Carl still leaves the coffee mug on the counter.
Half-full, rim stained with her faint lipstick. He hasn't touched it in years. Some mornings he stands there, staring at it the way people stare at old photographs quiet, expectant, as though time might reverse if he waits long enough.
He has learned not to wait long.
The house is quiet now, the way it was before Selene arrived and filled every corner with sound. She was the opposite of stillness: laughter that echoed off the walls, sudden plans for weekend drives to quiet forests or coastal trails she loved so much, her hand always reaching for his in crowds he hated navigating. As a physician, she moved through hospital chaos with quick judgments and steady hands; at home, she made first approaches conversations, kisses, adventures while Carl fumbled for words. She pulled him into life. He let her become his anchor.
They became engaged under string lights in the backyard one summer evening, her family toasting to something solid, something lasting. Carl loved her quietly, consumingly the kind of love that rearranges gravity when everything else has fallen away.
One morning she simply wasn't there.
No broken glass. No overturned chair. Her coffee mug sat cooling on the counter, still warm when he found it. Her shoes waited by the door in their usual haphazard pair. Her phone charger glowed beside the bed. She had stepped out or been taken without a sound, as if the air itself had folded around her and carried her away.
The police came. Questions overlapped like overlapping shadows. Carl answered each one with calm precision, retracing their last hours until the words lost meaning. He left her things untouched. Friends said he was hollowed, not frantic. He searched anyway quietly, methodically because stopping felt like surrender.
Therapy followed. In the dim office, the therapist asked once if he felt anger about the accident that took his foster parents years earlier, about Selene vanishing, about any of it.
Carl considered the question. "No," he said.
A note was made. Underlined twice.
He kept going. Fixed Mrs. Cooper's sagging gate without being asked. Delivered groceries to the widow on Maple. Smiled when expected. The community still loved him for it called him reliable, respected. But the fatigue carved deeper lines around his eyes, and there were moments brief, almost invisible when he froze mid-sentence, head tilted, as if catching a voice no one else heard.
Neighbors noticed other things. Him standing motionless in the backyard after dark, staring at the empty swing set where Selene once sat reading patient files. Once, Mrs. Cooper swore she saw him on the porch at 2 a.m., speaking softly to the shadows, nodding as though someone replied. She pretends not to notice now. Rebecca, Selene's childhood friend quick-tempered, gossipy, always suspicious of Carl even when she was happy for Selene does notice. She hasn't stopped asking questions.
Carl doesn't mind the watching. He has nothing to hide.
Except the part where he still hears her.
Not in his head. In the house.
A footstep on the stair. A laugh cut short in the hallway. A whisper just behind the door.
He turns. Always turns.
And the house is empty.
But not silent.
Not to him.