I broke the lock and pulled Maya into my arms.
Instead of begging me to take her home, my ten-year-old daughter stared past my shoulder at the swimming pool.
The water was dark, green, and strangely still.
“Daddy,” she whispered, trembling. “Please don’t look.”
Then I saw them.
Several black bags were lying beneath the surface.
Three days earlier, Maya had stopped answering my calls.
I was supposed to pick her up that weekend, but every call went straight to voicemail. At first, I tried to convince myself there was a simple explanation. Maybe her mother had taken her phone away. Maybe Maya was upset with me.
But by Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t ignore the knot forming in my stomach.
I drove to my ex-wife Elena’s house.
Julian’s SUV was sitting in the driveway. The curtains were drawn, the front gate was chained shut, and nobody answered when I knocked.
That was when Mrs. Harris, our longtime neighbor, hurried over.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ve heard screaming from that house for weeks.”
My stomach dropped.
She told me Maya had stopped playing outside and that Julian had recently surrounded the backyard with tall privacy panels.
Then she told me what she’d witnessed the night before.
“Julian carried several black trash bags into the backyard,” she whispered. “He threw them into the pool.”
Something inside me went cold.
Mrs. Harris showed me a low section of fencing between our properties. I climbed over.
The backyard looked abandoned. Weeds had swallowed the flower beds, the patio furniture was overturned, and the swimming pool had become a pool of murky green water.
Then I noticed a blue tarp.
It had partially fallen away from something in the far corner of the yard.
A metal dog cage.
I ran toward it.
Inside sat a little girl with her knees pulled tightly against her chest.
“Maya?”
Her head lifted slowly.
Her hair was tangled. Her lips were dry. She looked thinner than she had only a few days earlier.
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