Adam shook his head, a firm, definitive motion. Clara wasn’t impulsive like that. She might have needed space, sure, but she wouldn’t vanish without sending at least a short, clarifying message. She was too considerate, too connected. She wouldn’t turn her phone off completely, not with their weekend plans and her work emails and the thousand threads of a life that constantly demanded a signal. This silence was not her. This absence was all wrong. The certainty of that settled over him, colder and more frightening than the initial confusion. He looked at Leo, his expression bleak. “Something’s happened,” he said, his voice low. “This isn’t her. We need to find her.”
They had already gone through the apartment together, checking what she’d left behind. They found a couple of her T-shirts, a toothbrush by the sink, and a half-used bottle of shampoo. The normalcy of these items was a taunt. Surely she must return soon?
They had also knocked on a few neighboring doors, asking if anyone had seen Clara leave that morning. Each person answered the same way: they hadn’t noticed her at all. No footsteps on the stairs, no door closing, no quick hello in the hallway. It was like she’d never left, or like she had been erased from the building’s memory.
Back inside, Leo leaned against the counter, arms folded, watching Adam’s restless pacing. “Maybe one of her colleagues knows what’s going on,” he suggested. “Someone from work might’ve heard from her.” Adam seized on the idea immediately, gra
Grateful for something concrete to do, someone else to ask, Adam clung to the thread, however thin. He scrolled through Clara’s contact list, his thumb hovering before finally tapping Maya’s name. As one of Clara’s closest friends and a dinner guest at their apartment, she was a natural choice. Maya answered on the third ring, her voice tight, as though bracing for something unpleasant.
When he asked if she’d heard from Clara, Maya paused long enough for Adam’s nerves to prickle. “I’m…not really sure,” she said carefully, her vagueness feeling deliberate, like tiptoeing around a deeper truth. She followed with, “I must be getting back to my kids, Adam,” a dismissal that came too quickly. He pressed for details—had Clara mentioned plans, problems at work, anything unusual? Maya dodged almost every question, offering clipped, unrevealing responses like, “She’s been busy,” or “You’d have to ask her.” She sounded uncomfortable, even anxious, as if she badly wanted the conversation to end.