I scrolled further, past weeks of accumulated conversations, looking for something I could hang on to.
But there was nothing.
No thread that explained where he'd been going. No client in that area. No unknown number with suspicious messages. Just the ordinary debris of his life: family, friends, contractors, clients I'd heard him talk about over dinner.
The absence felt deliberate.
I went back to the top of the list and tapped on Ben's name.
The thread opened, and the first thing I noticed was the gap between messages. It was impossible to miss.
The last exchange before Friday had been in May. Ben had sent a gif of Jayson Tatum dunking, something about the Celtics' playoff run. Ryan had replied with a beer emoji andGame 3 at my place?Ben had sent a thumbs-up.
And then nothing.
No texts through June. Nothing in July or August. The silence stretched across the entire summer and into the fall, months of absence that I'd barely registered at the time because Ben had just... stopped being around.
But now, staring at the gap, it felt deliberate. Like something had happened in May that made Ben walk away in silence.
At 4:17 PM on Friday, Ryan had broken that silence.
You were right. This ends tonight.
I stared at the message until the words stopped meaning anything. Then I read it again, slower, like the meaning would change if I just focused hard enough.
You were right.
Right about what?
This ends tonight.
What ends?
I looked at the timestamp beneath the text. Less than three hours before the police said he'd crashed. Less than three hours before his car had gone off the road on Route 9, a place he had no reason to be, before it hit the guardrail and sent him into the cold mud at the reservoir's edge."
I scrolled up, desperate for context, for the conversation that came before this. For anything that would explain what Ben had been right about, what Ryan had been ending, why this message existed after eight months of silence.
But there wasnothing. Just the gap, and then this.
My chest felt tight.
Ben had been right about something. Something serious enough that Ryan had reached out after months of distance to tell him it was over. To tell him he was ending it.
And then Ryan had gotten into his car and driven west, away from home, toward a road I'd never heard him mention.
I pressed the home button. The Maui photo appeared, cracked down the middle. I stared at it until my vision blurred, then looked up at the police barracks and the gray January sky. I had no idea what I was supposed to do next.
Except I did.
I needed to talk to Ben.
Chapter 4
Olivia
Ben didn't answer.
I'd called him twice from the parking lot, watching the phone ring until it kicked to voicemail. His voice on the recording sounded younger than I remembered, lighter, from back when he still came to our house for Sunday football and argued with Ryan about draft picks.
