1. The Silence of the Canary
It had been exactly fourteen days, three hours, and twelve minutes since I had heard my daughter’s voice.
It wasn’t just the absence of a phone call. It was the complete, suffocating cessation of the vibrant, chaotic communication that had defined our relationship for twenty-eight years. There was no random text complaining about traffic, no hastily snapped photo of a new recipe she was trying to cook, not even a generic, obligatory emoji response to my daily ‘Good morning, sweetheart.’
For the past two years, ever since Sarah had married Richard Vance, a wildly successful hedge fund manager with a smile that always reminded me of a feeding shark, I had watched my bright, fiercely independent daughter slowly, agonizingly fade.
