Part 1

There are people who measure time by calendars.

I measure mine by the Sundays my daughter never came home.

Once upon a time, Sunday mornings were the happiest hours of my week. The entire house would wake slowly to the smell of cinnamon pancakes, fresh coffee, and laundry drying somewhere in the backyard. Music echoed from the kitchen long before breakfast was ready because my daughter insisted every meal deserved a soundtrack.

Savannah—though almost no one called her that.

To me, she had always been Nana.

She earned that nickname before she could even pronounce her own name. As a toddler, she would proudly pat her tiny chest and announce, “Nana!” Every attempt at “Savannah” ended the same way. Eventually, everyone surrendered, and the nickname became part of who she was.

She was loud.

She was messy.

She danced while brushing her teeth, sang into spatulas like they were microphones, and somehow managed to leave syrup on every kitchen surface imaginable. Pancakes never landed perfectly on the plate. Flour always ended up in her hair. And somehow, every Sunday felt perfect because she was there.

Then one Sunday…

She disappeared.

Ten years have passed since the last breakfast we shared.

Ten years of setting three plates instead of two.

Ten years of staring at the empty chair across from mine before quietly putting the untouched food back into the refrigerator.

Friends stopped asking questions after the first year.

Neighbors stopped mentioning her after the third.

Even detectives eventually ran out of new leads.

But everyone kept giving me the exact same advice.

“You have to move on, Natalie.”

The words came from every direction.

Family.

Coworkers.

Therapists.

Even strangers who thought they were offering kindness.

“You deserve to live again.”

“She’s gone.”

“You can’t spend your whole life waiting.”

I smiled when they expected me to.

I nodded when it was easier than arguing.

But inside, I rejected every single word.

How do you move on from your child?

How do you bury someone when there was never a body?

Hope can become its own kind of prison.

Mine kept me alive.

And it kept hurting me every single day.

My husband, Felix, stopped talking about Nana years ago.

At first, we grieved together. We attended every police meeting, searched every neighborhood, answered every phone call, and followed every impossible lead. We barely slept. Every ringing phone made us jump.

But somewhere along the way…