I stepped out of the bookstore, heart pounding, the polaroid still in my hand. Her smile was unmistakable. It wasn’t a lookalike. It was Lauren. Same dimple. Same scar above her eyebrow.
I showed the photo to the shopkeeper. Her face went pale.
“She was here yesterday,” she said. “Said she was waiting for someone. She paid cash. Then she disappeared.”
I walked the neighborhood for hours, asking café owners, shopkeepers, even a florist. Three people remembered her. All said the same thing: she looked… happy. But always alone.
At sunset, I returned to my hotel.
On my bed was another postcard. No stamp. No address. Just my name—and four words:
“You’re getting too close.”
I ran to the window. Down on the street, through the crowd, I saw a woman in a blue scarf—the same one Lauren wore the day she left for Paris.
She looked back once. Then vanished into the metro station.
The lesson?
Some mysteries aren’t about closure—they’re about control. And when the past resurfaces in full color, you have two choices: run from it… or follow it into the unknown.
