The DNA results came back eleven days later, confirming what Cruz had already known in his heart the moment he'd recognized his mother's locket: the remains belonged to Elena Alvarado, missing for fifteen years, finally found.
The funeral, held on a gray October afternoon in the small Ashford Hollow cemetery that already held Cruz's mother and father, drew a crowd far larger than Wren had expected — not just the club's extended family, but longtime townspeople who remembered Elena as a bright, restless teenager, people who'd quietly wondered for fifteen years what had actually happened to the Alvarado girl who'd simply, mysteriously vanished.
"I keep thinking," Cruz said that evening, sitting on their porch long after the reception at the compound had wound down, Ana finally asleep, "abo
