Whitney reopened the Find My Friends app, and Amelia once again popped up on the screen. They were headed down the street, around the corner. Lauren may have thought she was creating distance between them, that she was taking Amelia away from Whitney. But she wasn’t. Whitney’s daughter was right here in the palm of her hand.

She had a few things to take care of and then she’d follow the girls. And when Amelia was ready, she’d swoop in to rescue her the way she’d done a million times before.

The way she always would.

She almost felt bad for Lauren, believing that Amelia was blindly following her, leaving Whitney behind. Lauren had endured a lot. Whitney was an empathetic person. She understood the pain Lauren felt. She agreed with Lauren on some things. Like with Millie. Her life had ended too soon, and it wasn’t fair. But despite what Lauren believed, it wasn’t Whitney’s fault everything blew apart. It was Mitch’s. She’d told Millie from the beginning that he would destroy her. And he had.

Whitney thought about it often over the years. The what-ifs. The could-have-beens.

But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t bring Millie back. Nothing could do that. But Whitney still had a part of her in Amelia. And that was one thing she could control, keep safe. They were close. Tight. And nothing could change that.

Clutching the lifeless baby in her arms, blindly stumbling down the eerily empty hallway, tears obscuring her vision.

She sighed. Picked up her phone again. She knew she needed to call McAvoy. Tell him she’d found Amelia. But not quite yet. Dan’s turn was next. She’d stalled long enough. As badly as she wanted to continue to keep this from him, she knew that wasn’t an option. Now that Amelia knew, he’d one day find out. It wouldn’t be fair coming from Amelia. It had to come from Whitney.

He answered on the first ring.

“Did you find her?”

“Yes,” Whitney said.

“Where was she?”

Whitney scratched her scalp, licked her lips. “Well, that’s actually what I need to talk to you about. Do you have some time?”

When he said he did, she started back at the beginning. Went through the entire story, the same way she’d told it to Amelia. When she got to the part about their baby, she was startled to find herself crying. Tears that she’d kept locked tightly inside finally spilled out. She’d never been able to grieve with him. To share with him. For so many years, she’d done her best to repress the memory of the baby she’d birthed. She rewrote the narrative in her mind, tricking herself to believe that the Amelia she raised was the only one she’d ever had.

It felt good to remember the baby she’d lost.