I Found a Baby Wrapped in My Missing Daughter’s Denim Jacket on My Porch – The Chilling Note I Pulled from the Pocket Made My Hands Start Shaking

“Did you know that she was alive? That she left to live her life? That she left to be with someone she loved?”

“Jodi…”

“Did you know, Paul?”

“You knew more than you let on, Paul.”

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Hope stirred. I bounced her against my shoulder.

Paul rubbed his jaw. “She called me once.”

For a second, I couldn’t speak.

“She what?!”

He looked angry now, which meant he was cornered. “A few months after she left. She said she was with Andy. She said she was fine.”

“She called me once.”

“And you let me think she was dead. You told me to mourn my child because she wasn’t coming back.”

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“She made a choice, Jodi. Don’t punish me for her decision.”

Hope let out a thin cry then, and that somehow made everything worse. I swayed with her automatically, rubbing circles over her back.

“You told me for five years that we had no answers.”

“I told her if she came home, she came home alone,” he snapped. “She was sixteen, almost seventeen. She didn’t know what she was doing. She wanted to throw her life away for a college dropout with no future. What was I supposed to do? Encourage it?”

“Don’t punish me for her decision.”

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“No,” I said. “You’d rather be right than have her home, even if it cost us our daughter.”

Amber appeared in the doorway. “Paul…”

I didn’t even look at her. “You don’t get a word in here.”