I went straight to his texts, my focal interest. The first screen full of messages were from Annoying Little Brother, Mom, and Don’t-Answer Dickhead Daniel. Daniel was Oliver’s nemesis, an arrogant colleague whom everyone loathed but was forced to deal with as the entitled son of one of the directors. When Daniel called, you didn’t answer unless you had an hour or two to kill listening to him ramble on about himself. The only good thing about his random rambling—say that three times fast, I imagined Eliot saying—was that I discovered he had contact information for a highly esteemed private investigator. When Vera had first gone missing, Daniel held that contact info out to Oliver like a carrot on a stick, if Oliver stroked his ego sufficiently. Oliver had refused, instead preferring bleeding ears to listening to Daniel. Hence the PI’s identity remained a mystery.

I continued scrolling, until a name arrested my attention:

Vera

My heart squeezed into a tight fist with a sharp pain. A pulsating, monstrous anger surged through me. My hand trembled so hard I could barely press my finger to the screen. But when I did, there it was. Message after message between Oliver and Vera. For days, weeks, months. Up through today. I tapped the info button—it was indeed her cell phone number.

I flicked down, down, down to the bottom of the message train, following text after text like a twisted scavenger hunt. I skimmed countless conversations exchanged over the past three months, each one elbowing the previous one aside. Finally reaching the very first message, sent from Oliver in July, twelve weeks after Vera first disappeared, I saw the words in the green bubble, though they didn’t quite set off the alarm bells in my addled brain:

Hey, honey. It’s Daddy. I miss you so much. We’re falling apart without you.

A bubble below it on the other side of the screen in gray: Daddy? I miss you too. I would give anything to see you again.

His reply: Are you okay? Please tell me where you are.

Vera: I’m where I’ve always been. Waiting for you.

Oliver: Waiting for me? I’ll come get you. I need to see you. How do I find you?

Vera: You know that’s not possible. No matter how much I wish it was true.

Oliver: Everything is crashing down without you. Your mother isn’t going to survive this. And your brother and sister…it’s too hard with you gone.

Vera: I understand. I feel it too.

Oliver: Then why did you have to go?

Vera: I ask that question every day, Daddy.