Chapter 8 - To the Woman After MeThe letter was six pages long.
We learned that within twenty-four hours.
She had dated Ryan eight years earlier, after Madison and before me.
Lauren was twenty-six when she vanished.
The missing-person case had never received much attention because evidence suggested she left voluntarily.
Her car was found at an airport.
Her bank account showed a withdrawal.
A message was sent to her sister saying she needed “a fresh start.”
Ryan told police they had ended their relationship weeks earlier.
There was no evidence of foul play.
Until Madison told Detective Brooks about the phone call.
My father hated coincidences.
Detective Brooks hated them more.
But he warned us repeatedly.
“A reopened missing-person investigation does not mean Ryan harmed her.”
I understood.
Yet something inside me wouldn’t settle.
Ryan had always spoken about ex-girlfriends with contempt.
Madison was “crazy.”
Another woman was “obsessed.”
Lauren?
I barely remembered him mentioning her.
One night, early in our relationship, I found an old photograph inside a drawer.
Ryan with a brunette woman at a lake.
When I asked who she was, he snatched the photograph away.
“Ancient history.”
Then he burned it in the kitchen sink.
I had thought it was romantic.
Proof he was committed to me.
Now the memory made my skin crawl.
Investigators searched Ryan’s financial history from the year Lauren disappeared.
A payment immediately attracted attention.
Two days after her last confirmed sighting, Ryan paid cash to a private transportation company.
Destination?
The airport where Lauren’s car was later found.
That didn’t prove murder.
It did prove Ryan had lied when he said he had no contact with her.
Then detectives discovered that the text message sent to Lauren’s sister came from a prepaid phone.
That phone was purchased at a convenience store eleven blocks from Ryan’s former apartment.
Still circumstantial.
Still not enough.
But enough to reopen the case.
The media exploded.
My name was everywhere.
Pregnant Wife’s Abuse Case Connected to Missing Woman.
Developer Investigated in Eight-Year Mystery.
Army Colonel Stands by Daughter as Husband Faces Growing Allegations.
I stopped reading after the third headline.
Dad turned off the television.
“You don’t owe strangers your pain.”
But strangers had opinions anyway.
Some believed me.
Some said I was destroying Ryan for money.
Some claimed Dad was using military influence.
Some questioned why I had stayed.
That one hurt most.
Why didn’t she leave?
As if leaving were a door I had forgotten to open.
They didn’t understand that Ryan had dismantled every exit.
My money.
My confidence.
My friendships.
My access to transportation.
My belief that anyone would believe me.
He didn’t lock me in a basement.
He convinced me the world outside the house was more dangerous than he was.
A week later, I had my first therapy appointment.
I almost canceled.
Dad didn’t pressure me.
He simply said, “I’ll drive if you go.”
So I went.
Dr. Melissa Grant was in her fifties and had a shelf full of tiny plants.
The first question she asked was not about Ryan.
“What would you like me to call you?”
“Emily.”
The second question surprised me more.
“What did you enjoy before your marriage?”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“What made you feel like yourself?”
Nobody had asked me that in years.
“I painted.”
“What did you paint?”
“People.”
“Do you still?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Ryan hated my portraits.
He called them creepy.
Then amateur.
Then embarrassing.
Eventually I stopped.
“I don’t know.”
Dr. Grant waited.
“Yes, you do.”
I smiled faintly.
“He didn’t like it.”
“And what did you like?”
The question felt revolutionary.
“I loved it.”
That afternoon, Dad drove me to an art store.
“You don’t have to buy anything,” he said.
I bought everything.
Canvas.
Brushes.
Paint.
Charcoal.
A ridiculous wooden easel I absolutely did not need.
Dad loaded it into his truck.
“What are you going to paint?”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time, not knowing felt exciting instead of dangerous.
But that night brought the darkest development yet.
Detective Brooks called.
Police had searched a storage unit leased under one of Ryan’s shell companies.
Inside were old business documents.
Furniture.
Tools.
And a plastic storage bin marked with the name L.P.
Lauren Pike.
I stopped breathing.
“What was inside?”
Brooks paused.
“Clothing.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“Anything else?”
“A purse.”
I gripped the phone.
“And?”
“Several photographs.”
Brooks’s voice became careful.
“Emily, one photograph appears to show Lauren asleep in Ryan’s apartment.”
I swallowed.
“Okay.”
“There are bruises on her arm.”
Dad cursed under his breath.
Brooks continued.
“We’re processing everything.”
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
I hated how relieved and disappointed I felt simultaneously.
No body meant hope.
No answer meant fear.
Two days later, Lauren’s older sister, Rebecca, agreed to meet me.
We sat in the back room of a quiet café.
She looked exhausted in the way grief sometimes becomes permanent.
“I’ve spent eight years wondering whether she’s alive,” Rebecca said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
She stirred coffee she never drank.
“I saw your interview.”
“I haven’t done an interview.”
“The courthouse footage.”
“Oh.”
She looked at my bruised arm.
“I knew.”
“What?”
“That he hurt you.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
“Because Lauren looked exactly like that once.”
Rebecca opened her phone.
A photograph of Lauren appeared.
Smiling.
Dark hair.
Bright eyes.
She looked alive in the painful way old photographs do.
“My sister was stubborn,” Rebecca said. “Funny. Impossible. She could walk into a room of strangers and leave with five new friends.”
“Then she met Ryan?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Within a year, she barely called.”
Same story.
Different woman.
Rebecca reached into her purse.
“I have something detectives don’t know about yet.”
She placed a small silver key on the table.
“What is it?”
“Lauren mailed this to me three days before she vanished.”
My father leaned closer.
“What does it open?”
“I didn’t know.”
Rebecca turned the key over.
A number was engraved on it.
“But after seeing the news, I remembered something.”
She looked at me.
“Lauren used to rent a safety-deposit box.”
Detective Brooks obtained a warrant.
The bank confirmed the box still existed.
Lauren had prepaid the rental for ten years.
Inside was a flash drive.
A handwritten journal.
And an envelope addressed:
TO THE WOMAN AFTER ME.
I stared at the photograph Brooks sent.
My hands began shaking.
Because eight years before Lauren vanished, she had somehow understood there would be another woman.
May you like
Maybe many.
And she had left us a warning.
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