The police filed a report.
Eventually, one detective told me gently:
“Ma’am, sometimes young adults leave on purpose.”
But I never stopped looking.
I checked hospitals, shelters, bus stations, and churches.
I taped flyers to windows and lampposts.
I followed tips that led nowhere and called numbers scribbled on scraps of paper.
Eventually, the police labeled her a runaway.
Still, I kept searching.
Because mothers don’t stop.
The Red Sweater
One Thursday afternoon began like any other.
After work, I stopped by the grocery store to buy a few essentials. Gray clouds hung low over the parking lot as I walked out carrying two bags.
Then I saw him.
A homeless man sat near the alley by the pharmacy wall. His beard was thick, and his coat was worn thin. A paper cup sat beside his boots.
Normally I would have walked past.
But something caught my eye.
The last thing Lily wore the day she disappeared was a bright red sweater I had knitted for her eighteenth birthday. Thick cables. Wooden buttons. Soft wool she loved wrapping herself in on cold mornings.
Inside the cuff, I had stitched two small letters in pale thread:
“Li.”
My nickname for her since childhood.
The grocery bags slipped from my hands. Apples rolled across the pavement.
Because the man sitting there was wearing Lily’s sweater.
My heart pounded as I rushed toward him.
“Hey!” I shouted.
He looked up as I grabbed the sleeve and turned the cuff with shaking hands.
The tiny stitched letters were still there.
My voice broke.
“Where did you get this? Tell me what happened to my daughter!”
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