All I could hear was her breathing — ragged and uneven — and the rustle of something in the background, maybe drawers, maybe bags, maybe footsteps. Then she whispered, as if someone could hear her through the phone.

“He’s gone.”

Her tone was too sharp, too frantic. Alan wasn’t the type to inspire fear in Stacey — smug and manipulative, sure, but not terrifying. Yet something in her voice made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“What do you mean gone?”

“He’s missing,” she hissed. “He left an hour ago, said he was stepping out, but he didn’t take his phone, didn’t take his wallet, didn’t take the car. He’s just gone. And—”

She stopped. Not because she didn’t know what to say, but because saying it out loud made it real.

“And what?” I demanded.

“And he left a note,” she whispered.

My chest tightened. Of all things, a note. The kind that leaves more questions than answers, the kind that points to something no one wants to face.

“What did it say?”

She sucked in a breath. “It said ‘I’m sorry. Ask her.’”

Silence fell so thick between us that my pulse became the only sound in my skull.

“Ask who?” I forced out.

“You!” she screamed. “He wrote ask you! What does that mean? What does he want me to ask you? Why would he leave that?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat closed because my mind had already leapt somewhere I didn’t want it to go.

Alan had said those words before.

After the divorce, after the lawyers, after the custody battle that crumbled because he stopped showing up — there had been one night when he was drunk, trembling, and sitting in the driveway of my new apartment. It was the only time he’d ever cried in front of me. The only time he’d said something that sounded like regret.

He had said, “I’m sorry. One day you’ll understand. One day they’ll ask you.”

Them. Not Stacey. Not anyone. Them — our daughters.

I had buried that moment on purpose.

Now it was clawing out of the grave.

“Where are the girls?” I asked sharply.

She froze. I could hear it in her breath. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Where are they, Stacey?”

“At my mom’s,” she snapped. “We had them for two days. They’re asleep. They’re fine. What is happening?”

My legs were already moving. Lights on. Coat on. Purse. Keys. I didn’t choose to go — my body simply obeyed the instinct that something terrible was unspooling.

“Text me a picture of the note,” I said. “Now.”

Three seconds later my phone dinged. A small square of white lined paper, Alan’s handwriting messy and rushed. Just five words:

I’m sorry. Ask her. Please.

The “please” wasn’t in Stacey’s version. That one word rewrote everything, because Alan never said please. Not to me. Not to anyone.

My stomach dropped.

“Stacey, listen to me,” I said slowly. “Has he been acting strange? Leaving late? Getting calls?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t really laughter — more like panic wearing a mask. “He hasn’t been himself for weeks. He keeps talking about consequences and timing and responsibility. I thought it was about the kids. I thought he felt guilty.”

I closed my eyes. Guilt didn’t make a man disappear without his wallet.

“Get in your car,” I said. “Go to your mom’s. Stay there. Do not go back inside the house. Do not wait for him. Go.”

“You know something,” she whispered.

I didn’t answer.

Because I did. And I hated that I did. I hated that the wreckage of my old life was now bleeding into hers, even after everything.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Later,” I said. “Just go.”

She argued, but I hung up before she could finish.

The cold outside slapped me awake as I drove. My streetlights blurred past, yellow and hollow. The city was asleep, but I was wired with a dread so heavy it felt like a second body.

Alan didn’t just leave. He didn’t just vanish. He was running from something.

And the worst part — deep down — was knowing that whatever he was running from had been built long before Stacey ever entered the picture.

When I reached Stacey’s mother’s house, she was already there. Red-eyed. Shaking. Standing on the porch like a child who’d seen a ghost.

“Tell me,” she said again.

So I did.

I told her about the night in my driveway. About Alan’s breakdown. About the words he’d said and the tears he couldn’t control. About the fear in his voice when he talked about “timing” and “responsibility” and “when it lands.”

I told her that his job wasn’t just spreadsheets and conferences. That there were investigations. Quiet ones. Federal ones. And that a month before our divorce was finalized, someone left a business card in my mailbox with no name, just a number.

I told her that when I called it, the man on the other end said, “Keep your daughters close.”

By the time I finished, Stacey looked like she was going to faint.

“What does he want from you?” she rasped.

I shook my head. “He doesn’t want anything from me.”

“Then why the note?” she choked out. “Why ask you?”