Blame

The kitchen was quiet, the only sound coming from the slow, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock above the doorway. It was nearly midnight, but neither Elena nor Carlos Borbón had touched their dinner. Two untouched plates sat cooling on the table. The silence between them was thicker than grief—it was the unbearable weight of resignation.

Carlos sat hunched over, one hand curled into a fist on the table, the other rubbing his tired eyes. Elena stood by the window; her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if holding back a storm. Her face was pale, drawn with exhaustion and bitterness.

“It’s been over a week,” Carlos said finally, his voice low and bitter. “No word. No message. She just vanished.”

Elena didn’t answer. She stared out the window at the dark street beyond, though she wasn’t really seeing it.

“I told you,” he continued. “We shouldn’t have trusted her. Some private investigator with a shady background and no office? We gave her everything. Our savings. Our hope.”

“She believed us,” Elena whispered. “No one else did.”

Carlos slammed his hand on the table, making the plates rattle. “And what good did that do us? Delilah Knox is gone. Just like Gabriella. We’ve been conned.”

Elena flinched but didn’t argue. She had defended Delilah all week—insisting she was their last chance. The woman had shown them files, connected dots, even mentioned a name. “Patterns,” she’d called them. Obsessions. A sickness hidden behind charm and youth. She had been getting close. She had promised answers.

But then she stopped calling.

Stopped texting.

Stopped everything.

Carlos looked down at his hands. “We’ve lost her. Gabriella. We lost her the day she didn’t come home, and we’ve been pretending otherwise ever since.”

Elena turned from the window, tears pooling in her eyes, but none falling. Her voice cracked, raw and quiet. “You think I don’t know that?”

She walked slowly to the table, resting her fingers on the edge as if it would hold her upright.

“I know Gabriella is gone. I know we’re never going to find her. I knew the day we filed the report, and the police brushed it off as just another runaway.”

A tear finally broke loose and slid down her cheek.

“We just wanted to believe. That maybe… someone out there cared enough to try.”

Carlos looked up at her, his anger draining into sorrow. He rose and reached for her hand, holding it tight.

They stood there in silence, two parents in a quiet house, holding the last pieces of a dream that had shattered long ago. Outside, the wind rustled the dead winter leaves, and the darkness stretched on endlessly.

In their hearts, something shifted—an unspoken understanding.

Their Gabriella was never coming home. They would never see her again.

And the world, cruel and vast, would never give them an answer.

Mary Tucker closed the front door with a soft click that felt louder than thunder in the stillness of the house. Her hand lingered on the knob for a moment, fingers trembling. She leaned against the doorframe, her breath catching in her throat, and for a second she thought she might fall apart right there in the entryway.

The police had just left.

Their faces had been polite. Sympathetic, even. But their words had hit like bricks.

A week. A full week since her daughter Rae and Rae’s best friend, Emily McKenzie, had vanished on New Year’s Eve. No note. No goodbye. No answers. Just two girls who’d walked out into the winter night and never came home.

Mary had held onto hope for days. Maybe they'd run away. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe they were just being reckless teenagers.

But now?

Now, the officers had a theory. A name.

Delilah Knox.

According to them, Rae and Emily had been working—*working*, as if they were adults—for a woman who claimed to be a private investigator. Delilah had apparently hired them to spy on a classmate of theirs. Some boy. The officers wouldn’t say much more. Said it was “sensitive.”

But it didn’t matter. Because Delilah was gone too. Vanished the same night.

The theory? Delilah had taken them. **** them. Manipulated them. Maybe worse.

Mary stumbled into the kitchen, every step heavier than the last. She moved on instinct, not purpose, her mind buzzing with fragments of memory and grief. She reached for the wine bottle on the counter—deep red, unopened, a gift from her agency for closing a million-dollar sale just before Christmas.

She poured herself a glass. It sloshed messily into the stemware, a little too full, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t drink it.

She just held it in her hand.

The glass felt fragile. Cold. Like Rae’s hands the last time she’d held them, when she hugged her goodbye before heading to that damn work party.

She hadn’t wanted to go. Rae had begged her to stay in that night, “Let’s just have a movie night,” she’d said, but Mary had gone to the party anyway. Closed a sale. Drank champagne. Laughed with coworkers.

And now?

Now her daughter was gone.

Her vision blurred. Her breath hitched.

The glass slipped from her hand, hitting the porcelain sink with a sharp crack before shattering completely. Red wine spilled like blood, seeping between the shards, staining the white sink with a violent burst of color.

Mary stared at it, stunned.

So many pieces.

So many sharp edges.

Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, pressing her back against the cabinet doors. A sob escaped her throat, followed by another, and then another until she couldn’t hold them back.

She cried like she hadn’t cried in years—like a mother whose world had shattered along with that wine glass.

“You don’t understand, it’s all one big misunderstanding!” Paul Gordon shouted, his voice cracking with panic as the officer cinched the cuffs tighter around his wrists. His face was red, sweat collecting at his temples despite the winter chill. “We didn’t *do* anything wrong!”

Behind him, his wife Jenny was silent, her lips pressed into a thin, bitter line as another officer guided her down the porch steps. She didn’t protest, but her eyes darted between the neighbors gathered on their lawns—phones out, mouths whispering.

“Yeah, sure it is,” the arresting officer replied, unmoved. “Save it for the judge.”

The two were escorted toward the waiting patrol car parked at the curb, blue and red lights flashing off the snow-covered roofs of their quiet suburban street. The air stung with cold, but Paul barely noticed.

His mind was spinning. How had it all gone so wrong?

It wasn’t like they wanted to take the girl in. Emily had been nothing but trouble from the start—moody, defiant, always poking around where she didn’t belong. But Randy said it would be easy. Keep her under a roof for a while, collect the checks, and then quietly move her along once the paperwork was smoothed over. She wasn’t supposed to matter.

So, when she started asking questions—getting curious about things she shouldn’t, Paul and Jenny made the call. They kicked her out of their home. Simple as that. She wasn’t their kid. Wasn’t their problem.

They never expected she'd wind up as part of missing persons case with someone who mattered.

And when the news broke that Emily and her best friend had vanished on New Year’s Eve, the Gordons had figured it was just bad luck. Kids ran away all the time. Maybe she’d gone looking for her real family. Maybe she'd joined some squat. Maybe she was dead.

But then the police showed up at their door. And with them, questions, lots of questions. Uncomfortable questions at that.

How long had Emily been in their care?

Why wasn’t there any record?

Why were they still cashing the checks?

Then came the kicker.

Randy had talked. Sold them out the second things got dicey.

Now the truth was laid bare—falsified records, backdoor deals, a girl left to fend for herself in a world that had no use for her.

No one cared that it was not their fault Emily had vanished.

No one cared that life was unfair.