Marcus stared at the open door, barefoot and breathless, the early morning air curling around his ankles like a ghost. For a moment, he thought maybe she had just gone outside. Maybe she needed air. Maybe she’d be back in a minute.


But the minutes stretched into hours.


And Liana never returned.


He checked every room in the apartment twice. Then again. Her purse still hung by the kitchen door. Her phone was on the nightstand, dead. The lilac nursery stood quiet and untouched, the soft hum of the sound machine masking the reality that something was terribly wrong.


At the police station, he filled out a missing persons report with trembling hands.


“Any history of mental illness?” the officer asked, glancing over the form.


Marcus hesitated. “She… she struggled. After the birth. I tried to help. I don’t know if it was depression or something else.”


The officer nodded slowly, expression unreadable. “Sometimes people walk away. Sometimes they come back.”


But Liana didn’t.


Weeks passed. Flyers were stapled to telephone poles. Calls were made to hospitals, shelters, friends from her past. Her mother, Eleanor, hadn’t heard from her in years and barely offered a reaction. “She always had one foot out the door,” she said over the phone. “Some people aren’t meant to be mothers.”


Marcus hung up on her.


People whispered. The story shifted. Some said she’d run off with another man. Others claimed she had postpartum psychosis and vanished to protect Elara. But the truth was no one knew. Not even Marcus.


And still, the baby cried.


So he learned how to braid hair. How to soothe fevers. How to pack school lunches with little notes tucked inside. He took extra shifts playing in hotel lounges, saved every dollar, and rocked Elara to sleep with lullabies Liana never finished singing.


He never changed the nursery walls from lilac.


Never threw away the last onesie Liana bought.


Never stopped looking for signs.


But slowly, life bent around the hollow space she left, and Marcus focused on what he had: a brilliant, curious, wide-eyed daughter who deserved everything.


And Elara?

She grew.


She asked questions when she was old enough to sense the silence.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Why don’t I have a picture of her?”

“Did I do something wrong?”


Each time, Marcus answered gently.

“She loved you very much. But she had something inside her she didn’t know how to fight.”