At first, I brushed it off. Kids get sweaty, I told myself. Maybe she just liked feeling fresh. But as weeks passed, the routine felt less like a preference and more like something rehearsed.
One evening, I finally asked her gently, “Why do you always bathe right away?”
Lily flashed a quick, almost too-perfect smile. “I just like to be clean,” she said.
Her answer should have comforted me. Instead, it left a quiet unease sitting in my chest. Lily was usually carefree and a little messy. That response didn’t sound like her—it sounded practiced.
About a week later, that uneasy feeling turned into something much worse.
The bathtub had started draining slowly, so I decided to clean it out. I pulled on gloves, removed the metal cover, and used a drain tool to fish out whatever was clogging it.
It snagged on something soft.
I expected a clump of hair. But when I pulled it up, I froze.
Mixed in with the tangled strands was something else—thin fibers, like fabric. As I carefully rinsed it under running water, the grime washed away, revealing a familiar pattern: pale blue plaid.
My heart dropped.
It was the same pattern as Lily’s school uniform skirt.
My hands began to shake. Clothes don’t just end up torn apart in a drain—not like this. This looked like something had been scrubbed, pulled, even damaged intentionally.
Then I saw it.
Faint but unmistakable—a brownish stain, diluted by water but still visible.
It didn’t look like dirt.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment