Soon.
The word felt both close and impossibly far away.
As I gathered my things, Detective Bell appeared in the doorway.
“Before you go,” she said, “there’s one more item from the lockbox.”
She held out a clear evidence sleeve.
Inside was a photograph.
I recognized it immediately.
It had been taken years earlier, before my marriage to Ryan, before Elise was born. I stood beside a younger Colonel Hayes at a military training facility, wearing a uniform I had not worn in public for a long time.
On the back, in Ryan’s handwriting, were six words:
**She was never just a desk clerk.**
My pulse slowed.
Bell watched my face.
“Ryan says he found the photograph in an old box and didn’t know what it meant.”
I turned it over again.
Beneath his handwriting, in darker ink, someone else had added a sentence.
**Ask her what happened in Redwater.**
I had never told Ryan about Redwater.
I had never told
