Half her clothes were missing, along with a small duffel bag.
The Years of Searching
The police filed a report.
Eventually, one detective told me gently:
“Ma’am, sometimes young adults leave on purpose.”
But I never stopped looking.
I checked hospitals, shelters, bus stations, and churches.
I taped flyers to windows and lampposts.
I followed tips that led nowhere and called numbers scribbled on scraps of paper.
Eventually, the police labeled her a runaway.
Still, I kept searching.
Because mothers don’t stop.
The Red Sweater
One Thursday afternoon began like any other.
After work, I stopped by the grocery store to buy a few essentials. Gray clouds hung low over the parking lot as I walked out carrying two bags.
Then I saw him.
A homeless man sat near the alley by the pharmacy wall. His beard was thick, and his coat was worn thin. A paper cup sat beside his boots.
Normally I would have walked past.
But something caught my eye.
The last thing Lily wore the day she disappeared was a bright red sweater I had knitted for her eighteenth birthday. Thick cables. Wooden buttons. Soft wool she loved wrapping herself in on cold mornings.
Inside the cuff, I had stitched two small letters in pale thread:
“Li.”
My nickname for her since childhood.
