I Found My Missing Daughter’s Earrings at a Flea Market — The Next Morning, an Officer Came to My Door and Said One Sentence About My Husband That Nearly Knocked Me to the Floor

“She could still be alive.”

“Laura…”

“She could be somewhere waiting for us.”

“You have to let her go.”

I hated those words.

Let her go.

How could a mother let go of her child when she didn’t even know what had happened?

But Rick became increasingly firm.

“Some doors have to stay closed.”

At first, I thought he was grieving differently.

Maybe he couldn’t handle the uncertainty.

Maybe accepting the worst was his way of surviving.

I tried to understand him.

But something inside me never accepted that Hannah was dead.

I couldn’t explain it.

Call it instinct.

Call it denial.

Call it a mother’s intuition.

Whatever it was, it never disappeared.

I still believed she was somewhere.

Alive.

And waiting.

Ten years passed.

Hannah would have been twenty-one.

I sometimes imagined what she might look like.

Would she still love music?

Would she still play piano?

Would she remember us?

Would she hate us for not finding her?

Those thoughts haunted me.