7. Connor

We didn't find Jessie.

Weeks of searching, and we found nothing.

Every day spent in the woods, calling their name. Parties with dogs sent out to sniff them down. The elation when they caught a scent, only to run around in circles for hours then come up with nothing.

Trev went home first—his work was understanding, but he couldn't stay in Cider Landing forever. We couldn't stay in Cider Landing forever, he'd insisted before he went back to New York.

Fuck, it was hard to let him go, to feel like I was leaving him alone. To feel like he'd disappear on me too.

But I couldn't leave Jessie behind. I was CEO of Darling International, and the only people who had any real authority over me were the board. With Jessie missing, they ranked somewhere on my priority list below one of the dogs looking for my kid.

As soon as we'd realized we weren't just going to find Jessie right away, I'd told the board to assign someone to act on my behalf in the interim. I had a spike of fear that—well, everyone said the longer a kid was missing, the worse the outcome. I couldn't think about work.

Only, my nightmares didn't come to life. We didn't find Jessie hurt or worse.

We didn't find them at all.

Mattias and his grandmother were kind and patient and hesitant to accept the check I offered them for my extended stay, but I—I had to know that Jessie had somewhere to return to, a kind of home away from home, and this was the closest I could get.

But after a month in Cider Landing with no leads, I'd had to admit defeat.

I didn't know where Jessie was. Maybe, somehow, they'd been picked up and weren't even in town anymore.

Just... it felt wrong. Even on the day I packed up my suitcases, picked up Jessie's little green one, and loaded the car, I could feel them there. They were there, I was so sure. They were just out of reach.

I went back to the city in a haze, half my heart back in Cider Landing. The guilt didn't crash over me fully until I stopped looking—I'd been the one to insist on the fucking trip, and now my kid was?—

I couldn't handle it. Couldn't handle anything, really. I stepped down permanently as head of the company and spent my time on internet message boards. There were people all over the internet, sure that they could figure mysteries out from afar, and I was desperate enough to indulge them, sick as some of the theories were.

At least—would knowing would make this easier?

Impossible to imagine, this ever getting easier. Living without Jessie was impossible, a throbbing emptiness at the center of things where their smile used to be.

They had to be out there somewhere, so I fell down a rabbit hole.

There was one guy from Cider Landing, Peter Hawking, whose mother had been convinced he wasn't really her son, that her son had disappeared. It was an internet theory that'd popped up, and that was when I realized that I—I was going crazy.

I just couldn't stop, even when Trev said he was worried, that I needed to let go. When our friends stopped talking to me about their lives and instead got this uncomfortable, sorry kind of look in their eyes before they drifted away entirely.

I was losing my fucking marbles, and I needed to?—

Just get away. Go somewhere where the idea that I might find my child wasn't something crazy or pitiful. Or at the very least, somewhere people understood what it'd been like, that first night without them and every night after.

I wasn't crazy. I couldn't just get over losing Jessie.

So I went back to Cider Landing. Trev refused to come with me, but it was something I had to do, loading my suitcase and Jessie's into the trunk of my car and taking off for the small town.

Something loosened in my chest just driving down the winding road cut between the trees in the forest. Yes—yes, this was where I was supposed to be, where I'd find my Jessie. And I?—

I knew how it sounded, and I couldn't bring myself to care. It wouldn't matter if I was crazy, if I lost everything else in the whole goddamn world, if I found my Jessie again. If I could just give them one more hug, hold their little hand one more time, see one more smile.

When I pulled up in front of the Cider Inn, my breath was shaking. I'd lost everything here, but it was the only place I could hope to find it again. Find something worth living for again.

So if I was wasting my time? It was mine to waste.

I got out of the car and pulled my suitcase out of the trunk—mine, and Jessie's. If they came back, they'd need their things. Froggo and their clothes and, well, truth told, I'd never unpacked it. Hadn't had the heart. Hadn't touched their room back in the condo.

A suitcase in each hand, I turned to the familiar porch, took one last shaky breath, and walked up the stairs.