Single Mother

"She’s nowhere," Mel cries frantically down the line. "She’s completely disappeared." Mel can hardly breathe her chest is so tight. She lets out the sob she’s been holding in. "And it’s all my fault...." I nearly threw the letter about the inheritance away with the recycling. Late for work, worrying about how I would afford new school shoes for Kate, I just assumed it was a mistake. But perhaps moving to a new home in a quiet seaside town would be the fresh start we both need. Away from the school bullies making Kate’s life a misery, and out of the clutches of my dangerous ex. But in this new place where nobody knows our names, why do I hear locals whispering behind my back and have the uneasy feeling that my daughter is hiding something from me? Am I reading too much into the threatening messages left around our new home? Are the glimpses of my ex’s battered red truck real, or imagined? I will do anything to protect my daughter. She’s all I’ve ever wanted and all I really have, but th