Chapter 4 - STILL HERE
The birthday card became the center of everything.
Rebecca sent Detective Price a photograph of it from a secure email account before disappearing from contact again.
The card was handmade.
Blue construction paper.
A crooked yellow star.
Inside, in a child’s uneven handwriting, were two words.
STILL HERE.
Below them was a drawing of a lighthouse.
Laura stared at the image on Price’s tablet.
“Did Lily like lighthouses?”
“Rebecca says no.”
“Then it means something.”
“Probably.”
Price enlarged the drawing.
The lighthouse stood beside three tall trees and a black rectangle that might have been a building.
A red line crossed the bottom of the page.
Laura pointed.
“What’s that?”
“We don’t know.”
“Road?”
“Maybe.”
She studied the childish picture.
The star above the lighthouse had five points.
One point was colored green.
Something about it bothered her.
Then memory surfaced.
The villa’s old guest room contained a framed map of the coastline.
Mark had once told her he had owned property near Lake Mercer.
A cabin, he said.
Sold years ago.
“Mark had a place near water.”
Price looked at her.
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Think.”
Laura closed her eyes.
A dinner two winters earlier.
Mark talking to a contractor.
He had complained about insurance on “the Mercer place.”
Laura opened her eyes.
“Lake Mercer.”
Price was already calling someone.
Within an hour, detectives confirmed that a limited liability company connected to Mark had owned a parcel twelve miles north of Lake Mercer until 2022.
The parcel included a caretaker’s cottage.
And across the lake stood an abandoned lighthouse.
Laura felt cold.
“Could Lily have been there?”
Price did not answer immediately.
“We’re getting a warrant.”
Laura wanted to go.
He said no.
For once she did not argue.
Ethan needed her more than the investigation did.
They moved from the hotel to Laura’s sister Emma’s home across town.
Emma had always disliked Mark.
She never said I told you so.
That mercy mattered.
The first night, Ethan refused to sleep unless Laura lay beside him.
He kept one hand on her sleeve.
At two in the morning he woke suddenly.
“The girl is cold.”
Laura sat up.
“What girl?”
Ethan blinked in the darkness.
“The one with the rabbit.”
Laura’s heart hammered.
“Did you dream about Lily?”
He nodded.
“She said the light goes around.”
The light goes around.
Laura wrote the phrase in her phone.
In the morning she told Price.
He was cautious.
“So was the lighthouse already mentioned around him?”
Laura thought.
“No.”
“Did he see the drawing?”
“He might have seen it on your tablet yesterday.”
Price nodded.
“Then we treat it carefully.”
She hated caution.
But she understood it.
That afternoon the search team entered the Lake Mercer property.
The cottage had been abandoned for years.
Windows boarded.
Floorboards warped.
Animal nests in the chimney.
No child.
No recent occupancy.
Laura felt hope collapse.
Then investigators found a storage cellar beneath the kitchen.
Inside were canned foods long expired, bottled water, blankets, children’s books, and a stack of old newspapers.
One newspaper was dated four months after Lily vanished.
On the wall beside a narrow cot were pencil marks.
Height measurements.
L.M.
Again.
Price called Laura from the scene.
“She was here.”
Laura closed her eyes.
“For how long?”
“We can’t say.”
“Then where did she go?”
“We’re still searching.”
Police found another clue beneath the cot.
A metal token from a children’s arcade.
The business name was stamped around the edge.
SEABIRD FUN PARK.
Emma searched it immediately.
“It closed years ago.”
“Where was it?”
Emma looked up.
“Port Hollis.”
Laura knew the town.
It was forty miles from Lake Mercer.
Mark once had business there.
The pattern expanded.
Villa.
Lake cottage.
Port Hollis.
Places connected not by family memories but by properties and companies.
By the end of the day, investigators had traced a storage unit Mark rented under another company name near Port Hollis.
Inside they found furniture.
Boxes.
Old tax files.
And a child’s bicycle.
Pink.
The serial number matched a receipt Rebecca still possessed.
Lily’s bicycle.
Laura cried when she heard.
Not because it proved Lily was dead.
Because it proved she had been moved.
Hidden.
Carried from place to place like evidence someone was trying to erase.
Then investigators found the first sign that Lily might have survived longer than anyone believed.
A photograph.
Printed at a pharmacy kiosk.
Date stamped May 2022.
Nearly two years after Lily’s disappearance.
The image showed a young girl standing beside a motel vending machine.
She had darker hair.
She looked thinner.
But Rebecca identified her instantly.
Lily.
Alive.
Price brought the photograph to Laura’s sister’s house that evening.
Laura stared at the child’s face.
“She was alive.”
“Yes.”
“Who took this?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where?”
“The print metadata suggests Port Hollis.”
Laura looked closer.
Behind Lily was a motel logo reflected faintly in glass.
A pelican wearing sunglasses.
Emma searched again.
“There’s a Pelican Bay Motor Lodge.”
Price stood.
“It closed last year.”
Laura’s pulse jumped.
“Then go.”
“We are.”
The search happened after midnight.
The motel sat near an abandoned ferry terminal.
Most rooms were empty.
Two had been used for storage.
In Room 17, investigators found something hidden behind the bathroom mirror.
Not a weapon.
Not blood.
A notebook.
Child-sized.
Purple cover.
Inside, Lily had written dates.
Some pages described ordinary things.
Toast.
Rain.
A television show.
Others were darker.
M says Mom forgot me.
I know he lies.
He says if I run, Mom gets hurt.
Then, near the end, one entry changed everything.
A woman came today.
Her name is Nora.
She said she can help but I have to be brave.
The final page contained an address.
Not complete.
Just three words.
CEDAR HOUSE NORTH.
Price’s team searched databases until sunrise.
They found nothing by that exact name.
But Laura remembered something.
Mark’s mother had lived in a nursing facility before her death.
Cedar House.
Not north.
Cedar House Rehabilitation Center.
Price checked ownership records.
A sister facility had once existed two counties away.
Cedar House North.
It closed in 2023.
The abandoned building now belonged to the county.
A search team entered at 8:15 a.m.
Laura waited by the phone.
At 9:02, Price called.
His voice sounded different.
“We found records.”
Laura stood.
“What records?”
“Patient intake documents.”
“For Lily?”
“No.”
Laura’s stomach dropped.
“Then what?”
“A woman named Nora Vale worked there.”
The name from Lily’s notebook.
“And?”
Price paused.
“She left employment the same week Lily’s notebook ends.”
Laura gripped the phone.
“Do you know where she is?”
“We have an address.”
“Is Lily with her?”
“We don’t know.”
May you like
Then Price added the sentence Laura had been afraid to hope for.
“But we may finally have someone who knows where she went.”
