Chapter 1 - The Crescent Moon
The sponge slipped from Mariana’s gloved hand and disappeared beneath the dark bathwater.
For several seconds, she could hear nothing except water dripping from the faucet.
The mark on Lucy’s shoulder was small, no larger than a thumbnail.
A crescent moon.
Mariana had seen it before.
Not once.
Hundreds of times.
Her fingers moved automatically toward the chain hidden beneath her olive-green blouse. She pulled out an old silver locket scratched from twenty years of being opened, closed, and pressed against her chest whenever memories became too painful.
Lucy stared at it.
Her breathing changed.
Mariana opened the locket.
Inside was a faded photograph of two girls.
One was sixteen-year-old Mariana.
The other was her mother, Elena, smiling beside a lake.
On Elena’s exposed shoulder was the same crescent-shaped birthmark.
Mariana’s knees weakened.
“No…”
Lucy’s eyes fixed on the photograph.
Her hands began trembling beneath the water.
“Where did you get that?”
Mariana could barely speak.
“It belonged to my mother.”
Lucy grabbed her wrist.
Hard.
“Her name.”
“Elena Ruiz.”
Lucy recoiled as if struck.
A broken sound escaped her throat.
Then footsteps sounded behind them.
Alejandro stood in the bathroom doorway.
He had apparently been there long enough to hear everything.
Mariana looked at her husband.
“You knew.”
He didn’t answer.
The silence told her more than words.
“You knew who she was before you brought her here.”
Alejandro’s jaw tightened.
“Mariana, listen to me.”
Lucy suddenly shrank toward the far side of the tub.
Her fear was immediate.
Instinctive.
She stared at Alejandro as though looking at someone from a nightmare.
“He’s not the man who found me.”
Mariana turned slowly.
“What?”
Lucy pointed at Alejandro with a shaking hand.
“He was there before.”
Alejandro’s expression changed.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
Mariana stepped between them.
“Before what?”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears.
“The night I disappeared.”
Alejandro reached backward and calmly closed the bathroom door.
The click of the lock sounded impossibly loud.
Mariana stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
Alejandro looked directly at Lucy.
Then at the locket.
“I was hoping she would remember differently.”
Mariana’s blood ran cold.
“Remember what?”
Lucy whispered the answer.
“The construction site.”
Alejandro went completely still.
Lucy continued.
“He left me there.”
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And Mariana realized the stranger in her bathtub might not simply be her missing mother.
She might also be the only living witness to something her husband had spent twenty years hiding.
