Josie

The old file was two states away and six years old. A stepdaughter named Josie Pruitt, nine at the time, similar age gap, similar language, a caseworker's notes describing a "feeding-based punishment system" that was never substantiated because the family relocated abruptly before the second interview could happen, and the mother, under what the file delicately called "significant pressure," recanted her initial complaint entirely.

The woman in that file had a different last name and a slightly different hair color in the DMV photo Sutton pulled up. It was Tara.

Dad sat very still for a long time after that, and when he finally spoke, his voice had none of its usual certainty left in it. "I married someone I never actually met," he said, mostly to himself.

Once she was told she was under formal investigation with a corroborating prior case attached, Tara stopped performing warmth entirely. She didn't cry, didn't deny it to our faces, didn't do anything we could have predicted. She simply asked, very calmly, to go upstairs and pack an overnight bag for Daisy, in case the visit ran long.

Nobody stopped her, because none of us yet understood what an overnight bag really meant.

That evening, Dad went up to check on Daisy's bedtime and found the room empty, the closet door open, Daisy's favorite blanket gone from the crib, and the folder where we kept the kids' passports and birth certificates sitting open and half-emptied on the dresser.

Tara and Daisy were gone.