she whispered. "There's a police officer outside."