Chapter 2: Three in the Morning
Liam woke a little after three with the sudden certainty that something was wrong.
The bedroom was dark except for the thin line of light under the curtains. He reached across the mattress out of habit and found Nora’s pillow cold. The sheets on her side of the bed had never been turned down.
He sat up too fast. The quiet of the apartment pressed in around him.
From the living room, the balcony glass reflected only the dim interior and a pale wash of streetlight. For a moment he thought he still saw her shape out there, small and folded in on itself against the cold. Then his eyes adjusted, and the balcony looked emptier than it should have.
He walked over, heart already climbing into his throat, and stopped.
A wet trail crossed the living-room floor.
It began near the front door and ran in uneven marks toward the balcony, as if someone soaking wet had come through the apartment and walked straight to where Nora had been. The moisture darkened the wood in long, broken streaks. Liam stared at it, unable at first to make the image fit any reasonable explanation.
He fumbled with the lock, fingers suddenly clumsy, and shoved the sliding door open.
Cold air hit him hard.
The balcony was empty.
On the concrete near the railing lay Nora’s wedding ring.
A single handprint marked the top rail, faintly darker where moisture had clung to it. Liam stepped out in his socks, the cold biting straight through the thin fabric, and looked down over the edge.
Below, near the base of a tree at the side of the building, a white shape lay motionless on the ground.
For one suspended second, his mind refused to assemble what he was seeing.
Then the meaning arrived all at once.
“Nora—”
Her name left him in a broken sound as he turned, ran back through the apartment, and took the stairs two at a time. The wet trail, the ring, the empty balcony, the white shape under the tree—every detail slammed through him in the same sick rhythm as his footsteps.
By the time he pushed through the ground-floor exit into the night, his breath was already coming in raw bursts.
May you like
The cold outside was sharper than it had been through the glass.
And the white shape still had not moved.
