“Sir, we’ve found your daughter,” said a confident but excited detective on the phone, “She’s alive and healthy. We need you to come down to the station immediately.”

I stared out the window in disbelief, eyeing the beautiful tulip garden next to the wood line that I planted in remembrance of my daughter Tuli, who went missing with her mother exactly 12 months ago.

“Sir?”

The voice on the phone startled me slightly, bringing my mind back from daunting memories.

“Uh…”. I paused to clear my throat and massage the knots that had appeared in the back of my neck

“Are you sure? You’re sure it’s her?”

“Yes Sir, the fingerprints match.”

“And her birthmark, you’ve identified it?”

“A dark tulip-shaped mark behind her left ear. That’s how we identified her. Sir, it’s really her, it’s Tuli.”

“What about her mother, umm- my wife? I asked, still fixated on the Tulip garden that I had tended to nearly every day for the past year.

“There’s currently no sign of your wife, but we’re searching. Do you need us to send you a car? Tuli said she is dying to see you!”

“I- I’m on my way.”

I drove to the police station In disbelief of the day that I never believed would come. I pinched myself, then slapped myself, to ensure this was not a dream. She’d been gone for so long that even the most optimistic of people resigned themselves to acceptance of her death.

“Daddy!” Tuli screamed as I walked through the door.

“This has to be a dream,” I thought to myself as I saw her running toward me. Tuli looked just as she had that last morning; Radiantly bright, clean, even wearing the same purple sundress she wore all months ago.

This cannot be real.

She collapsed into my arms and the sweet scent of her familiar floral hairspray infiltrated my nose, throwing my senses into a confused memory.

People rejoiced, clapping, hugging, and some even crying at the seemingly impossible reunion. I ran my thumb behind her left ear, over the tulip-shaped birthmark that sparked her name

Everyone around faded into a blurred background. How was I the only one to notice the oddities?

How could a young girl be missing for a year, and not have grown or changed? How could she be wearing the same clothes, and be so clean? How could her blonde French braids look the exact same as her last day of school?

The young girl looked me in the eye, her radiant blue eyes meeting mine. She smiled and gave me a wink, in a dark and taunting fashion, that told me she knew how trapped I was.

You see, this girl can’t possibly be my daughter, because I watched the life leave those panicked blue eyes one year ago as I smothered her to death. I buried her next to her mother, wearing her purple dress, near the wood line where I planted that Tulip garden.