Three days later, Ethan disappeared — an empty apartment, a disconnected phone, and a message telling Claire not to look for him. The police investigated, but the missing records made the case difficult.

Claire’s father absorbed the loss. The company collapsed eighteen months later. Her father died believing he had trusted the wrong people. Claire spent years trying to reconstruct what had happened.

Ethan spent those same years building a new life and pretending the old one had never existed.

Lauren didn’t know any of that. Neither did I, until three days before my trip.

I’d known Ethan for almost a decade, and he had never mentioned Claire. He’d told me he worked in commercial construction in Chicago, that it was a small operation that failed in a bad market.

He never said he’d been engaged. He never said money had vanished. He never said anyone had been looking for him.