A car I didn't recognize pulled up outside our house one afternoon. A woman in her forties, with kind eyes and a weary smile, got out. She introduced herself as Celia, Luna's younger cousin. She'd read about the case and wanted to meet me.
We sat at our kitchen table, my mom serving us glasses of cold calamansi juice. Celia had been a child when Luna disappeared. "She used to draw with me," Celia said, her voice soft with memory. "She was so patient. She'd tell me stories about the kapre not to scare me, but to make the woods seem exciting, full of adventure instead of fear."
She brought out a small, faded photograph from her purse. It was Luna, alive and vibrant, maybe 14 years old, her arm around a much younger Celia, both of them grinning in front of the very same plaza fountain. Seeing her like that, so solid, so real, was a different kind of heartbreak. It wasn't the loss of a ghost; it was the loss of a person. A girl who had a family, a cousin who loved her, a life that was stolen. My quest had always been about the mystery, the promise. Celia reminded me that it was also about a stolen life, and the ripples of grief that had spread through a family for decades.