I’d hoped to see him, but not under circumstances like this. Never in a situation this fraught and stressful. When Jack rang my doorbell and stepped inside, he looked haunted.

Like he’d died and been reanimated as a spectre of his former self, sent to remind me of what I’d had before…Before he blew up, really.

I knew I shouldn’t have let Duncan in, and I definitely shouldn’t have taken any of his words seriously, but Jack’s reaction had been completely disproportionate. I had half a mind to let him stand outside in the cold and never even answer the door.

But something convinced me otherwise, and I was glad in retrospect that I’d listened to that small voice in my head. This was bigger than the two of us, more important than our squabbles. They seemed so petty now.

A hiccup in a relationship that we both still valued, very much so.

Ava was so dear to me that I cringed in pain when Jack told me she was missing. It shocked me out of my self-pity as quickly as a slap in the face, and it was all the more unwelcome because yesterday had been Christmas.

This was a time for family to be together, not searching for a lost daughter in a panic.

I didn’t know what to say, but my gut told me I had to help. My mind followed suit and I agreed to come along with Jack and do whatever I could.

If I wasn’t mistaken, my being here, holding Jack, and agreeing to participate was therapeutic. I could see hope re-emerge in his darkened eyes, the circles beneath them pronounced. He was a walking shadow, a dark sketch of what he looked like on a normal day.

We briefly discussed options, timing, and what Ava might have been thinking when she set out, and I threw on a sweatshirt over top of my slept-in shirt. No time to waste. Ava wouldn’t care if I were wearing a full-size adult onesie when she saw me.

If she saw me.

Don’t think like that, Charlotte.

It was more likely that she’d run away from some perceived slight than that she’d been kidnapped by an unhinged fan or abducted by a predator.

Still.

Just because something was statistically unlikely didn’t mean it didn’t resonate with fears located deep in your solar plexus, didn’t haunt you with their vivid possibilities.

Ava had to be OK.

I couldn’t imagine Jack losing her, for good, on top of his troubles with Sarah. The man had been through enough, hadn’t he?

So we drove to the school to check in and make sure she hadn’t gone there, hadn’t camped out in some classroom to avoid the complicated emotions of the holidays. All the doors were locked and the security guard we accosted swore that there were no children inside.

Jack had a picture of Ava on his phone that he showed the guard, insisting that the man call him if he saw her.

“Aren’t you that rock star guy?” the guard said, sizing Jack up as if he were disappointed by what he saw. As if he assumed the partying lifestyle and fame had made Jack a bad parent.

It made me sick to my stomach, so I pulled Jack away while I glared at the man, protective in my own peculiar way.

Jack was a good father, even if he had been hurting so much when Sarah first died that he couldn’t be an active parent. I’d seen him try, seen him attempt to reconcile and build a new life with Ava. That was what mattered, not the past.

Action.

We set back out onto the road, zooming to the cemetery where Jack was sure we would find Ava.

“She painted me the most amazing portrait of her. But what am I talking about, of course, you know that.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” I said. It had been the sweetest idea Ava had for a gift, and I wanted him to have something to treasure. A memento that could put Sarah in a prominent place, not hide her away in trauma and angst.

I’d be lying if I’d said that I hadn’t been a little intimidated by her beauty, the photos I saw of her with Jack when they first married. She was a stunning, ambitious woman. Those shoes weren’t mine to fill.

I just hoped that Jack still had a place for me in his heart somewhere.

I loved him.

I knew I loved him when he left after seeing Duncan. I’d spent my Christmas trying to deny those feelings, but here they were regardless of my efforts.

The tears streaming down his face seemed unlikely to stop as we drew closer to the headstone, so I took Jack’s hand. He didn’t resist, pull away, or otherwise indicate he didn’t want me to hold his hand, but he didn’t squeeze back either. The skin of his palm was chilly from being exposed to the cold air while driving.

As we walked along the cemetery pathway, I could feel his hand sweating, chilled though it was. The headstone was visible from here, and Ava wasn’t in front of it.

