A week passed and no matter how many times I tried to call, I still hadn’t heard from Alice. I stayed at Heather’s, miserable, barely living and clutching my phone at every moment. I felt obsessed and desperate, but with each day I was growing weaker and weaker. My phone rang one night at the end of the week and I picked it up eagerly.

“Hello?” I said, praying to hear from Alice. Or better yet, Lucas. But the voice that responded wasn’t one that I recognized.

“Is this Ellie Waters?” the man asked.

“Who is this?”

“This is Officer Dopps of the NYPD,” he said. “We were wondering if you’ve seen someone recently—a Lucas Sanders.”

I swallowed hard. “No, I haven’t seen him.”

“You haven’t heard from him at all? He hasn’t tried to call you? We were told that the two of you were dating. You were the one who found out that his little girl was gone, right?”

“Yes,” I said, my throat feeling dry. “But I haven’t heard from him—from either one of them—since. I don’t know where they are.”

“Okay,” said the man. “That’s all I needed to know. If you see them or hear from them, give me a call, will you?”

“I will,” I promised, and felt numb as I hung up the phone. That was it. There was nothing that I could do now but hope that they showed up, that I got some kind of closure about what had happened at least. There was a gaping wound within me, formed when they’d all disappeared, and no matter how many girly nights I had with Heather, nothing was going to come close to filling it. After the phone call with Officer Dopps, I realized it was time to go back home to New York. I’d spent far too long wallowing in Heather’s guest room. I needed to get back to work, to get over this and get my head on straight. It was time to move forward no matter what had happened to Lucas—I technically had no claim on him. He wasn’t mine to find.

I left Heather after dinner one night, driving back in the dark as I had when I’d come. It was relaxing to drive at night with no distractions, and I managed to clear my head for a few hours as I drove. I got to my apartment early in the morning, and when I unlocked the front door, my landlady came out of her apartment to greet me in the hallway.

“Hi, Mrs. Torrance.”

She was the last person that I wanted to talk to. All I wanted to do was to get upstairs to my bed and get some sleep, restart the day later and get to work writing. Writing was the only thing that was going to take my mind off this mess, and it had been almost a week since I’d done it at all.

“Hi, Ellie,” the old woman said. “Have you seen Lucas recently? I haven’t heard from him in over a week.”

“No,” I said dully, making my way toward the stairs. “No, I haven’t seen Lucas.”

“Send him over if you do,” she said and disappeared back inside her apartment. I went up the stairs, glancing at Lucas’s door before going into my own apartment. He hadn’t been home. I checked my phone to see Alice still hadn’t called. The worry started to nag at me again—I could understand Lucas and Luna going missing if he’d got back together with Maria, but there was no reason for Alice to be gone.

I found myself looking up her address. It seemed like a desperate thing to do and I hoped it wouldn’t be too weird to drop by on her, but I was desperate. The cops and Mrs. Torrance had raised nothing but more questions and I needed answers or else I was going to lose my mind completely.

I found Alice’s address on her photographer page and quickly got into my car to drive there. She lived in a swanky part of town, her building shiny and modern. I went inside and up the stairs to her apartment, tapping lightly on the door. It came open under my slight push, and I called out to Alice.

“Alice?” I said, pushing the door open wider and peering in.

I felt strange, but I suddenly got it in my head that Alice could be there and in danger, that she could need my help. Something was going on here and it could possibly be dangerous. When she didn’t answer, I crept inside. I heard a noise—faint music coming from down the hall. I made my way in that direction, my body at the ready in case I needed to run. I found where the music was coming from—there was a room at the end of the hall, the door half open.

I looked in to see Alice with her back to me, looking up at a row of pictures hanging from pegs on a line. She was developing her film, and when I saw the pictures, my heart sank. I almost felt the wind leave me as my eyes scanned over them. They were taken through the window, and on the other side of the glass was Lucas. He had Maria in his arms and was kissing her while Luna sat at the table behind them. There were several pictures drying, showing Lucas and his happy little family. I gasped, unable to stop myself, and Alice swiveled around to see me standing there.

“Ellie—” she said, but I’d already turned around. I rushed out of the apartment and down the stairs, feeling her following behind me.

“Ellie, it’s not—”

“Stop, Alice, please,” I said, nearly sobbing as I pushed out the door of the apartment building. She didn’t follow me. I went to my car and got in, burying my face in my hands. I pulled out my phone to call Heather, not knowing what else to do. She picked up on the first ring.

“What is it?” she asked when she heard me crying.

“Lucas—Lucas is back with Maria. He went back to her. They’re living as one big happy family.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw pictures,” I said, shutting my eyes as if doing so would make me forget what I’d seen. “They weren’t just in the same room together. He was kissing her.”

“Oh,” said Heather, pausing. “I’m so sorry, honey. I know how you feel about him.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t—it’s not that big a deal. He was just a stupid guy. I knew he had a wife when I started sleeping with him. I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Heather chided. “Listen, it happens to the best of us. You fall for the wrong guy, it hurts, you move on. Do you want to come back here?”

I sighed. “No, I’m going to stay here and work. Try to forget about it.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s the best thing you can do.”

“Thanks, Heather. I’ll call you later.”

“Please do,” she said. “Chin up, hon.”

I hung up, shaking my head as I started the car. My sadness was dissipating and slowly turning to anger. Not anger at Lucas or at Alice, but at myself for letting myself fall for him after what I’d been through. For a moment, I’d let myself be stupid enough to believe in the happy endings I wrote about in my stories. I knew better than anybody there was no such thing as happy endings, especially not for girls like me.