Three Girls, One Stolen Life

Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Waited

Daniel sat back on his heels.

“What is your name?”

“Lucy.” She pulled her sister closer. “That's Rose.”

“Where is your mother?”

Lucy's eyes narrowed. Adults had apparently asked that question before, and the answers had not helped.

Sophie put her bear under one arm and picked up Rose's from the pavement.

“Here.”

Rose took it. Their fingers were the same size.

A woman hurried out of the bakery across the street. Flour streaked her apron.

“Girls! I told you to wait by the door.”

She stopped when she saw Daniel.

He recognized her slowly. Nora Bell. Elena's friend from the little café near their first apartment.

Nora looked at Sophie, then at the two children beside her.

“Oh, Elena,” she said under her breath.

Daniel stood.

“Where is she?”

“In hospital. Since Tuesday.”

The relief struck him so hard he had to grip the back of a nearby bench. Elena was alive. Six years of silence had not ended in the answer he feared most.

Nora took the children inside. Their shoes, soaked through that morning, were drying beside a small heater. She gave Rose a plaster for her scraped knee and put three cups of warm milk on the table.

“I thought she left us,” Daniel said quietly.

Nora stared at him.

“She thought you kept one child and threw the rest of them away.”

He shook his head.

“One child? We had one child.”

Nora sat down.

“Elena had three daughters.”

Outside, a delivery bicycle rattled over the stones. Inside, Sophie pushed the sugar bowl toward Rose.

Daniel remembered the birth. An emergency. A corridor. His mother telling him Elena had suffered a severe hemorrhage. A tiny baby placed in his arms while everyone spoke over him.

Two days later, they told him his wife had gone.

There had been a letter.

He had read it so often that its sentences still lived in his head.

I cannot be the person you need. Please don't look for me.

“My mother said Elena didn't want contact.”

Nora's face changed.

“Your mother paid for the clinic.”