Chapter 1

The day Lily was supposed to move into her dorm, my phone lit up with two notifications.

The first was Ethan's Instagram post. In the photo, he stood between Vanessa and Mia in the lobby of The Peninsula, champagne flutes raised, captioned: "Three days of celebration for our girl. Proud of you, sweetheart."

The second was an email from Morrison & Sons Funeral Home, asking me to select an urn.

On Orientation Day, six men dragged my daughter into a restroom on the east side of campus. They found her face-down in a flooded urinal. Not a single inch of her left unmarked.

Three days. I identified the body, hunted down every last one of those animals, and watched them get hauled away in handcuffs. I arranged the cremation. I signed the paperwork. I did it all alone.

Ethan was nowhere.

I called him over a thousand times. Not one picked up. Just a single automated text he'd set for when he was busy:

"In a meeting. Don't disturb."

The morning they slid Lily into the cremation chamber, I tried one final time. The phone rang three times before someone declined the call.

I stood there in that sterile white room, clutching my dead daughter's belongings in a plastic bag, and I remembered something she'd said last year. It was her birthday—another one he missed. She'd blown out the candles alone, then turned to me with those old, tired eyes no seventeen-year-old should have.

"Mom, if I die someday and Dad still isn't in home—don't tell him. Don't let him come to my funeral, okay?"

Okay, baby.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, booked a one-way flight, and printed the divorce papers.

We don't need his absence anymore.

……

The funeral home was cold. The woman behind the counter kept glancing at the door behind me as she handed over the urn.

"Just you? Where's her father? It's the girl's last journey—it's cruel if he doesn't show."

I looked at my phone. The lock screen showed my messages. Clean. Empty. No reply in three days. Only subscription alerts from apps I never opened.

I tucked the phone away.

"I don't know where he is."

"Maybe busy."

"Too busy for his own child's—" She caught herself, softened. "I'm sorry, honey. You shouldn't be doing this alone."

I'd seen that look dozens of times in the past seventy-two hours. Pity. From the detective. From the hospital staff. From the school counselor who called me ma'am in that careful, gentle voice people use around the freshly destroyed.

I had no tears left.

I took the urn—warm from the kiln, impossibly light for everything it held—and walked out.

Behind me, their voices carried across the parking lot.

"God, that poor woman. Her daughter was supposed to start college that day—"

"Full scholarship too. Top of the whole state on her practice exams."

"And the mother tracked those boys down herself. Didn't sleep for three days."

"The husband never showed. Not once. Maybe she's widowed?"

……

The house was dark when I got home. Past midnight. No lights on, no dinner left out, no sign anyone lived here who might have worried.

Twenty years of marriage, and I was used to this.

If Ethan wasn't at the firm, he was with Vanessa. With Mia. Driving them somewhere, fixing something, buying something. Present for them in all the ways he'd never been for us.

Our share of his time? There was none.

For eighteen years, Lily and I split one portion of undercooked affection between us, and pretended it was enough.

Now Lily was gone. And a marriage built on perpetual absence meant nothing to me anymore.

I set the urn on her desk and began packing her things. Every object I touched—her hairbrush, her SAT prep books, the stuffed rabbit she'd had since she was four—cut into me like dull glass, slow and ragged.

Her phone buzzed.

I froze. Then picked it up.

A message from Mia.

A photo: an amusement park. The one Lily had begged Ethan to take her to ninety-nine times. He'd promised ninety-nine times. Showed up zero.

The hundredth time, Lily held my hand beneath the Ferris wheel and waited until dark. Across the river, fireworks went up—Ethan throwing Mia a birthday party.

He'd forgotten it was Lily's birthday too.

After that night, Lily never asked again.

The photo was slightly blurred, a candid shot, but clear enough to gut me. Ethan—my husband, who recoiled if a stranger brushed his sleeve—carrying Vanessa on his back in the rain. One hand holding her heels, the other gripping Mia's hand. The three of them laughing, soaked, a portrait of something warm and whole.

Something Lily and I never had.

Beneath it, two voice messages.

Mia's voice, sweet and breathy: "Uncle Ethan, you said if I got into a good school, you'd grant me one wish. So here's my wish—will you be my dad?"

A long pause. Then Ethan's voice, low and fond:

"Alright."

"Then I'm calling you Dad from now on! Dad, you're the best!" Giggles. Silver-bell laughter.

And Ethan, amused, indulgent: "Settle down, I'm still carrying your mother here."

I stared at the screen until it went black.

Then I opened my own phone. Typed nothing. Deleted nothing. Just stared at his empty chat for a long, long time.

The booking confirmation chimed.

Day three. Departure at dawn.