The next three hours blurred into a nightmare of police reports, search teams, and Victoria's performance.
She arrived home at 4 PM and immediately transformed into the picture of maternal distress. A single tear traced down her cheek as she spoke to Detective Morrison, her voice a carrying whisper designed to reach every ear in the room.
"He's been under so much pressure at work," she said, dabbing delicately at her eye. "We all have. Sometimes I worry…" She paused, as if catching herself. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't say."
"Please, Mrs. Sterling." Morrison leaned in. "Anything could help."
"It's just... when you're stretched so thin, things slip through the cracks. I've tried to tell him that Millie needs more attention, but the company always comes first." Another tear. "I don't blame him. I just wish..."
She let the sentence hang, dripping with implication.
I watched from across the room, my hands curled into fists at my sides. Three weeks ago, I filed for divorce. The court had mandated cohabitation until our preliminary hearing. It was a special kind of torture sharing oxygen with a woman who was methodically building a custody case against me. Every sympathetic glance the detective gave her was a brick in that case.
"Mr. Sterling?" Detective Morrison approached me, his expression carefully neutral. "We need to discuss anyone Millie might have tried to reach."
"I've given you the list. My friend James Reeves, my assistant, her teacher?—"
"What about family? Her mother's side?"
"Her mother is dead." That part of her life and mine was gone. "There is no one on her side."
Victoria appeared at my elbow, her hand resting on my arm with practiced tenderness. "It's so hard for him to talk about Michaela," she murmured to Morrison. "They were so in love."
I pulled my arm away, as if it were venomous. Any other day, I could have handled her narcissism, but on this day, I really had no patience.
After the detective moved on, Victoria lingered. The tears had vanished, replaced by a cool assessment that was far more honest.
"The detective wants to know if she has any other relatives," she said.
"I already answered that."
"Just trying to help, darling." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "This must be so hard for you. Losing track of her like this."
That accusation landed exactly where she'd aimed it. I turned my back and walked to my office, shutting the door on the chaos and on her.
Alone, I stood before my desk. Michaela's photograph watched me from its silver frame: her mid-laugh, eyes crinkled, frozen in a moment of uncomplicated joy. The guilt rose like bile.
"I'm sorry," I said to her image, the words barely audible. "I lost her. I'm failing her, too."
The flashback came uninvited, as it always did in moments of crisis.
Three years ago. Michaela was rubbing her temples in the kitchen.
"It's like a vice, Nate," she'd said. "And my vision gets blurry sometimes."
I'd been neck-deep in the product launch: eighteen-hour days, living on coffee and adrenaline. I'd kissed her forehead, handed her aspirin, dismissed it as stress.
"Take a bath. Relax. We'll go away on vacation next month, I promise."
The day it happened, I was in a board meeting. My phone vibrated against my thigh. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. I'd been annoyed; she knew how critical this meeting was. When I finally stepped out and saw the missed calls, annoyance curdled into dread.
I found her on our bedroom floor, curled into herself, crying with a pain so profound it had stripped away everything but primal suffering.
"My head, Nate." Her voice was barely coming out. "It's breaking."
She died in the ER, my hand in hers, while machines screamed a single endless tone.
I'd been so focused on building a future that I'd missed the present collapsing. I hadn't been watching closely enough. The doctors said her earlier headaches were sentinel warnings of an aneurysm, and it ruptured fatally. I ignored all the warnings; I failed her.
