executives and leave with everyone shaking hands.
But he couldn’t make his wife answer her phone.
And he couldn’t make Sophie come home.
His gaze drifted toward the staircase.
Only three weeks earlier, his daughter had raced down those steps wearing mismatched socks, shouting that she had discovered how to draw a butterfly.
He’d been in the kitchen taking a call.
“Daddy! Look!”
“One minute, princess.”
She’d waited patiently.
Then she’d wandered away.
He never did look at the drawing.
Now the house was so quiet he could hear the grandfather clock in the hallway.
Dominic climbed the stairs.
Sophie’s bedroom door was open.
The pink curtains were gone.
Her favorite dresses were missing.
The little rabbit-shaped lamp still stood beside the bed, but the mattress was bare.
He remembered how Lauren used to sit there every evening, patiently helping Sophie arrange her stuffed animals.
