No bodies helps. Grief fills blanks.

Bennett showed me a photograph of it. I stared until the words blurred. Grief fills blanks. He was right. For seven years, grief had filled my house, my bed, my mornings, my daughter’s birthdays, every empty chair.

It had filled the places where truth should have been.

Chapter 5 — Alive

Two weeks later, the call came. I was folding laundry, because normal chores become survival during impossible waiting. Bennett said, “Claire, sit down.”

I gripped the phone. “No.”

“Claire.”