TOWARD THE DISTANCE Chapter 10

Lily went quiet.

She hadn't given up. The title of Mrs. Harrington — the money, the house, the power — she was still convinced those things would eventually be hers. Patience was just another tool in her arsenal. She could wait.

Cade hadn't been home during the day in months. Walking through the front door felt strange — like stepping into a museum. Everything was perfect. The gardens were trimmed, the floors gleamed, the air smelled faintly of the flowers Elena kept in crystal vases on every surface. It was a home that had been loved into shape, quietly and carefully, over years.

It was Elena's work. All of it.

"Elena?" Cade called out, his voice echoing through the foyer. "I'm home."

He moved through the living room, the kitchen, the study. Silence everywhere.

A housekeeper was dusting near the staircase. Cade stopped her. "Where's my wife? Did she go out?"

The housekeeper exchanged a look with the other staff members nearby. Each of them wore the same uncomfortable expression — the kind people get when they know something they don't want to be the one to say.

"We… we haven't seen her today, Mr. Harrington. Not since this morning."

Cade's frown deepened. "You don't know if she ate breakfast? Nothing?"

Nobody answered.

He held their gaze for a moment, then let it go. "Fine. I'll find her myself."

He climbed the stairs quietly, the way he used to when Elena would sleep in on lazy mornings and he'd sneak up to watch her for a while before waking her. Old habits.

The bedroom door was open. Sunlight flooded the room — warm, golden, peaceful. The curtains billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. Everything looked exactly the way it always did.

Except Elena wasn't there.

Cade walked in slowly. He checked the bathroom, the closet, the balcony. Nothing.

Then he noticed it — on the vanity table, beneath a small box, a piece of paper. Elena's handwriting. He knew it instantly; he'd watched her write thousands of letters, seen her fill sketchbook after sketchbook with her careful, elegant hand.

He picked it up and read:

I know about you and Lily. I know everything.

I'm leaving. Don't look for me.

Two sentences. No signature. No "I love you," no "goodbye," no explanation beyond the bare, brutal facts. She hadn't even bothered to soften it.

Cade stood there for a long time, holding the note, feeling the paper go damp from his grip.

Then he called her.

No answer.

He called again. And again. And again.

Nothing.

He searched the house — every room, every corner, every place she'd ever loved to sit. The garden where she grew herbs. The rooftop where she'd hung a swing for watching the stars. All of it empty.

"Elena —"

The voicemail picked up every time. Her voice, calm and soft, recording a greeting she'd made months ago, back when everything was still supposed to be fine.

Cade pressed the phone against his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut.

He called her friends next — their shared friends, the people they'd known since college.

Her closest friend answered on the third try, and the first thing she said was a cold laugh. "You two are married. If you can't find her, how am I supposed to?"

Click.

He tried the others. Same thing. Polite refusals, barely concealed anger, a few outright hostile silences before the line went dead.

They all knew. They had all seen it coming — the distance, the way Elena had slowly retreated into herself over the past year — and Cade had been too blind, too comfortable, too wrapped up in his other life to notice.

He called the last person on his list — an old classmate, someone who had always been neutral, diplomatic.

"Has she contacted anyone recently?" Cade asked, his voice raw. "If she was really planning to leave, she must have talked to someone —"

The classmate sounded almost sad. "Cade — you're the person closest to her. If you didn't see any signs, what do you think talking to us would have accomplished? Maybe you should think about whether you two have actually argued recently."

Cade went silent.

They hadn't argued. Not once. And that, he realized with a sickening clarity, was exactly the problem. If they had fought — if Elena had screamed at him, confronted him, given him a chance to defend himself — maybe she would have stayed long enough for him to fix it.

But she hadn't. She had simply… decided. Quietly, completely, without drama or warning. And now she was gone.