A truth so ugly, I sometimes struggle to look in the mirror or sit quietly in my own company: it is my fault Olivia has been missing for sixteen years. If I had acted sooner, if I hadn’t frozen in that doorway, if I’d run downstairs and called the police or my parents instead of cowering until they returned, Olivia would have been found. The man in the Venetian mask would have been caught. This is the reason I bend to my mother’s will. I owe my parents the daughter they lost. That stayed lost because of me.
Yikes...
