Present Day

Ava had recovered from my reaction to her gift with the help of my brothers. They loved her and they knew me, so they could smooth the edges and explain to her that it was hard for me, seeing how beautiful the painting was. And they reiterated how much I loved her. I was infinitely grateful for their help.

We ate a beautiful dinner in every way except the glaring absence of Charlotte, an extra chair left in the basement that would have been for her. I couldn’t stop thinking about it while I ate turkey, the flavors in my mouth rich and savory. Once we switched to fruitcake, I was beginning to be thankful that I felt the pain.

At least it meant I cared for someone other than myself. It also meant that I had gotten over my grief enough to find someone new intriguing. Maybe that was all I could hope for these days, but it seemed monumental nonetheless.

When we finally retired to sleep, Ava had mostly warmed back up to me, smiling at me from the bed when I kissed her forehead goodnight. She was sad to see the rest of the family shipping out tomorrow, but we’d all known that it would be a short visit.

I was glad they’d come even though it was brief.

That night, I slept in the living room to avoid waking Ava when I drove Win and Kaycee to the airport. Their flight left at such an ungodly hour it seemed unfair to disturb anyone, especially the children. Grace, Kyle, and Adelaide had a flight later in the afternoon, so they could look after the house while I ferried Kaycee and Win.

But when I got back, Ava’s door was still closed.

“She not up yet?” I asked Kyle, who was bouncing a fussy Grace on his knee. Adelaide was using the shower in the main bathroom.

Kyle shook his head and shrugged. “Big day must have been tiring for her.”

Despite myself, I went to Ava’s door and knocked. I wanted to hug her, make her a breakfast to mend the sore feelings from yesterday.

No response. I knocked again, calling out her name.

Again I was met with silence.

When I turned the handle and peeked into the room, I expected to see my daughter sound asleep, deeply unaware of the world around her. She sometimes slept like that, unable to be roused.

Instead, Ava’s bed was empty, her bedside lamp still lit from some late-night or early-morning activities. On the side table, there was an open book lying askew.

I stepped inside, my chest reverberating with the harried beating of my heart. It wasn’t a book. It was my journal, open to the pages when I had been most desperate, most suicidal and grief-stricken.

Panic flooded me. How did she get that? What had she seen?

“Ava?” I called out.

Maybe she was hiding in the closet as a joke. Or perhaps she’d just woken up early enough to go somewhere else in the house without anyone noticing. But Kyle and Adelaide’s room was devoid of people, the living room was as it had been moments ago, and the basement was empty.

Ava wasn’t here.

I resisted the urge to scream, to pull at my beard and fall to the ground, angst-ridden and helpless as when I first heard the news of Sarah’s death.

She had to be somewhere nearby.

Charlotte’s?

Ava had been so sad Charlotte didn’t come over to celebrate Christmas. She’d probably just wanted to say hello and tell her about my reaction to the painting they made me. Share some stories, maybe a cup of tea, and watch Charlotte work on some other painting.

That was it.

That was where she was.

I shrugged on a jacket and leaped down the front steps, no longer preoccupied by the potential for being seen. This was more important than my stupid image. Than anything the paparazzi could do, if they cared.

Of course, no one was watching. My story had blown over as quickly as it came out, and I saw now that my paranoia had hurt Charlotte.

Too late to care about that problem. This new one was far, far worse.

I was at her front door in half the time it normally took, my strides leaving jagged footprints in the snow as I rushed. Charlotte’s doorbell resonated through the house as I marvelled at the difference, already, in our relationship. I didn’t feel comfortable letting myself in.

Didn’t deserve it.

So I found myself tapping my fingers against my leg, waiting for her to answer the door. Desperate to see Ava’s face peer out from the easel, mildly curious about why her dad was so agitated.

Instead, Charlotte was wrapped in a bathrobe when she opened the door. Her eyes were puffy from sleep, or perhaps tears. And she looked surprised to see me.

Shit.

“Ava’s not here is she?” I asked, and she frowned and shook her head, sudden clarity waking her out of the daze she’d been in moments before.

“I haven’t seen her,” she mumbled. Charlotte bit at a fingernail while I stood there, my every nerve frayed to an agonizingly sensitive point.

“She’s missing,” I said. To admit it nearly choked me, brought me to the brink of my ragged emotions. Charlotte clearly recognized the agony in my voice because she seemed to wake anew from her vague state.

“We’ll find her,” she answered, the certainty she projected exactly what I needed. There had to be something to latch onto, some port I could navigate towards in this storm. Charlotte saw that I would crumble without those things and she gave them to me, without question.

Without bringing back up my bad behavior, without needling at me that she’d been hurt.

She could see the importance of action and she took it. My heart thanked her wordlessly while I was still too distraught to find anything I could say.

Charlotte watched me spiralling in front of her, and the generosity of her spirit struck me once again when she pulled me into a hug. With one hand resting on my neck and the other patting my back, she helped me reclaim a semblance of calm, even just for a moment.

“There there, Jack,” she whispered. “We’ll find her.”

She broke the hug after a few seconds but continued to hold my forearms while she spoke. “When did you last see her? Do you know who she’d been with?”

“It was just last night,” I said. “She’d gone to bed, I—I drove Kaycee and Win to the airport and when I got back she was gone. Room empty.”

“Did anything unusual happen?”

I resisted the urge to spill my guts, tell her every detail about how Ava had been so palpably disappointed that Charlotte hadn’t celebrated Christmas with us. I didn’t want her to think I blamed her, because I didn’t. I knew it was my fault, and my fault alone.

Overreaction had led us here.

“She did have my journal,” I said. “But I don’t know how that would have made her run away from home…”

“What do you write about in it?”

It was an invasive question, but coming from Charlotte it felt natural. She gazed at me with curiosity that was completely focused on Ava, not the inner workings of my mind and how they came out on paper. I felt a wave of gratitude wash over me and fought the urge to kiss her.

Now was not the time.

“Letters to Sarah, saying the things I wish I could tell her. Angsty shit like that.”

Though I knew she needed to hear that, for Ava’s sake, I wished Charlotte didn’t have to find out quite that soon that I still wrote to Sarah. That I still thought about what I would say to her at the end of the day sometimes. Not as frequently as I used to, but it helped whenever I did.

She smiled at me, her eyes shimmering. “That’s a lovely idea.”

And Charlotte squeezed my hand in hers, the warmth of her skin comforting against mine. It helped ground me from my panic, return me to the present instead of the cacophony of potential negative futures in my head.

“Thanks,” I said. “But it was pretty dark stuff in that journal. Maybe it upset her.”

Charlotte agreed, with some hesitation. “She’s a smart kid. She’d pick up on that. Do you have some ideas of where she might be?”

I nodded. “I think I have an idea, but I wish it didn’t have to happen like this.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte, her voice full of emotions that I wanted her to leave unspoken. I couldn’t handle pity right now, only plans for finding Ava. Still, she bridged the gap between us with so much kindness I regretted my reaction to seeing her and Duncan kissing all the more.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said, and I hoped she knew what I was talking about. Hoped she could see that it was more than just Ava, just my own pain. It was everything, all wrapped up into one messy, emotional package.