“You don’t know? I just assumed, but no, you’re so young, so new, I suppose you wouldn’t know. Our son, Dashiell, died. SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He wasn’t even six months old. It was headline news for a few weeks, raising awareness for the condition, all that. Sutton didn’t handle it well.” Ethan’s voice cracked. “Neither of us did.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. When did he pass away?”

“Last year. It was in April. Tax day, April 15. We went to check on him, and he wasn’t breathing.”

He choked a little on the last word, suddenly having difficulty catching breath himself. God, he’d wanted that baby. When she fell pregnant, he was ecstatic. After all he’d done to help her get pregnant, after all their arguments, his cajoling, begging, her final agreement to have the child, to lose him in an unexplained death sometimes felt like punishment.

He knew Sutton had grown to love Dashiell. He’d seen the joy on her face when she didn’t think he was looking. And now he was gone. His perfect son had been taken from him. And his wife was missing.

Your wife is missing, your wife is missing.

“So she disappeared on the anniversary of your son’s death?” Moreno asked.

It hadn’t hit him, the significance. He’d been too caught up in his own unique brand of self-flagellating mourning to realize, and too worried about where she might be to look at the calendar. He hated to think back to that day. There was no such thing as an anniversary with grief this new, this raw. It was a daily, visceral, animal thing that ate at him constantly. He didn’t think in terms of dates, or months since, years since. There was just Before, Dashiell, After.

“Yes, that’s right. The anniversary.”

H. Graham looked to the older officer, then closed her notebook and stuffed it into her back pocket, like a professional golfer. “We’ll put together a report, sir, be on the lookout, check everything we can. But I think it’s safe to say your wife isn’t in any danger. I bet she comes home anytime now. People deal with grief in different ways. Sounds to me like things were just too much for her. An anniversary like this, it’s difficult. Add in complications from work? Sounds like she’s been having a really rough go of it.”

He felt relief. They believed him. They didn’t think he was involved.

Ivy came into the kitchen, so quietly they didn’t hear her until she said, “Ethan, you need to tell them everything.”

Ethan saw the cops both start slightly.

“Ma’am?” Graham asked.

“We are very concerned Sutton may have harmed herself. She has been having a hard time lately,” Ivy said.

“Mr. Montclair mentioned things have been tenuous with her.”

“Tenuous. That’s a good term. She’s been on edge, upset, angry, and crying.”

Ethan shot Ivy a glance. Whose side are you on here?

“What’s had her upset, ma’am?”

“What hasn’t? I mean really, can you blame her? First her baby, then her career? Anyone would be laid low. Sutton is a brilliant artist. She’s sensitive.”