The office was quiet, but it wasn't peace that lingered in the silence. It was a kind of stillness that settled in after the storm but before the damage could be surveyed. Dylan Russell sat behind his desk, elbows on the cool surface, his fingers steepled tightly in front of his mouth. His eyes, hard and glassy like cracked sky, were fixed on the blinking call log on his phone screen. The call had lasted only two minutes and thirty-one seconds. Just long enough to hear three words that gutted him: "She is alive."
Alive.
The word rang in his skull like an accusation, not a revelation. All these years—the hollow birthdays, the empty seats at school functions, the gaping wound of silence when he asked about her—and now this. Alive. Not dead. Not lost. Just... gone. Chosen absence. A deliberate ghost.
