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FARNHAM — Françoise Algier parks her blue Dodge Caravan next to the park and looks out her window. Pinched between her dashboard and windshield is a photo of her daughter Mélina. A smaller one hangs from her sun visor.

Stepping out from her car, she motions to the high school across the street.

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“This is where I left her,” Algier, 61, says as she looks around. “They had made a fire pit in the park. There were dog sleds behind the school.”

Thirteen years later, she says, moments from that day still come to her in flashes.

There was the brunch together in the morning and the pit stop at the dollar store for new gloves.

Then the last words — “yes mom, thanks” — after reminding Mélina to meet at a nearby fast-food restaurant at 5 p.m. And, finally, the image of her daughter running across the street, her younger sister’s winter boots on her feet.

“Having known I would never have brought her here,” Algier says, unprompted. “But you can’t know.”