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“You haven’t tasted them.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Why?”

I squeeze her hand.

“Because my daughter made them.”

4

HAYLEY

Ifind my daughter on my thirty-fourth birthday.

Not in person.

Not yet.

I find her in a missing-person report buried inside a state database I shouldn’t have access to, wearing a school photograph taken when she was sixteen.

The girl on my laptop screen has white-blond hair, storm-gray eyes, and a hesitant smile that is nothing like mine.

Everything else is.

I touch the photograph with trembling fingers.

“Sage.”

The name comes out broken.

I haven’t spoken it aloud in years.

Not because I forgot it. I could never forget the name I gave my daughter during the few minutes I was allowed to hold her.

I stopped saying it because the sound hurt too much.

Now I say it again.

“Sage.”

My daughter is beautiful.

And she is missing.

I read the report for the third time, even though I already have every word memorized.

Sage Baxter. Age sixteen. Reported missing from foster placement in eastern Tennessee.

Baxter must have been Mae’s last name.

The report contains little information. Sage was last seen leaving her foster home sometime after midnight. She took clothing and personal belongings. Her disappearance was initially classified as a runaway situation.

No Amber Alert.

No organized search.

No one looking for the girl I have spent eighteen years trying to find.