Detective Pruitt called regularly until he retired.
There were sightings.
Rumors.
Scams.
Once, a man in Nevada emailed me a photograph of a young woman standing by a motel pool.
You couldn't see his face.
She said it was Gia.
He demanded four hundred dollars for more photographs and his location.
For about thirty-three terrible seconds, I considered paying.
So I called the police.
It led nowhere.
Most of the councils did.
Someone swore that Gia was working in Tennessee.
Another person claimed to have joined a religious group in Arizona.
Each possibility brought her back for a moment.
Every dead end led her back again.
In the fifth year, people stopped saying Gia's name around me.
I refused to stop.
When someone asked me if I had children, I said yes.
When I spoke of the past, I said his name.
Gia.
I wouldn't let my daughter become a silence that everyone politely avoided.
Sixteen years passed like this.
Then, last July, I found myself walking along the boardwalk in Ocean City.
It was hot and crowded.
The children were carrying melted ice cream.
The music is coming from a games room.
The air smelled of fried food, sunscreen, and salt.
I had bought a bottle of water and wasn't walking anywhere in particular when I saw a woman coming towards me.
She had a cream-colored knitted bag over her shoulder.
I suddenly stopped so abruptly that the man behind me bumped into me.
– I'm sorry – he murmured.
I barely heard it.
My eyes were fixed on the bottom of the bag.
In a crooked row of dots.
I knew about that mistake.
I had cried over that stupid mistake in my kitchen years before because Gia wanted the bag finished before the weekend.
Then the woman changed the strap.
A brass keyring swung against her hip.
The world bowed.
I started after her.
Every instinct screamed at me to run.
Another part of me was terrified of catching up and discovering I was wrong.
The woman looked to be about forty. Dark hair. Pulled back.
Sunburned shoulders.
I had never seen her before.
That should have stopped me.
He didn't.
I reached her and grabbed her arm.
“Where did you get that bag?”
She shook.
- Sorry?
– That bag.
My voice was trembling.
“I did it. I made that bag for my daughter sixteen years ago.”
For a moment, she just looked.
People were moving around us.
A little car squealed.
Someone shouted for a child .
The whole world went on while mine squeezed into that bag.
Then I realized I was still touching her.
I released her immediately.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have grabbed you.”
His irritation softened into concern.
“Did you say you did this?”
- Yeah.
I pointed towards the seam.
“There is a mistake near the bottom.”
She looked.
“That row. I tried to fix it and made it worse.”
The woman turned the bag over.
The mistake was still there.
Then he asked in a low voice, "What was your daughter's name?"
My throat tightened.
– Gia.
Something changed in his face.
Barely.
But after sixteen years of studying strangers for reactions, I realized.
– You know that name.
She swallowed.
“I’ve heard it.”
My heart began to hammer.
- Where?
He looked out at the ocean.
“I think we should sit down.”
- No.
Her eyebrows rose.
– Tell me where you got the bag.
Finally, he nodded towards a nearby bench.
– I bought it.
- Where?
“A second-hand shop.”
- When?
She hesitated.
