I walked in, wrapped my heavy wool coat around her, and lifted her off the crate. She collapsed against me, weeping into my shirt. “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m sorry I messed up.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I whispered into her hair, which smelled of the peppermint shampoo she loved. “You didn’t do a damn thing.”

I drove her to my apartment, a quiet sanctuary of brick and leather that felt a universe away from the pristine, suffocating museum my parents called home. I made her hot chocolate with extra marshmallows. I tucked her onto my couch under three blankets. I watched until her breathing evened out into the heavy rhythm of exhaustion.

Only then, in the silence of my living room, lit only by the blinking cursor of my laptop, did I allow myself to feel.

My parents, Margaret and Robert, hadn’t called. Not once. It had been two hours. They hadn’t checked if she was safe. They hadn’t called the police. They had simply erased her because she didn’t fit the aesthetic of their holiday.

I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop. For years, I had been the dutiful son. The successful accountant who managed their portfolio, who fixed their tax mistakes, who co-signed their refinancing loans when Dad’s “consulting firm” had a bad quarter. I knew where every skeleton was buried because I was the one who dug the graves.