THE EMPTY KITCHEN CHAIR: ZERO BALANCE, FINAL WARNING

Three days had passed since I walked out of my front door in Virginia.

To the rest of the world, I had vanished. My house was locked tight, my mail was on a permanent hold, and my phone was disconnected from my primary carrier. For a woman who had spent forty years answering every ring, responding to every crisis, and organizing every family gathering, the silence was intoxicating.

I spent my days walking through the moss-draped squares of historic Savannah, reading nineteenth-century poetry on park benches, and eating warm peach cobbler at local diners where nobody knew my name or cared about my bank balance.

On the fourth morning, while browsing through a small, dusty antique bookstore near River Street, a familiar voice made my blood run cold.

“Excuse me, ma’am? Have you seen an older woman matching this description come through here?”

I froze behind a towering stack of leather-bound encyclopedias.

It was Richard.

His voice sounded ragged, exhausted, and laced with a frantic edge that terrified me. He had tracked me down—not through magic, but through logic. Savannah was where Edward and I had spent our honeymoon forty-five years ago. It was the only place outside of Philadelphia where I had ever expressed a genuine, lasting attachment.

“No, sir, can’t say that I have,” replied the elderly bookstore clerk with a slow southern drawl. “We get hundreds of tourists through here every day. Try the riverfront hotels.”

I held my breath, pressing my back flat against the bookshelf, praying the dust wouldn't make me sneeze.

Through a narrow gap between two volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I watched my son.

He looked ten years older than he had a week ago. His designer suit jacket was rumpled, his shirt collar was unbuttoned, and dark, hollow circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and hadn't stopped running since the moment he opened that envelope on my kitchen table.

“Thank you,” Richard muttered, rubbing his face with shaking hands before turning and hurrying out of the shop, the brass bell jingling sharply behind him.