I read it. Then I read it again because the words wouldn’t go in. The father was her husband. Her husband. My husband. Dale.

I sat on that floor and I went back through every quiet year.

The locked door she wanted. The way she stopped hugging him first, then everybody. The flinch when he stood behind her chair. “She’s just looking for attention.” The way she begged me, in my kitchen, “It’s not what you think,” and I put my hand up like a stop sign because I already had the man’s side of it before she ever opened her mouth.

She didn’t run from me because she was a scared pregnant teenager. She ran because the one person who was supposed to protect her handed her a suitcase and chose the man who did it. She tried to tell me. She got nine words out. “It’s not what you think, Mom.” And I shut the door.

I don’t know how long I sat there. The intake coordinator found me and asked if I was okay and I said something about my knees. I couldn’t say the real thing out loud. I still can’t, really. I took a picture of that file with my phone, which I know I shouldn’t have done. Then I drove home.

That was four nights ago. I have not found Megan yet. The shelter can’t give me anything, and I understand why, I’m the last person on earth she’d want knocking. I’ve been looking. There’s a county over where I think she might be. I don’t know what I’d even say. “Sorry” is such a small, stupid word for it. There’s no word the right size.

Dale is still in the house. He’s upstairs asleep right now. I’ve been sitting in my car in the driveway since I got home, looking up at our bedroom window, at the light, then no light.

I keep my phone in my lap with that photo of her file on the screen. The two Nones. The little loop on her R.

I haven’t gone inside yet. I keep thinking about her writing that sentence on a clipboard in a place full of strangers, finally telling somebody the whole thing, and the only person who needed to hear it wasn’t even in the room. She got to finish it that time. I just wasn’t there.