# Chapter 12: The Butterfly in the Sunlight
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 12 of "Forget You Saw Her free digital audiobook". This is one of those chapters that does not simply move the plot forward; it reaches into your chest and squeezes. So take a breath, settle in, and let us follow Sabina through a moment of heartbreak, memory, and a whisper of something that may be beyond explanation.
Sabina makes it only one block away from the Beaumonts’ house before she has to pull over. She parks beside a vacant lot, close enough to Desert Greens smoothie shop that she could almost convince herself to keep driving, but her hands are shaking too badly. If she does not take a few minutes to pull herself together, she knows she will crash. Something terrible happened inside that house. She is certain of it now, and that certainty tastes like broken glass sliding down her throat.
Andrea was put in a laundry room. Her daughter, her precious baby girl, was given a cramped, dirty bedroom next to a washing machine as if she were an inconvenience instead of a child. Sabina cannot stop her mind from spiraling. If that was the room they showed her, what else did they hide? She would not leave a pet alone with Bunny and Dennis Beaumont, let alone a vulnerable teenager. Why are the police not scrutinizing them more closely? Where is CPS? Where is a search warrant? The Beaumonts boxed up all of Andrea’s clothes. They packed her away as if they fully expected she would never return. For Sabina, that is a screaming red flag.
She calls Joel. Before he can even say hello, everything she has just seen and heard pours out of her. “They said she had no friends,” she cries. She tells him they boxed up Andrea’s belongings. “They did something to her, Joel. I know they did.” The moment those words leave her mouth, she wants to pull them back. She wants to reel in the fragile hope she has been clinging to like a distant kite. But ever since she looked into Bunny Beaumont’s sharp, marble-cold pupils, she has felt that thread beginning to snap.
Joel’s voice comes through the phone, sad and low and familiar as her own heartbeat. It makes her miss him so much she almost begs him to drop everything and come to Utah. He would, too. She knows he would not hesitate for even a second. But Sabina also knows that even the comfort of his arms could not touch the frantic, gnawing despair in her belly. “This is my fault,” she sobs. “Whatever happened to her is my fault. I loved her, Joel. I didn’t want to give her away to anybody. I thought I was doing the right thing. I had no idea. I ...” She puts the phone on speaker, lays her head across her hands on the steering wheel, and keens like a wounded animal.
Joel tells her it is not her fault. His voice turns firmer and sharper than she has ever heard it. She chokes back that she does not know how to believe him. If she had stood up to her parents, if she had waited a little longer before agreeing to the adoption, everything would have been different. Andrea would be theirs. She would be here right now. But Joel reminds her that she could not have known any of this would happen. She was only sixteen, even younger than Andrea is now. She was a child herself. And even then, she did what she did because she loved her daughter. That is all anyone can do without a crystal ball.
Sabina does not answer. She squeezes her eyes shut and grabs the balled-up sweatshirt on the passenger seat, pressing it to her face to muffle the wail that refuses to stay trapped in her throat. Joel tells her he is going to do a deep dive on the Beaumonts while his mother takes a nap. He will add anything he finds to the dossier. Then he asks if she is headed to the smoothie shop they told her about.
Sabina wipes her eyes and nose on the sweatshirt. She sits up straight and blinks into the sunlight streaming through the windshield. The pockets of sun create a tiny spotlight on the passenger seat, landing on something shiny. In the middle of that halo of light is the little trinket she saw beneath the entryway table in the Beaumonts’ house. She had grabbed it without pausing to think through the ramifications of stealing it. She barely realized what she was doing when it caught her eye. She has not even looked at it until now.
Joel says her name, and she realizes she has gone silent. “I’m here,” she whispers. She is looking at a tiny monarch butterfly perched in the middle of the passenger seat, wings aloft, as if it had just landed. The wings are nearly translucent, red and orange with black stripes and outlines that perfectly mimic a real monarch. It is made of some kind of plastic. Then she sees the delicate gold chain and hook attached between the wings. An earring. Did it belong to Bunny? Or could it be—
That is when the quilt-wrapped feeling comes back. Warmer and tighter than ever around her heart. Along with the words, clear as a bell in the recesses of her mind: *It’s mine.* The thought is abrupt and insistent, whispered in the first person, and it confuses her for a fraction of a second. Because she knows without a doubt that the earring is not hers. Not mine, she corrects herself. *Hers.* Andrea’s.
She reaches for the little monarch as carefully as she would a real butterfly that might startle and take flight. “I need to go, baby,” she tells Joel. “I’ll call you back soon, okay? I love you.” She barely listens as he repeats that he loves her too, then ends the call. A few minutes earlier, the desperate sadness and rage in her chest felt so big she could not bear it for another second. Now, though, she feels held. Mercifully cocooned inside that invisible quilt. A shuddering breath escapes her, her body shaking involuntarily, the way it does when she and Joel have a rare fight and then reconcile, pulling each other into a tight embrace.
She closes her palm around the sun-warmed plastic wings of the butterfly, shuts her eyes, and lets the weight of her body sag against the driver’s seat. “Andrea?” she says, her voice breaking on the last syllable. “Is that you, baby?” Sabina has never given much thought to the idea of ghosts. The concept has always frightened her. But right now, she needs to believe more than she has ever needed anything. Her gut insists that Andrea is gone, but it also tells her that Andrea is still here, too. Tears slip down her face from behind her closed eyes. There is no answer to the question she just asked, nothing an observer could have pinpointed. And maybe it is just her broken heart or her grief-addled brain, but that quilt-tucked feeling snugs even closer.
She promises herself that no matter what happens in the coming days, she will not question what she is feeling right now. Because she feels her. She does. Not daring to move a muscle for fear the moment will evaporate, she keeps her eyes shut. “I love you,” she tells Andrea, her voice thick through her tears. “I wanted everything for you. I wanted you. And I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. I know my apology isn’t enough ... it’s not even close to enough. But I’m here now, and I’m going to fight for you. You’re my daughter. You’ve always been my daughter.”
## Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating
This chapter is devastating in the most intimate way. It takes Sabina’s guilt, grief, and fierce maternal love and compresses them into a single car ride, a single phone call, and a single butterfly earring. The emotional realism is stunning, but what truly elevates the chapter is the quiet supernatural thread. Is Andrea reaching out? Is Sabina’s mind creating a comfort she desperately needs? The ambiguity makes it even more powerful. I felt the shift from suffocating despair to that strange, warm cocoon right alongside Sabina, and the final lines broke my heart while giving me a sliver of hope.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
## Next Chapter Prediction
Sabina will head to Desert Greens smoothie shop, and that visit will likely open a new crack in the case. The butterfly earring feels too important to be random—it may connect Andrea to someone, somewhere, or something the Beaumonts tried to erase. Joel will begin his deep dive and probably uncover a troubling detail about Bunny and Dennis. Meanwhile, Sabina’s belief that Andrea is still with her will only grow, pushing her toward a confrontation she may not be ready for. I predict the next chapter brings a new witness, a dangerous clue, or a moment where Sabina realizes she is no longer just searching for answers—she is being guided toward them.
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