Zoey The apartment was quiet when I got up late on Tuesday morning. The same kitchen. The same small stack of dishes beside the sink. The same laptop sitting on the desk waiting for me to work. Nothing had changed. Exc ept my brain would not stop r eplaying the look on Liam’s face when he left. I started the coffee and leaned against the counter as the liquid dripped into the mug. My ankle had made enough of an improvement that I could stand comfortably again. The swelling had mostly disappeared, and the bruising had faded to an ugly yellow that suggested my body was almost done dealing with it. The rest of me was not nearly as efficient. I carried my mug into the living room and sat down on the couch. Markie watched me from his perch. He had been studying me for several minutes. I could tell he was deciding whether or not to in volve himself. “Don’t,” I told him. He tilted his head. “DOG.” I closed my eyes. “Fuck.” “DOG.” “We are not doing this.” He leaned forward. “BAD DOG?” “Yes,” I said immediately. “Very bad dog.” Markie considered that. “DOG.” I pointed at him. “Hush.” He shuffled his wings and resumed cracking seeds with great seriousness. I stared into my coffee. It had been two days. Two days since the worst possible combination of misunderstanding, panic, police in volvement, emotional boundaries, and a very large, emotionally devastated mountain man had collided in my apartment hallway. Two days since I had told Liam not to contact me. The silence had been exactly what I asked for. Which meant I could not complain about it. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop my brain from r eplaying the entire situation in slow motion. Because the more distance I put between myself and the moment, the clearer certain things became.
Liam had made a mistake—a big one—but he had also taken responsibility for it immediately. No excuses. No argument. No attempt to convince me I was wrong. He had listened and agreed to my boundaries. He had walked away even though it clearly hurt him. That was... not nothing. I set the coffee on the table and leaned back into the couch. My therapist’s voice drifted into my thoughts. Safe people. Notice them. Allow access slowly. I hated how reasonable that advice sounded. Because the more I examined the situation honestly, the more I had to admit something uncomfortable. Liam was a safe person—a very large, slightly obsessive, occasionally overprotective safe person, who had absolutely terrible judgment regarding apartment entry procedures. But, still safe. He had fed me. Taken care of me. Respected my ind ependence, even when every instinct in his body clearly wanted to hover around me like a six-foot-four emotional security system. He had never asked me for anything. Not once. And if I allowed myself to think about it for longer than five seconds, the truth became even more inconvenient. I liked him. I didn’t generally like people. People were complicated. They were demanding and unpredictable. Frequently exhausting. Liam, however, had somehow become the one person whose presence in my space didn’t immediately drain my social battery. I liked talking to him. I liked arguing with him. I liked watching his very kind face when Markie yelled profanity at him. And if I was being brutally honest with myself, the chemistry between us was not subtle. That night in the mountains had not been a fluke. I rubbed my face with both hands. This was de eply inconvenient. Feelings required vulnerability. Vulnerability required trust. And trust required evidence. Lowering my hands, I stared at the ceiling.
So far, the evidence suggested that Liam was someone worth considering. Which was both encouraging and de eply irritating. Markie hopped onto the arm of the couch beside me. “DOG.” “Stop.” “DOG.” “Stop.” He leaned forward. “WHERE DOG?” I turned my head slowly and looked at him. “You are not helping.” “DOG.” “Liam is not currently present,” I said firmly. “And we are not discussing him.” Markie clicked his beak. “DOG.” I closed my eyes again. This bird was going to be the death of me. My phone buzzed on the coffee table. I picked it up and saw Cris’s name on the screen. “Hello.” “Hi,” she said. “Are you alive?” “Technically.” “That bad?” I sat up and tucked one leg under me. “It has been a week.” “It’s only Tuesday. How was therapy?” “Complicated.” “That sounds productive.” “It probably was.” Cris laughed quietly. “Well. I was thinking we could take a walk this weekend. Nothing ambitious. Just one of the easier trails.” “That sounds nice,” I admitted. “And your ankle?” “Functional. Should be up to the task by the weekend.” “Good.” The warmth in her tone se eped into my chest. Our friendship had grown quickly since I arrived here, and much faster than I expected. What started as casual had turned into something more stable. So far, Cris didn’t demand excessive emotional labor. She didn’t expect me to fix her life. She showed up. She listened and offered companionship without pressure. It felt... safe. For now.
