David Rothwell learned his wife was dead on a Tuesday, six months after she disappeared.The medical examiner's office called at 2:15 p.m., interrupting a deposition. He'd stepped into the hallway, half expecting another wrong number, another robocall. Instead, a woman with a careful, practiced voice told him they'd found remains matching Audrey's dental records in a vehicle pulled from the Quabbin Reservoir."I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Rothwell."He stood in the hallway outside Conference Room C, looking at the abstract art his father had commissioned—bold slashes of red and black that meant nothing—and tried to make sense of the words. Remains. Such a clinical term for what was left of a person."How long?" His voice sounded far away."The vehicle had been submerged approximately six months. The timeline matches your wife's missing persons report."Six months. Almost to the day since he'd woken to find Audrey gone. No note. Her car missing. Her phone, laptop, purse—all gone. The police had suggested suicide, given her "state of mind" after the research setback. He'd wanted to scream that they didn't know her, that Audrey Chen didn't quit, that her father had died so she could succeed and she'd never squander that.But he'd said none of it. He'd filled out forms, provided photos, answered questions. And slowly, as weeks became months, he'd started to let himself believe she'd simply left. Run away from him, from the marriage, from everything that had broken between them. It was easier than the alternative."Mr. Rothwell? We'll need you to come in and sign some documents. We can arrange—""I'll be there tomorrow."He hung up and stood very still, aware of his heart beating, his breath moving. The mechanical persistence of being alive.Amanda appeared at his elbow. "David? The Klein deposition—""Reschedule it.""But they've flown in from—""I said reschedule it." He walked past her, grabbed his coat, and left.He drove without thinking, muscle memory taking him across the river into Cambridge, down Main Street through Kendall Square. Past the Cambridge BioMed Research Institute where Audrey had spent years chasing an impossible dream. The building looked the same. Biogen's tower gleamed in the afternoon sun. The world had continued without her.He ended up at their house in Somerville—his house now, he supposed. Everything inside was exactly as she'd left it. He'd changed nothing. Her coffee mug still sat by the sink. Her jacket hung on the hook by the door. The lab notebooks she'd brought home were stacked on the kitchen table, pages covered in her precise handwriting and sketches of molecular structures.He'd lied to the police about the state of their marriage. Told them everything was fine, that Audrey had been stressed about work but happy at home. The truth was uglier. The truth was he'd been sleeping with Amanda for eight months. The truth was Audrey had known—he'd seen it in her face that morning when his phone lit up with Amanda's text, seen the way something died behind her eyes even as she said nothing.The silence had been worse than screaming.He'd wanted to end it with Amanda after that. Had tried, in his fumbling way. But Amanda had cried, and he'd felt trapped between two versions of guilt, and in the end he'd done nothing. Let it continue. Let his marriage rot while he hid in conference rooms and hotel rooms and anywhere but home.And then Audrey had vanished.He'd spent six months in purgatory, unable to grieve or move forward, suspended in not-knowing. Now he had his answer. She'd driven to the Quabbin Reservoir—an hour west, a place they'd never been together—and driven her car into the water.Because of him.He picked up one of her notebooks and flipped through it. Pages of calculations, failure analysis, protocol adjustments. Near the end, a different kind of entry:Cooling rate problem persists. Marcus suggested volumetric heating via magnetic nanoparticles—brilliant but years away. E. Vance wants results next quarter. D. wants divorce. Everyone wants something I can't give.Thought: what if the only variable I can control is time itself?The entry was dated three days before she disappeared.David read it again, trying to parse meaning from the words. What if the only variable I can control is time itself? It sounded like her—abstract, scientific, turning life into a problem she could solve. But solve how?His phone buzzed. Amanda: I heard. I'm so sorry. Do you want me to come over?He turned the phone off.The funeral was small. Audrey's brother James flew in from San Francisco, hollow-eyed and furious. He didn't speak to David beyond the necessary formalities. A handful of colleagues from the institute came—Eleanor Vance, two postdocs, the department administrator. No one from David's world. His parents sent flowers and regrets; his mother was in Provence and couldn't possibly make it back in time.Marcus Foster didn't come. David had tracked him down through the institute, left a voicemail. No response. Later, someone mentioned Marcus had transferred to Seattle months ago, right around when Audrey disappeared. Coincidence, probably. Or not.The service was at Mount Auburn Cemetery, under trees starting to turn. The casket was closed—there wasn't much to bury after six months underwater. David stood and listened to a minister who'd never met Audrey recite generic platitudes about loss and peace.James spoke briefly. "My sister gave everything to her work. She believed science could solve the impossible. She was brilliant and stubborn and she deserved better."The last part was aimed at David.Afterward, James cornered him by the cars. "You killed her.""James—""Not legally. But you know what you did." James's hands were shaking. "She called me two weeks before she disappeared. Told me about the affair. Said she felt invisible. She'd sacrificed everything—her twenties, her social life, her health—for that research, and you couldn't even pretend to care.""I did care.""You had a funny way of showing it." James turned away, then back. "She asked me once if I thought people could be frozen and brought back. Cryonics, like in sci-fi. I told her it was impossible with current technology. She got this look, like she was calculating something." He laughed, bitter. "I thought she was joking. Turns out the joke's on all of us."He walked away, leaving David with a creeping unease he couldn't name.That night, David went back to the house and read through Audrey's notebooks methodically, something he should have done months ago. Most of it was beyond him—equations and technical jargon. But certain entries stood out:If vitrification can preserve cellular structure indefinitely at -196°C, and if rewarming can be achieved uniformly via nanoparticle-mediated heating, then time becomes negotiable. Subject enters stasis; world continues; subject reemerges when technology allows recovery.Legal obstacle: death certificate required for complete separation. Missing persons generate searches, questions, complications. Better to die cleanly.M. would help if asked. But asking means burdening him, and I've burdened enough people.M. Marcus.David sat back, his mind racing. It was insane. It was impossible. Audrey couldn't have—But what if she had?What if his wife hadn't committed suicide? What if she'd frozen herself, staged her death, and planned to wake up a decade later when the science worked?It would be exactly like her. Turn herself into data. Control the one variable no one else could.His hands shook as he picked up his phone and called the medical examiner's office. Got transferred three times before reaching someone who could answer questions."The remains found in the Quabbin vehicle," David said carefully. "How was identification confirmed?""Dental records, primarily. The submersion made visual identification impossible.""Were there full skeletal remains?"A pause. "I'm not authorized to discuss details of an active case.""I'm the next of kin. I have a right—""Mr. Rothwell, I understand this is difficult. The identification was conclusive. Your wife's dental records matched the remains. The medical examiner signed the death certificate. I'm very sorry."David hung up and sat in the kitchen, staring at Audrey's notebooks.Dental records could be faked. Planted. If you were smart enough—and Audrey was—you could stage a death that would pass official scrutiny. The Quabbin was huge, remote. A car going in would take months to find. By the time it was discovered, any evidence would be compromised by water, time, decay.He thought about Marcus Foster, who'd transferred to Seattle and never returned David's call.He thought about Audrey's last notebook entry: The only variable I can control is time itself.He thought about the woman he'd married—brilliant, driven, capable of anything when she set her mind to it.And slowly, impossibly, he let himself consider that she might not be dead at all.That somewhere, in some lab he didn't know about, his wife was frozen, waiting.The thought should have brought relief. Instead, it brought a grief so profound he couldn't breathe. Because if she'd done this—if she'd chosen to leave so completely that she'd erased herself from existence—then she'd looked at her life, at their marriage, at him, and decided it was all worth abandoning.He'd lost her long before she disappeared.The death certificate just made it official.
