The Letters We Were Meant to Find

The Photograph

CHAPTER 8

THE PHOTOGRAPH

Amara stared at the photograph for several seconds without speaking. The image was old, its edges yellowed with time, but the faces were clear enough. Her father stood beside Daniel Kwon, both of them younger, smiling beside a black car. Behind them was the same lake she remembered from the photograph in her mother's drawer.

But there was something else.

A small figure stood in the distance.

Amara leaned closer.

“That's impossible.”

Ethan looked over her shoulder. “What?”

She pointed at the figure. “That person.”

He took the photograph from her and studied it carefully. His expression changed.

“Do you recognize him?”

“No,” Ethan said quietly. “But I recognize the car.”

Amara's heart tightened. “Whose was it?”

“My father's.”

Silence settled between them.

Then Amara noticed writing on the back of the photograph. She turned it over carefully.

There were only four words.

LOCKER 17. MIDNIGHT. ALONE.

Ethan looked at her.

“This is a trap.”

“Probably.”

“Then you're not going.”

Amara folded the photograph and slipped it into her coat.

“I have spent twenty years wondering what happened to my father.”

She met his eyes.

“I'm going.”