Chapter 3
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Her thoughts drifted to her childhood—Grandmother Betty pinching pennies to pay for her education, the memories vivid before her eyes.
Betty would mend her school uniform late into the night, fingers dotted with needle pricks, never once complaining.
Whenever she brought home good grades, Betty's smile outshone everyone else's.
Meanwhile, in a dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of town, elderly Betty lit the fourth candle, praying for her missing granddaughter.
The neighbors called her deranged—a lonely old woman with no one to keep her company, no one who cared.
Once, she and her granddaughter had been each other's world. But since her granddaughter vanished four years ago, Betty's grip on reality had slipped, or so the neighbors whispered.
Betty kept vigil at the window daily, bone-deep certain that one day her granddaughter would return.
The cottage walls were plastered with photos of the girl, many now faded and curling at the edges.
When her granddaughter vanished four years ago, Betty's hair turned snow-white overnight, her eyes becoming hollow pools of grief.
Yet her granddaughter's name wasn't Linda—it was Jessica.
The town whispered that Betty had lost her mind, but still she lit a lamp by the door each night.
"My Jessica will come back," Betty would insist, a fierce light burning in her eyes.