“She has to be here,” he said. “She has to.” It was a statement muttered to himself, not meant for me to hear. I squeezed his hand nonetheless, hoping he could find some comfort in the gesture.

We walked faster, then, drawing up to the headstone with a frantic pace. Ava wasn’t there, not standing in front of it reading the words to herself, not leaving flowers or sulking or hiding behind other tombstones.

It was a barren, frigid day, and the high cloud cover kept the sky grey and miserable. Jack took a deep, ragged breath and yelled a wordless cry into those clouds.

“Where the fuck is she?” he asked me, those eyes brimming with panic even as they spilled tears.

Behind him, the headstone’s message was “Love Always.” There were dried out flowers at the base of the stone, probably laid there by Jack himself a few weeks ago. Sarah’s name was elegantly carved into the granite, the font reminiscent of her name’s lightness.

“I don’t know, Jack,” I said. “We’ll find her.”

But my words couldn’t comfort him anymore, found no lodging in his brain. He shook my encouragement off like it irritated his skin just being there.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “I’ve ruined my life. Again.”

“Jack!” I said. My breath was coming to me quicker now, heartbeat racing to keep up with his intensity.

“It’s over,” he whispered. And he sank to the ground, knees deep in the late-December snow cover. It had to be cold on the legs, even with his jeans on. If Jack felt anything, he didn’t reveal it.

All he did was breathe, laboriously, while cradling his face in his hands.

“Jack,” I murmured, kneeling close to him, holding him tightly. “We will find her. We will. Something upset her, probably, and she’s off to find a place where she can work through that. I mean, I know I ran away when I was a kid and my parents wouldn’t let me buy a book I wanted. I know it’s hard, but that doesn’t mean it won’t end well.”

Though he didn’t respond to my words, he leaned in to me and let me hug him, his huge and muscular body so vulnerable next to mine.

“Jack,” I said, a little louder this time. “We’ll find her, and it’s going to be ok.”

He drew me in with his arms, encircled me tightly. “How?”

When he looked into my eyes, I saw the depth of his sadness and for yet another time I was struck by its magnitude. He’d lost so much, and seemed to feel he would keep losing until there was nothing left.

Not if I could help it.

“Jack,” I spoke quickly to keep myself from getting in my own way. “I love you. I want you to know that. It wasn’t ok, the way you reacted to Duncan being in my house, kissing me without my consent, but I care for you. And if you still want me, I want to be with you, too.”

He inhaled sharply and I felt myself continue, rambling despite the part of my brain that told me to stop.

I had to get it out now, or I never would.

“I know you’ve been perfectly happy before, and I don’t want to presume that I could ever replace Sarah in that way, but I do think we could be good together. I’ve felt it, and I hope you’ve felt it too. And I know this is the worst time ever for me to bring this up, but at least I had the chance, right? At least we still have each other.”

Though he wasn’t speaking, Jack held me so tightly I was sure some part of him agreed. With another sharp exhalation, he grounded himself and stood.

“Charlotte, I care about you too. And—”

His speech was interrupted by the blaring of his cell phone, the ringtone volume set to its loudest in case of word from Kyle that Ava had returned home. I couldn’t fault him for answering it in a split second, even if my heart was saddened by the interruption.

“Yes?”

But it wasn’t Kyle, it sounded like a woman’s voice on the phone. Jack’s face morphed from shock to sadness to acceptance. If I looked at him in the right light, I thought it was a hopeful expression.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

I didn’t want to ask if something was wrong. I just stared into his eyes asking wordlessly for an answer.

“She went to her old foster home,” said Jack. He brushed the remaining snow off of his jeans and then his hands. Whatever emotions he was experiencing, he clearly did not want to delve into them until after we’d met up with Ava.

I could accept that.

She was the most important thing in his life, after all. A person so irreplaceable that he bridged the gap between us to try to find her again.

As it should be.

“Let’s go,” I said. And this time, Jack reached out and took my hand.