I left my daughter with my parents during a business trip. Two days later, she disappeared at the mall. My parents said, “we only looked away for a moment.” Ten years later, while cleaning out my grandmother’s house, I found a strange vent in the wall. I leaned in and heard a little girl humming from inside.

That was the last time I heard her do it.

Two days later, my parents called me from the mall.

My mother was crying so hard I could barely understand her. My father kept cutting in, his voice tight and loud, insisting they’d only looked away for a moment. Just a moment. She’d been right there, holding his hand, asking for a pretzel. He’d turned to pay. He’d turned back.

Gone.

The mall security footage showed nothing useful. No screaming, no struggle. Just my daughter stepping out of frame between two clothing racks and never stepping back in. The police used words like wandered and lured, and eventually, unlikely to be found.

They searched for weeks. Then months. Then—quietly—years.

My parents aged ten years in ten months. Their guilt hung in every room like dampness. I tried to be kind. I tried to believe them when they said they’d only looked away for a moment.

But moments don’t swallow children whole.

My grandmother’s house sat empty for almost a year after she died. No one wanted to deal with it. Not my parents, not my uncles. When they finally asked me to help clean it out, I said yes without thinking.

It felt easier to sort through someone else’s memories than my own.