Callahan Meyer’s public severance of ties with Alexandria Rodriguez was absolute. The message was clear.

But Callahan had no time to focus on the media fallout back home. On the train to Montreal, he received an international call from Peter Cole.

Peter’s voice sounded aged and thin, thick with congestion, as if he had been weeping for hours. "Callahan... we—we saw what Alexandria posted, and we saw your statement. That girl, is she... is she really lying about everything? The ice storage, the accident, the injuries... did she stage it all herself?"

"Sir," Callahan interrupted, his voice weary but steady. "Maya never hurt her. Not once. Alexandria orchestrated the entire thing. We were all fooled, blinded by our own biases."

On the other end of the line came the sound of Martha Cole’s ragged sobbing, followed by Peter’s heavy, uneven breathing.

"Then... what we did to Maya... locking her up, forcing her to take the fall..." Martha sobbed. "She must have been in such agony! She was already injured, she’d just lost her baby... We’re monsters, Callahan. You have to find her. Tell her that her mother and father know they were wrong. Tell her to come home. We’ll make it up to her—we’ll treat her twice as well as before..."

*Come home?*

Callahan’s jaw tightened. He raked a hand through his hair, his face a mask of jagged, raw regret.

"Come home?" He gazed out the train window at the desolate, autumn landscape of a foreign country, his voice barely a whisper. "Mr. and Mrs. Cole, do you honestly think she still has a home to return to?"

The crying on the other end ceased abruptly, replaced by a dead, suffocating silence.

After a long moment, Peter’s voice returned, raw and gravelly with remorse: "We... we were the ones who destroyed her home."

After hanging up, Callahan leaned his forehead against the cold windowpane and closed his eyes.

*Maya, did you hear that? They regret it.*

*But it’s too late, isn't it?*

*I regret it, too.*

*I regret not seeing the truth sooner. I regret not standing by your side when you needed me most. I regret hurting you and pushing you away.*

*But is there still time?*

Deep autumn had settled over Montreal, and sycamore leaves blanketed the ground. Here, Callahan began a long, desperate search.

Montreal’s complex linguistic landscape made the task even harder. He scoured every neighborhood, every bistro, every independent bookstore, and every campus he could find, clutching a photo of Maya and asking strangers in halting, broken French and English.

"Excuse me, have you seen this young woman? She’s very slender, about this tall... she has beautiful eyes."

Most of the time, he was met with nothing but polite, sympathetic shakes of the head.

A month bled by. He had walked nearly every street in the city. He had lost weight, his eyes were hollowed out and shadowed, and his face was covered in thick stubble. His expensive suit was crumpled and stained with dust. The once-polished heir of the Meyer family now wandered the foreign streets like a broken man.

Eventually, Peter and Martha, overcome with worry, flew in to help. The three of them wandered the city like lost souls, but they found nothing. The two elders looked increasingly withered, the last flicker of hope in their eyes finally extinguished. Crushed by their own regret, they eventually flew back home.

When the final cold snap of late autumn arrived, the first snow fell in Montreal.

Fine, delicate flakes drifted down, landing on Callahan’s shoulders and hair, melting into a bone-deep chill.

He stood in the square outside the Notre-Dame Basilica, staring at the central fountain. It had been drained for the season, the basin now locked under a thin sheet of ice.

Just then, a slender figure in an off-white parka and a red scarf caught his eye.

She was standing with her back to him, bent slightly as if she were feeding pigeons. The curve of her cheek, that sharp, delicate chin, the quiet, graceful way she held herself...

Callahan’s heart stopped.

Adrenaline roared in his ears. He didn't care about anything else; he shoved through the crowd, sprinting toward her. With every ounce of strength he had left, he shouted the name he had obsessed over for a thousand nights:

"Maya—!"