The officers exchanged a subtle, professional glance. Adam felt heat climb up his neck, a flush of shame mixed with raw desperation. Why hadn’t he asked more questions, like whether she was truly happy with him? Why hadn’t he paid more attention before everything went silent? He suddenly felt like he was losing her all over again, right there in his own living room. They promised to look into her recent activity and said they’d contact her workplace. Adam nodded mechanically, holding onto the only concrete reassurance they offered: “We’ll find out what’s going on.” He clung to the words as though they alone could keep him from completely unraveling.
The officers asked for recent photos of Clara—ideally, very recent ones. Adam opened his phone’s gallery, scrolling quickly. But every picture that included Clara was old, some taken months ago. He insisted, his fingers trembling, that he had newer ones, but the screen offered nothing except empty digital spaces where recent memories should have lived. They checked Clara’s social media presence together. Her latest posts were only generic snapshots of sunsets or coffee—no images of the two of them, no personal updates, nothing that tied her to Adam or their shared life. The officers’ expressions shifted subtly.
ly, registering these widening gaps without yet giving them a name.
One officer asked when he had last seen Clara in person. Adam opened his mouth to answer with certainty, but his conviction faltered mid-breath. He remembered mornings together and fragmented conversations on the couch, but none of it aligned cleanly with a specific timeline. Dates blurred, moments overlapped, leaving him grasping at insubstantial fragments of time.
Panic slid through him like ice. His memories felt vivid and real, yet the tangible evidence—the missing photos, the impersonal posts, the lack of a clear last moment—contradicted him at every turn. Had he misremembered their last weekend together? Had she seemed distant, and he’d simply refused to see it? Had he missed silent signs of something far deeper? Every new question hollowed him further, turning his own home into a museum of his neglect.
Leo, who had arrived, stood beside him, his worry deepening with each contradiction. He watched Adam struggle privately to make sense of details that no longer logically fit. In a low voice, Leo offered up what little he knew about the timeline of Adam and Clara’s relationship, but it felt like placing small, insufficient stones into a widening chasm.