It was after dinner when she came into my room. I was folding laundry, half-watching some forgettable show. Lily stood in the doorway, holding a small pink phone.
“I found it in one of the old closet boxes,” she said. “The charger was in there too. I thought it wouldn’t work, but it charged.” Lily’s eyes suddenly filled. “I was looking through all these old selfies and games from when I was little, and then I found something else.”
I set the laundry aside. “What is it, sweetheart?”
She looked down at the phone. “Mom, Dad sent me a video the night before they left and asked me not to show you.”
I stopped folding laundry and stared at her. “What video?”
“Dad sent me a video the night before they left and asked me not to show you.”
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“I was six, Mom. I didn’t understand it. He texted me not to show it to you until 10 years had passed. I forgot the phone was even there after they vanished.” Lily started crying softly. “He said you might hate him when you saw it.”
She handed me the phone. I hit play and already knew I wasn’t going to come out of it the same.
Ryan’s face filled the screen in a video filmed in the garage.
“Anna,” he said softly. “If you’re seeing this, then enough time has passed that maybe you’ve started to move on. I’m sorry. Jack and Caleb deserve something I had no right to keep from them any longer, and by the time you watch this, I will already have taken them to their biological mother.”
A broken little gasp slipped out of me. Lily’s hand landed on my arm, but I barely felt it.
“He said you might hate him when you saw it.”
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