The tie sits on the back of the chair, daring me.
I stare at it from the kitchen. It’s a dull charcoal blue, the one Dalia once called almost-nice in that half-sarcastic, half-serious tone she uses when she doesn’t want to admit she’s being kind. I haven’t worn it in months. It feels like a uniform for someone else’s job, someone with clean hands and a less complicated heartbeat.
Dinner with her husband. What a fucking brilliant idea.
I drink. It doesn’t help.
My apartment is still dim, even with all the blinds up. Early spring light creeps along the hardwood in slats, brittle and reluctant. Dust motes drift through it, trying to disappear. I left the TV on mute—some old rerun flickering silently in the background. White noise without the white. I should have left already, but I keep circling the table like there’s something I forgot to pick up.
There’s something about Markus that grates. The kind of man who picks out sympathy cards like they’re part of a presentation. He smiles with precision. He dresses like he’s trying to look effortless. I’ve seen him maybe four times in person, and each one left me with the itch of something off, like a painting hung slightly crooked. I haven’t found the crack in the canvas yet, but I know it’s there.
And now I’ve been invited to their home. Dalia’s voice was calm when she asked. A little too calm, like reading from a script. It’s easier if we all stop pretending this case isn’t bleeding into everything.
She didn’t say please. She didn’t have to.
I slam the beer glass into the bin. It doesn’t break, but the sound spikes loud through the apartment. I don’t care.
She wants me to see it, the inside of her life? The house with the front porch and the family photo by the fireplace. Can you do your job, sit across from my husband, and not let the truth slip from your mouth? Truth like: I’ve imagined your skin pressed against mine more nights than I’ve slept.
I tug on the collar of my shirt. No tie yet. Still resisting. The bathroom mirror catches my reflection in motion. I look tired. Not just the usual detective kind—this is something deeper. A weariness that settled in after we opened that file on Ruth Quinn and found a ghost instead of a victim. Ruth. The spiral. The phrase on the flyer. The vessel suffers for our bloody salvation. It circles like a vulture. I haven’t stopped thinking about it and I know Dalia hasn’t either. Even if she won’t say it aloud.
I button the shirt slowly. Rhythm of fabric over skin, tight across my chest where the tension lives.
I remember the last time I saw her truly undone. That night in the motel room is still driving me crazy—I can’t let go of the way she looked softer than I’d ever seen her.
I knot the tie. It feels wrong. Too formal, like I’m preparing for a hearing. Which, in a way, I am.
A line from her sticks with me—“He hasn’t been the same since Wren disappeared.” She said it like it excused everything, like grief is a shield you can wear indefinitely, even when the war is over. But grief doesn’t perform like Markus does. Grief bleeds. It rages. It weeps at inconvenient hours and wrecks your appetite. Markus just… smiles.
I grab my keys and wallet, shoulders set like I’m walking into court.
Tonight isn’t about the case. It isn’t about the Church of Reclamation or Jonas Vale or the spiral etched in gold foil.
As I hit the stairs, I mutter to myself. “Dinner with the family.”
It sounds like a threat.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
From the outside, her house looks like any other middle-class home on a street lined with old maples and memories. Two-story, pale gray siding, white trim curling slightly from sun exposure. Someone’s tried to plant tulips by the front walk, but the soil’s too dry and half of them lean like they’re trying to crawl back underground. I stand there with my fists in my coat pockets for longer than I should, staring at the door. It’s red. That kind of curated suburban red people pick when they want to seem bold, but not loud. Dalia didn’t choose it.
I knock.
The porch creaks under my weight. Some part of me registers that the light overhead buzzes the same way the one in our evidence room does. I count to five. Then the door opens.
Dalia stands there in jeans and a deep green sweater, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her hair’s down tonight, brushed back over one shoulder, catching the warm light of the hallway behind her. She looks… beautiful.
“Hey,” she says, a smile playing on her lips. It lands softer than usual.
“Hey,” I pray I sound like my usual self.
She steps aside so I can enter, and I move through the doorway like someone crossing a line they’re not sure they’ll come back from. I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the small paper bag—neatly folded, plain brown. Nothing fancy, just enough to feel like effort.
