Henry and Amelia were nearly silent as they walked back to the parking lot where they'd left their cars. He gave her Liam's address just in case she lost track of him while trying to follow him over there, but aside from that, he seemed to be giving her a bit of space to herself. Her cheeks were still sticky with tears, after all, and the compulsion to cry hadn't entirely dissipated.

Back at their cars, he lingered by her door and tentatively asked if she needed him to grab her tissues or water or anything from CVS while they were right there. Although she found this to be very kind of him, she was much too embarrassed by everything that had already occurred to ask that he do anything else for her. She ended up quickly darting inside to grab the melatonin that she had gone there for in the first place but had promptly abandoned when she ran after him.

A fine drizzle began to patter onto her windshield a couple of minutes after they'd started driving, the glow of passing headlights and stoplights refracting off of the water droplets into a neon haze. She strained slightly to keep track of which vehicle ahead of hers was Henry's; it didn't help that it was black. Her maps app was reciting instructions to her, but knowing where he actually was blanketed her with an extra sense of security.

Fortunately, it wasn't all that long of a drive to Liam's, and once she'd pulled into a parking space next to Henry, she grabbed the small umbrella that she always kept shoved under the passenger seat. It wasn't raining quite hard enough right now to really warrant an umbrella just for the short walk to the door, but there was no telling if it'd be downpouring when it was time to leave.

She had forgotten about Henry's mention of Lily and Liam having a dog until he answered the door and she was immediately being accosted by a giant, slobbery, cream-colored ball of fluff. She was delighted by it.

"Who's a good boy?" she cooed instinctively, scratching behind the retriever's ears. "Or girl."

"This is Moosey," Liam told her just as the dog got up on its hind legs to lick her cheek, tail wagging frantically. He tried to shoo him off of her with mild success. "Sorry—I think he's probably excited to see a new person since Lily..."

Liam's voice drifted off when Moosey got down and was no longer blocking him from being able to see Amelia's face. She'd glanced at her reflection in the car mirror just a minute ago, so she knew that she still very much looked like she'd been crying.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked.

She nodded meekly. "A drink would be nice, yeah."

Amelia and Henry pulled their wet shoes off by the door and then went to sit in the living room. Even though there was a perfectly good couch, she found herself wanting to be on the floor rug with the dog instead, so she carefully sat down near the edge of it and crossed her legs. Moosey wasn't reluctant to lay down at her side and keep sniffing her, his nose tickling her foot.

"All I have is red," Liam said from the kitchen. "That okay?"

"That's great, thanks."

As he pulled out a glass for Amelia, he glanced at Henry to silently offer him one too, but he shook his head. The nearly-empty matching glass that was already sitting on the counter made her think that Liam had already been drinking himself, but there wasn't much other clutter to be seen aside from that. The dishwasher was running, suggesting that he might have shoved a bunch of stuff in it to tidy up shortly before they arrived.

As her eyes drifted around what she could see of the apartment, it was impossible not to linger on a framed picture of Lily and Liam that hung on the wall. They looked so happy, so young, and it hit her all over again that they really were just kids. Sure, they might have only been a couple of years younger than she and Henry were, but Amelia herself barely felt like an adult most days. Lily was still in college, Liam only a few months out of it.

She wondered for perhaps the thousandth time how he and Henry were managing to stay afloat at all, how any twenty-something was expected to cope with a mess of such proportions. Amelia barely knew how to find her tax forms online, much less try to find a literal missing human.

Henry decided to also be on the floor, sitting back against the TV console and stretching his legs out in front of him. He looked tired enough to close his eyes and yet also uneasy at the same time, still holding tension in his shoulders despite looking relaxed otherwise. Liam brought over her glass of wine; she thanked him as he lowered himself onto the couch.

"So," Henry said. "Why are we here?"

"You know how I've been checking her emails?" Liam questioned. Henry nodded; Amelia continued stroking the dog's head. "Well, one came through today. A receipt. Her prescription was filled this morning."

He managed to say it straightforwardly, but Henry went utterly still. Amelia stopped as well, her glass halfway lifted to her lips.

"So..." Henry said quietly, like he was scared he was misunderstanding.

"So...she's alive."

