When the Forgotten Daughter Rises Chapter 06

When the Forgotten Daughter Rises Chapter 06

Early the next morning, the three of them take the first flight home.

As soon as the taxi pulls up outside the house, Mom practically runs up the three flights of stairs.

She jams the key into the lock.

The door opens.

The living room is spotless.

The only thing left on the coffee table is a single key.

Mom rushes into my room. There isn’t a single personal belonging left.

My state ID, bank cards, and all the little things I’ve collected over the years are gone.

Mom stands in the middle of the empty room, slowly looking around.

There are no posters on the walls, no photos, not even a sticker.

The room is so clean that it doesn’t look like an eighteen–year–old girl has lived here for eighteen years.

It looks as if no one has ever lived here at all.

Dad follows her in and sees the same thing.

“Where’s her acceptance letter?”

His voice is low.

“Mr. Wilson said it was delivered in July. Where is it?”

Mom suddenly remembers something.

She turns and rushes back into the living room, frantically searching through the things on the coffee table.

There’s nothing.

Her hands suddenly stop moving.

“That day…”

Her voice begins to tremble.

“When we got back from shopping, I dropped all the bags on the coffee table. She pulled something out from

underneath one of them. I thought it was some flyer and told her to throw it away.”

Dad says nothing.

The living room remains silent for a long time.

Lily stands in the entryway, still holding the coconut candy she brought back from Miami.

She asks cautiously, “Mom, did Elena go to college?”

No one answers.

Mom starts searching every corner of the house.

Eventually, she finds the ledger.

The same one she used to record the cash gifts at Lily’s graduation party.

She flips to the last page.

There, in her own handwriting, is a line;

“Cash gifts given to Ellie are all to be counted as Lily’s college gifts.”

Mom stares at the words for a full minute.

Then she remembers.

The two thousand dollars Uncle Mark gave Ellie.

The envelope Uncle David slipped into her hands.

And all the cash gifts from relatives who had specifically said, “This is for Ellie.”

She had counted every last dollar toward Lily’s expenses.

Mom’s fingers begin to tremble, “How did I…”

She murmurs the words, her voice filled with a bewilderment she can’t even explain herself.

She hadn’t done it on purpose.

She really hadn’t.

She had simply gotten used to it.

Used to every resource in the family revolving around Lily. Used to Ellie not needing anything. Used to Ellie

never asking for anything.

In a family with limited resources, a child who never asks for anything eventually gets categorized as

someone who doesn’t need anything.

It isn’t cruelty. It’s just habit.

But sometimes, the damage caused by habit cuts deeper than deliberate cruelty ever could.

Dad sits on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his head lowered.

After a long silence, he finally says, “I don’t even remember what grade she was in.”

Mom suddenly looks up, “We have to go to Yale.”

Her voice is suddenly firm, “We have to find her.”

Three days later, Mom and Dad take a flight of roughly six hours and arrive in New Haven.

They don’t know my dorm number. They don’t know which residential college I belong to.

They don’t even know my major.

They know only one name.

Yale.

Mom stands outside Yale University, watching students come and go. She looks like a bird that has

accidentally flown into an unfamiliar forest, lost and anxious.

“Go to the admissions office,” Dad says. “Ask them to look up her information.”

They find the admissions office and explain why they’re there.

The staff member looks at them, her expression becoming slightly guarded.

“You’re her parents?”

“Yes.”

“But we can’t disclose a student’s personal information without their consent.”

“She’s my daughter!” Mom bursts out. “Her phone is off. We can’t reach her!”

The staff member looks uncomfortable.

“I understand. Let me contact her residential college and have an advisor reach out to her. We can ask her to

contact you.”

They wait for forty minutes.

Finally, the advisor calls back.

“Hello. I’ve spoken with Elena Reeves. She says she’s safe and doing fine. She doesn’t want her parents to

come to campus.”

Mom grips the phone tightly, her fingers trembling slightly.

“What else did she say?”

“That’s all. She said she’s fine and asked me to tell you not to worry.”

Mom says nothing. But she doesn’t leave either.

She stands outside the school for the entire afternoon.

She watches one girl after another walk through the gates, trying to find my face in the crowd.

But the campus is too big.

There are people everywhere, and she suddenly realizes she can barely remember what her own daughter

looks like.

It isn’t an exaggeration.

She takes out her phone and scrolls through hundreds of photos.

Almost every single one is of Lily.

The most recent photo of me is a family picture from three years ago.

In that photo, I’m standing at the very edge.

Half of my shoulder is practically cropped out of the frame.

By evening, Dad finally takes Mom by the arm and leads her away from the campus.

“She doesn’t want to see us.”

His voice is low.

“Forcing her to meet us will only make things worse.”

Mom stands beneath a streetlamp.

The yellow light stretches her shadow across the pavement.

She looks at Dad, her eyes slowly turning red, “Luke…”

Her voice is barely a whisper, “Am I a terrible mother?”

Dad doesn’t answer, “I didn’t even know she took the SAT. I don’t even know what city she’s in.”

Her voice grows hoarse.

“She was inside me for ten months.”

“But now, I don’t even know if she’s home unless I check the security cameras.”

Mom slowly crouches down beside the curb, covering her face with both hands.

Dad stands beside her in silence for a long time before lighting a cigarette.

“Let’s go home.”

He exhales a cloud of smoke, “Give her some time.”

Mom looks up, “How long?”

Dad stares down the distant street, “I don’t know.”

In the end, they go home.

Another journey of nearly six hours.

This time, neither of them says a word.

Mom leans against the car window, watching the scenery rush past.

Suddenly, she realizes that Ellie has already traveled this road alone.

No one saw her off. No one picked her up. No one knew what time she arrived.

And while her daughter was making that journey alone, her mother was on a beach in Miami, applying

sunscreen.