“Thank you,” she whispered.
His face tightened.
“You did good, kid.”
“You stayed.”
“I said I would.”
She pulled back and touched the bracelet.
“Purple.”
“Yeah.”
“My mommy has purple too.”
Elias went still.
“What?”
Lucy pointed vaguely toward the ambulance.
“She has purple in her box.”
I assumed she meant jewelry.
Nobody paid attention.
Elias did.
“What kind of purple?”
But Lucy was already being called back.
She waved.
Then disappeared through the automatic doors.
The crowd began breaking apart.
The emergency was over.
Or so I thought.
Derek looked at Elias.
“We still need your information.”
Elias nodded.
“Sure.”
“Identification.”
He handed over his wallet.
Derek read.
“Elias Maddox.”
Something flickered across Marcus’s face.
I noticed.
“What?”
Marcus looked at Elias again.
Then the bracelet.
“You’re that Elias Maddox?”
Elias’s eyes hardened.
“I’m just Elias Maddox.”
Marcus whispered:
“Sophie Maddox.”
Derek frowned.
“Who?”
Marcus stared at the faded bracelet.
I remembered then.
Not the details.
A photograph.
A little girl.
Purple.
News vans.
Missing posters.
I had been sixteen or seventeen.
My mother had kept one poster taped inside our church entrance for almost a year.
Sophie Maddox.
Five years old.
Missing from Oklahoma City.
Twenty-two years earlier.
I looked at the bracelet.
My mouth went dry.
“Was she your daughter?”
Elias said nothing.
He did not need to.
Marcus asked softly:
“That bracelet was hers?”
Elias looked down.
“Matching set.”
He rubbed his thumb across the faded stars.
“Store gave them out during a family-safety event.”
“One for the child.”
“One for the parent.”
“Same number.”
He turned his wrist.
The printing was almost gone.
Still visible if you looked closely.
S.M. 4173
Derek’s face changed.
For the first time all afternoon, he looked uncertain.
“What happened?”
Elias laughed once.
There was nothing amused in it.
“You mean after everybody decided I was dangerous?”
Derek looked away.
I felt shame burn through me.
Elias saw it.
His expression softened toward me.
“Wasn’t just you.”
That somehow made it worse.
Marcus asked:
“Did she disappear from here?”
Elias looked around the enormous store.
“Not this building.”
“The old Westfield Market that stood here before they rebuilt.”
My skin prickled.
Same property.
Elias continued.
“Sophie was five.”
“My wife brought her shopping.”
“I was at work.”
“They got separated.”
“Some woman found Sophie near toys.”