At first, everyone assumed she had stepped out for air — nerves, maybe. But minutes became hours, and the panic started to build. David called the police by three o’clock. I remember him pacing the porch, clutching his head, repeating, “She wouldn’t just leave.”

But she had. Or so it seemed.

There were no signs of struggle, no credit card activity, no phone calls. The police asked questions, but after a few months, they had nothing. “Sometimes people walk away,” one officer told my father, who’d flown in from another state to help.