“I brought something,” I say, a little awkwardly. “Thanks—for the invite.”
Dalia raises a brow but takes the bag. Her fingers brush mine, and it’s quick, barely a spark. She opens the bag slowly, like she’s bracing for a joke, pulling out a glass jar. Dark plum jam from the Saturday market, handwritten label curling at the edge. She stares at it for a moment too long and my heart is hammering inside my chest.
“This is…,” she starts.
“Jam?” I offer, letting a nervous laugh slip by. “Figured it might taste like something good.”
Her throat works around a swallow. She nods once. There’s subtle shift in her posture—the way her shoulders drop half an inch, letting her guard rest for one breath.
“Thank you, Elias.”
Then she turns and keeps walking, holding the bag a little too carefully. I follow.
The inside of her house smells like roasting meat and garlic. The floorboards are polished wood, lived-in but clean. There’s a framed photo on a side table—a child, maybe four, all gap-toothed grin and tangled dark hair. Wren. My chest tightens.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she says ahead of me.
I follow her through the hallway toward the kitchen. It’s warm here. The walls are painted a soft gray-blue. A corkboard to my left is pinned with sticky notes, appointment reminders, and a faded Valentine’s Day card with a pink heart drawn in glitter pen. I don’t let myself look at it too long.
The kitchen is open and bright. Pale tile. Cast iron pans hanging from a rack. The dining table sits to one side, already set. Three places, decorated with white ceramic plates. Silverware that doesn’t match. A folded napkin at each setting. Markus is at the stove, stirring something in a pan. He’s dressed like he stepped out of a department store catalogue—dark slacks, crisp white shirt rolled to the forearms. Polished watch glinting under the overhead light. At least I don’t feel overdressed. When he turns, he smiles at me.
“Detective Wexler,” he says, like he’s greeting an old friend. “Glad you could make it.”
I nod, ignoring the pulse in my jaw. “Thanks for the invitation.”
“Can I get you something to drink? Beer, wine?”
I shouldn’t drink. “Water’s fine.”
Markus moves to the fridge like it’s a stage cue. Dalia steps between us, heading for the oven. Her shoulders are tight, like she’s caught in the gravitational pull of two opposing moons.
“You didn’t have to go all out,” I say.
Dalia shrugs. “It’s just chicken.”
Markus hands me a glass of cold water, then returns to the pan, and I watch him stir.
“How’s the case coming?” he asks casually, as if we’re talking about the weather.
I exchange a glance with Dalia. Her expression is unreadable.
“Slow,” I reply. “But we’re getting closer.”
Markus hums, nods. “Dalia told me it’s been intense. Long hours. Not much sleep.”
His tone is neutral, but the implication hovers like smoke. Dalia clears her throat.
“I need to pop upstairs,” she says. “Markus, can you finish plating?”
“Of course.”
She slips out of the room, and the air shifts the moment she’s gone. Whatever truce we’ve all agreed to suddenly lost its mediator.
“She’s been different lately,” Markus says. Still smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “More distracted. Less herself.”
“She’s under pressure,” I respond, voice even. We are under pressure.
“Yeah. That’s what I figured.”
I know my dislike for Markus may seem like it stems from jealousy, but it’s more instinct than anything. Everyone likes this guy, yet there is this unexplainable aura around him that rubs me the wrong way. He sets a plate on the counter.
“I appreciate you looking out for her. I know she doesn’t always make that easy.”
There it is again. The performance of the careful, calculated empathy, the play of the good, concerned husband. He knows the right beats to hit but not what they mean.
“She doesn’t need looking after,” I say, sharper than I meant to.
Markus tilts his head slightly. “No. I guess she doesn’t.”
Dalia reappears and the tension in the room lifts, just barely. She notices it, of course.
“Everything good?” she asks.
“Dinner’s ready,” Markus answers, sliding the final plate into place.
Dinner starts in halting rhythms. Conversation stitched together with neutral topics—recent cases, the precinct budget cuts, weather patterns that might explain half the disappearances we can’t. Dalia stays mostly quiet, focused on cutting her food into deliberate, perfect bites she doesn’t always eat. Markus, meanwhile, fills every silence with polished ease.