We settled on a time for a short trail walk and ended the call a few minutes later. My thoughts returned to Liam almost immediately. That was becoming a pattern. I stood and carried my coffee back into the kitchen. Maybe it was time to reach out. Not today. But soon. A small st ep. Something cautious. Something honest. I stood up from my desk and rolled my shoulders back as I walked to the kitchen to get more coffee. As I turned to the machine, a frantic knock suddenly sounded at my front door. I froze. The knocking came again. Fast. Urgent. I set my mug down and went to open the door. Mei stood in the hallway, her hair loose around her shoulders, her chest rising quickly as she breathed unevenly. She looked terrified. “Please,” she said immediately, gripping the doorframe. “Please tell me Bobbi is here.” “No...” Her shoulders dropped immediately with a defeat that made my stomach twist. “Oh,” she said. I st epped aside instinctively. “Come in for a second.” She shook her head quickly and glanced down the hallway behind me as though Bobbi might appear if she looked hard enough. “The Air Tag in her necklace stopped updating about twenty minutes ago.” That stopped me. “The Air Tag what?” “The locket,” she said. “The necklace she wears. There’s a tracker in it.” Something unpleasant settled in my chest. So that was how she always knew Bobbi was here. I thought about the small silver locket the girl wore constantly. The one she fiddled with while explaining things to Markie. I’d assumed it was sentimental, but it was surveillance. “It’s not working?” I asked. She shook her head again. “I ke ep refreshing the location, but it won’t update. I’ve called both babysitters three times and they’re searching the neighborhood, but she’s not anywhere near the house.” My stomach dropped. “Start from the beginning,” I said. She pressed her hands together. “I had a doctor’s appointment for my son this afternoon. He’s having some medical issues, and it took months to get the appointment. So, I had our regular sitter with Bobbi and another sitter with my youngest.” “Okay.”
“It was nap time,” she continued quickly. “Bobbi doesn’t nap, but we still ke ep things quiet during that hour. One sitter st epped into the bathroom and the other was with my youngest and...” Her voice cracked. “She slipped out.” Shit. “We looked everywhere around the apartment and the building, but she’s gone.” Another wave of cold understanding moved through me. Bobbi didn’t wander randomly. Bobbi explored. She investigated. She followed interesting things, which meant she could be anywhere. “Shit,” I said out loud. Markie chose that moment to shout. “BAD DOG.” I ignored him. “How long ago?” “About forty minutes.” Shit. Shit. Shit. Something inside me shifted. It wasn’t panic but focus. The rest of the world narrowed down to one simple objective: find Bobbi. “I’m going to start making calls,” I said. “You don’t have to n —” “I do.” The truth hit me with alarming clarity: I cared about that kid. More than I realized—more than was probably wise. Bobbi asked strange questions. Built coaster towers in my living room. Discussed therapy with the seriousness of a small philosopher. Treated Markie as a legitimate conversational partner. And apparently, she had crawled straight into the part of my brain responsible for protecting small, chaotic humans. I st epped back into the apartment and grabbed my phone. Markie hopped onto the counter. “DOG.” “Not now.” “DOG.” “This is serious.” “BAD DOG.” I pointed at him. “Silence.” He shuffled his wings but complied. My fingers moved quickly across the screen. Cris first. She answered on the second ring. “Hey n —” “This little girl who visits me regularly is missing.” “What?” “She slipped out during nap time. The tracker in her necklace stopped working.”
