“Who was it, Nora?”
She finally looked up.
And then she said a name I had not expected to hear.
My brother.
I couldn’t move.
She explained that she had seen him near the place where the girls had gone that evening. She remembered his car. She remembered his voice. And she remembered him warning her not to tell anyone what she had witnessed.
I wanted to reject what she was saying.
My brother had been part of our family. He had helped search for Emily. He had stood beside me during those terrible weeks.
But suddenly, his old words returned to my mind.
“That girl knows more than she’s saying.”
Had he been trying to protect himself?
I didn’t know.
I asked Nora why she had waited ten years.
She wiped her face.
“Because I was a child. I had nobody. I thought you would hate me if you knew I had been there. And I was afraid that if I told the truth, something would happen to you.”
I reached across the table and held her hand.
“You should never have had to carry this alone.”
She cried harder.
I told her we would not make accusations or confront anyone recklessly. We would contact the authorities, explain what she had remembered, and ask for the original investigation to be reviewed.
The next morning, we began documenting everything she could recall.
Names. Places. Dates. Details about the car. Every memory she had kept buried for a decade.
Some details were difficult to remember, and we knew that memories could change over time. But her account deserved to be heard and properly investigated.
For the first time in ten years, I felt that we might finally have a direction.
I still didn’t know what had happened to Emily.
I didn’t know whether she was alive or whether we would ever find her.
