She left no note and never called.
The police never found a body, leaving me with more questions than answers.
My daughter just disappeared without a trace.
For months, I didn’t sleep more than two hours at a time.
I also kept her room exactly the way it was, hoping that maybe she’d walk back in and complain that I had moved something. Her favorite hoodie still hung on the chair. Her perfume — that lemony scent — lingered in the closet long after it should have faded.
I lived in limbo, caught between grief and denial.
That morning, I was on my way home from visiting my sister, Margaret.
I had a long layover in a city I didn’t know, so I wandered into a small coffee shop near the train station. The place was busy, bursting with the kind of warmth that should have felt comforting but only made me feel more hollow inside.
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