His hand reaches across the table and lands on Dalia’s. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t close the space either. It’s contact without connection. A gesture meant to be seen.
Something in my chest tightens.
“So how long have you two worked together now?” Markus asks, eyes too sharp behind the wineglass.
“Three years,” I answer. “Give or take.”
“Long time,” he muses. “Must be hard not to bring the job home.”
I take a long sip of water. There’s no one to take it home to.
Markus excuses himself to clear plates. Dalia rises to help, but he waves her off.
“You cooked. I’ll clean.”
I help Markus dry the plates. He thanks me like a host bidding a guest farewell, but I can see the flicker of something else behind his smile—mistrust, maybe. We engage in more small talk in the living room, controlled, easy going. Markus doesn’t bring up our work again, instead he complains about his own like he is practicing a comedic routine. I try to relax and disappear into the folds of the leather couch.
“So,” he says, “great news from work. I learned I’m now expected to run two departments, manage a grant we didn’t ask for, and teach a parenting workshop with absolutely zero additional pay. But, hey, at least the printer jammed for forty-five minutes this morning and threatened to burst into flames.”
I give a dry smile, unsure whether he’s waiting for sympathy or applause.
He props one ankle on his knee and points at me with the neck of his beer bottle. “You know, I used to think being a social worker meant helping people. Turns out, it mostly means being ignored by people in meetings who think Excel spreadsheets count as progress.”
Dalia sits on the armrest, glass in hand, eyes somewhere off beyond the window. Her expression is part amusement, part tight-jawed endurance.
Markus isn’t done.
“I’m now the unofficial IT guy, the janitor, and probably the office therapist. Last week, I found someone crying in the supply closet next to the copier. Didn’t even work in our department. Just said it felt like a safe space.” He swigs his beer. “Can’t argue with that.”
It’s easy to let him talk, to let the sound fill the space. My gaze drifts toward the wall behind the couch.
That’s when I see them.
Three simple frames. Children’s drawings, done in crayon, arranged with too much care for something most people shove on the fridge. One shows a field of red grass under a yellow sky, with three stick figures in it. Mom, Dad, Wren. The second one seems like a purple unicorn. I blink. Lean forward just slightly.
“Wren drew those?” I ask, nodding towards the wall.
Markus chuckles. “Yeah, apparently it’s her long lost kingdom. Or queendom, I guess. She loved pretend playing to be a Disney princess.”
He is talking about the third drawing, showing a green hill beneath a blue sky. On the hill stands a narrow building with no doors, only a staircase leading upwards, pink clouds surrounding it. On the top of the roof, there are some scrawls. One of them reminds me of an eye. I’m convinced it’s actually just random doodles and it’s the exhaustion catching up with me.
Dalia offers a soft shrug. “She’s always had a big imagination.”
“Sure,” Markus is nodding along. “but when your kid tells you the flowers in her dream talked in backwards voices, you start wondering if screen time’s doing something to her brain.”
My fingers tighten slightly around the glass.
Markus waves a hand into the silence. “She also claimed fairies were real.”
Dalia doesn’t laugh. Neither do I. I bet it all seemed innocent at the time, yet after her disappearance one can’t help but wonder if the signs were there all along. If it was one of the “fairies” that took her on the day of her disappearance. I’m sure Dalia thought about this already and exhausted all the leads.
I let Markus shift the conversation again for a little bit before I stand, careful with my glass, and set it on a coaster that reads “World’s Okayest Dad.” A little worn at the corners. Honest in a way that makes my throat tight. Dalia follows the movement with her eyes, like she’s been waiting for me to go.
“You heading out?” she asks, voice soft.
Markus lifts his hand in a lazy wave. “Good seeing you, man. Don’t be a stranger.”
I force a smile. “Thanks for having me.”
Dalia walks me to the door and retrieves my coat. Her hand brushes mine again.
Outside, the night has turned cold. She doesn’t step out, just leans lightly against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest.
“Thanks for coming,” she says. “Drive safe.”
I step out onto the porch, hands in my jacket pockets. The door doesn’t close right away.
I turn back just before it does. “You ever want to talk—”
“I know,” she says, quiet. “Goodnight, Elias.”
The door shuts with a soft click.
And I’m alone again.
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