Iris had remembered the moment after the crash—sitting bruised and bleeding in the overturned vehicle in the dark woods, listening to the crunch of snow above. A man with a flashlight had climbed down the steep slope, looked inside the shattered window, and seen her small face staring back at him. He had hesitated, his flashlight beam illuminating his scarred neck, before turning around and walking away, leaving a four-year-old child to die in the freezing cold.
“The man at the library was the driver,” I breathed out, the horrific truth settling into my chest like lead. “He’s here in our town. He’s been here this whole time.”
“Yes,” Alan nodded grimly. “And the reason Iris couldn’t come to you, Clara, the reason she was crying so hard she could barely speak, is because that man isn’t a stranger to our family. He’s someone you know very well, someone you interact with every single week.”
I stared at my husband in absolute horror as the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place, realizing that the killer of my daughter’s biological family had been standing right in front of us the entire time, waiting for the truth to finally surface.