The weight of that sentence didn't register with Amelia, not really. She was too busy watching Henry as he pressed his lips together and then took a shaky breath, attempting to keep himself composed. His eyes were bright, a fractured kaleidoscope of a million emotions, and she wanted to say, It's okay, Henry, I understand you, I know what it's like to be feeling a million things at once, to have your heart be torn and tugged in so many different directions that you feel like you're dying–

But she was aware that she did not, in fact, truly understand what he could possibly be thinking right now. In some ways, that didn't matter, because her heart still reached out to him, she still ached to reciprocate what he'd done for her back there on the bridge by offering him a brief glimpse of peace. So she reached over to lightly place a hand on his arm, gingerly rubbing her thumb back and forth for a second before pulling away again. He didn't look over at her.

"...What does this mean, then?" he finally asked. "Why is she–"

He paused, obviously torn between utter relief and frustration at the thousands of new questions that this must have raised in his mind. She wondered if he ever felt like there were two versions of himself cohabitating his body, the part of him that was enraged that anything like this could ever happen to Lily and the part of him that was enraged at her for disappearing on them.

It wasn't hard to grasp why Liam had been drinking before they showed up. His body seemed worn down with exhaustion in the same way that Henry's did, but his expression was more numb, more medicated.

He looked right at Henry and asked miserably, "Are you completely sure that she wouldn't run away from us?"

That obviously wasn't what he had expected to hear; his lips pulled into a frown. "Are you sure?"

He sat up straighter, more intently focused on Liam than he'd been a moment ago. Amelia's breath lodged in her throat. Those couple of silent seconds were like the calm before a storm, when the sky is clear but you can see the clouds ahead, nearly feel the hum of electricity in the air.

"Is there something you haven't told–" Henry started.

"Henry–" she began to interrupt him, startled by this sudden confrontational shift, at the same time as Liam flatly stated, "I asked her about getting married."

All three of them went as silent as corpses. The only sounds she could hear for several seconds were Moosey's tail thumping against the legs of the coffee table and the steady patter of rainy teardrops weeping their way down the windowpane.

And Amelia abruptly felt like an intruder, because surely Liam wouldn't be confessing to this in front of her if he wasn't at least mildly drunk.

He spread his hands in a sardonic gesture of self-deprecation. "I asked her about getting married," he repeated. "And two weeks later she's gone. Look me in the eye and tell me that this doesn't look like it's my fault."

But Henry didn't tell him anything. He looked as shocked as if he were learning for the first time that she was gone, his eyes screaming, Why didn't you tell me?

"Will you say something?"

"Alright," Henry finally, slowly nodded. "I think that's bullshit."

Amelia almost choked on her wine. Liam looked like he'd been slapped.

But Henry continued. "You know damn well that she'd want to marry you. That is the last thing she would run away from—give her a little more credit than that."

Liam seemed to wilt a little more, sink into the couch a little more, and it was a sad enough sight to make her want to go over there and give him a hug. He scrunched his eyes shut for a second like he could trick himself into believing that this would all go away in another minute.

"...Right. I'm sorry. I just—I don't even know what I'm supposed to think. Where I'm supposed to go from here. I think we're way in over our heads with this."

"You told her parents about the prescription, right?" Henry asked.

"Of course I did," Liam replied. "I'm not going to withhold information about their daughter from them just because we're all a little pissed off with each other right now. They're gonna talk to the police again, but...well, I doubt her getting medicine is really gonna help back our case that something's wrong."

A mere mention of the police was enough to make Amelia start feeling sick; she set her wine glass down. Her palms felt sweaty and she had to remind herself that Colton would be nowhere near this case. It was way out of his league—he spent most of his time just handing out traffic tickets.

The pieces of this puzzle weren't connecting for her. She felt her eyebrows scrunch together; it seemed like the boys were forgetting something important.

"But it does look weird, doesn't it?" she spoke up. "No one's heard from her in weeks and all of her stuff was left behind, but she can go and get a prescription? There's...I don't think there's any way she could be alone."

Liam faltered. "What do you mean?"

"You just said it yourself—you have your eyes on her communications, her money," she explained. "And we know that she doesn't have her car, which means that all of those things must be coming from somewhere else. There...there has to be someone with her."

Amelia felt her breath tighten in her lungs as she looked at them. She hadn't expected to stumble upon any fact of importance tonight—she'd only followed Henry here because she was lonely, not because she'd thought for a second that she would be of use—but it gradually dawned on her that this might be it. The existence of this unknown other, whether a mysterious ally who was aiding her or a shadow lurking behind her, was their first real lead.

"But..." Liam drifted off. He didn't finish the sentence; he didn't need to. She was certain that they were all thinking the same thing—

Who?

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A/N:

well gang, it looks like we've got another mystery on our hands