He’s not here. End of story.

I cut through the living room and into the entry, snagging one of the hats my dad wears at the shop from the hook by the front door. It’s his favorite. I slip it on, say, “Goodbye, house,” blow it a kiss, and walk down the path to where the truck’s parked at the curb.

“Nice hat.” He doesn’t ask for it back, already well aware of how sentimental I am.

I adjust it, preferring a slight curve to his straighter bill. “Thanks.”

He opens the truck and leans on the door. “You ready, Pip?”

“As much as I ever will be.” It’s weird when Harbor’s words return, coming from my mouth. I moved home the day after graduation, trying to rid my life of Harbor. I could toss the pillows and burn the sheets—Amanda’s idea. I could donate every morsel of food to a bank to help others. But that wouldn’t change the fact that he was there twenty-four hours earlier. I still smell his cologne in the air as a part of him remains just to torture me some more.

Facing the fact that his departure was planned, I found most of his belongings were gone before I walked across the stage that day. The furniture remained, and the cabinets were full of dishes. The towels were stacked as if prepared for the next tenant—Noah.

The Westcotts told me I could stay as long as I wanted. Noah even said the same. But why? Why stay in a space that feels like we never existed?

Since Amanda had moved into a studio a few blocks over from my dad at the beginning of the year, when I packed my stuff, barring a few things I couldn’t find, I moved back into my childhood bedroom. It was comforting and easy to be here, to live with my dad and pretend Harbor was never part of my life, much less the largest part for a time.

But I was fooling myself into believing that he was found in objects—a chair he preferred over the couch, a coaster I insisted he use when watching TV, a lone sock found behind the couch. An empty side of the bed. A toothbrush left in a cup in the bathroom. There were reminders wherever I looked.

I left to save myself the misery only to find he’s not just in the tangible things. He’s everywhere. Still is on days when I’m more accepting of my fate. I see him in a box of cereal that he loved to eat a few hours after dinner. I feel him in the bath beneath me when I’m trying to escape all my memories with him. I’m haunted even outside on the patio when a breeze plays a cruel melody that sounds like the laughter we shared when we were happy.

Escaping was fruitless.

I endured instead.

That ache I once craved, the one I could feel the next day after he claimed every part of me, I now live with. Though it’s changed from one of feeling full to barren emptiness. Maybe I’m not as ready as I said, but I have no choice. Harbor Westcott disappeared without a trace, at least in my life. His mom says he’s f . . . she can’t say it because she knows it’s a lie. And that’s not a lie she wants to tell me. Somehow through this nightmare, Delta and I have bonded.