There was a short pause. Then Cris’s voice shifted into the same focused tone my brain had already adopted. “I’ll start calling people. I have family in the Southern Adirondacks. Send me your address.” Next, I called Dr. Ellie. That conversation took thirty seconds. She knew my stories of Bobbi well enough to understand exactly how concerning this situation was. Within minutes, she had already reached out to several contacts in the community. The information spread quickly. Within an hour, the small circle of people I trusted had turned into an organized search effort. Text messages bombarded my phone from people checking the parks, the trails, the stores, the playground near the elementary school. Mei moved down the hallway, making calls of her own. I st epped outside to scan the street while r eplying to another message. My phone rang again. I answered without looking at the screen. “Yes.” “Oh good,” my mother said. “You answered. I lost my itinerary,” she continued cheerfully. “The one I printed out before the cruise. Could you text it to me?” My brain stalled for half a second. “Mom.” “Yes?” “It’s in your email.” “I know, but I don’t want to dig through all that right now,” she said. “Couldn’t you just write it out for me again? You’re so much better at that logistical stuff.” A few days ago, I would have done it without hesitation. I would have opened the email, copied the information, and sent it, because that was the role I had always played. Fix the problem. Soften the inconvenience. Make things easier. My therapist’s words surfaced quietly in my mind: Boundaries. Safe people. You are allowed to say no. I looked down the street where neighbors were beginning to gather. People were spreading out in different directions, looking for a small girl who liked to wander. “Mom,” I said calmly, “there’s a little girl missing right now.” She paused. “What?” “One of the kids in my building slipped out of her apartment and no one knows where she is.” “Oh.” I started walking faster toward the cluster of people near the sidewalk. “I can’t do this for you.” There was a beat of silence. “It would only take a second,” she said.
The old phrasing landed exactly where it always did. Small thing. Quick thing. Easy thing. Language designed to make refusal sound unreasonable before I had even made it. “No,” I said. “Zoey, I’m asking for one simple favor.” I st epped around a flower bed and spotted Bobbi’s mother halfway down the block, talking too fast into her phone. “I heard you,” I said. “And the answer is still no.” My mother exhaled in that injured way she had perfected years ago. “I just thought maybe you’d care that I’m trying to get everything together for once.” There it was. The emotional invoice attached to the request. “I do care,” I said. “That’s not the issue.” “Then why are you acting like I’m bothering you?” she asked. “You don’t even respond to my text messages anymore.” I tightened my grip around the phone. I could feel the old structure trying to snap back into place. The implication that closeness meant access. That love meant immediate compliance. That if I said no, I was not protecting my time or attention. I was betraying something sacred and sad and maternal. A few weeks ago, that probably would have worked. I would have caved and resented it later. Not tonight. Not with Bobbi missing. “Mom,” I said, and my tone came out flatter than before. “This is not a closeness issue. This is a grown woman not wanting to search her own email while I’m in the middle of an actual emergency.” She went quiet for half a second, then said, “You do not have to talk to me like I’m incompetent.” That almost impressed me. Ask me to do the task because I’m better at it, then punish me. A classic. “I’m not,” I said. “I’m saying you are capable of doing this yourself.” “I was just asking for help.” “And I’m saying no.” “You’ve been so different since you moved.” Yes, less available for unpaid administrative labor. But to my surprise, I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t feel cruel. Bobbi was still missing. My mother was still standing somewhere with a phone in her hand and full access to her own inbox. These two things were not morally equivalent, no matter how hard she tried to drag them onto the same level. “I love you,” I continued. “But you are capable of managing your own life.” “Wow,” she said. “You can be annoyed with me later,” I said. “Right now, I have to go help find a child.” She let out a huff. “Fine. Go save the neighborhood. I’ll just figure it out myself.”
Petty. Predictable. Then my mother sighed. “Okay, good luck finding her.” We hung up. I stared down at my phone for a moment. For the first time I could remember, I had not rushed to fix my mother’s problem. My heart was beating hard in my chest—mostly from nerves, but also from pride and disbelief. Shaking my head, I turned back toward the street. The search continued. Minutes passed. Then more minutes. And the longer we searched, the worse the possibilities became. My thoughts drifted unwillingly to Liam. The way he had circled the neighborhood the other night. Checking everything. Watching everything. I had been furious with him for that. But standing here now, waiting for updates that weren’t coming fast enough, I suddenly understood that kind of vigilance came from fear. The kind of fear that settled de ep in your chest when someone you cared about might be in danger. If that was what Liam had been feeling that night, I could not imagine carrying it for long, because the small slice I was experiencing right now already felt unbearable. My phone buzzed again. No new leads. I paced across the sidewalk. Think. Think. Think. Then something obvious occurred to me. Bobbi might be unpredictable, but she wasn’t invisible. And I knew one person with a very particular skill set when it came to finding things. I pulled up his contact before I could talk myself out of it. My thumb hovered over the call button for half a second, then I pressed it. The phone rang for what felt like an eternity, but it was only three rings. When he answered, I spoke immediately. “Liam,” I said, “I need your help.”