The moment I stepped inside, the metallic door chime greeted me in Chinese. It was as if every Chinese restaurant had the same cookie-cutter chime special issued to them when they opened their doors to the public. The unmistakable scent of Chinese food hit my nose before my foot hit the floor. Lily’s Diner, a cute little hole-in-the-wall place, held a lot of memories for me. I was always grateful to be back, but these days, the gratitude was also intermingling with a growing reluctance and the shadow of a dead man we followed here -— Nathan Ming, the victim of the cult we couldn’t save. Somehow, misfortune had led me back here again; this time it was a missing girl, and once again, I had Gabe by my side.

  Lily was not hard to spot, standing right behind the counter in her work apron. The name “Yang’s Diner” was embroidered on the front in shiny red lettering, but I didn’t care what this place was called. To me, it would always be “Lily’s Diner” that’s what I always called it back then. When we were kids, I spent way too much time here. We would sit around killing time and doing homework, or at least pretending we were, while our parents were too busy to check. It was simpler back then when we were young and hadn’t had enough time yet to grow apart.

  “Hey, Lily,” I said, walking towards her. “It’s been a while.”

  Even when I knew that no one would hold it against me, I hated breaking promises. I hated them almost as much as I hated having others’ expectations on my back. Both these things had one thing in common: people to disappoint. There were always people I couldn’t bear to disappoint. Mainly, that had been my parents, but anyone I cared about was a possible candidate. What kept me away from here wasn’t a reluctance to come back and spend some time with her again, but the voice in the back of my head nagging me about ghosting the people who cared about me whenever I didn’t feel up to par.

  Lily’s face lit up as she turned to face me.

  “Lana!” she cried with a warmth in her voice I couldn’t return. “You’re back!”

  “Yeah…” I muttered. “Sorry about that.”

  It didn’t take long for all of us to get reacquainted. Lily was happy to see Gabe again too; she was just that sort of person. She made friends with everyone everywhere she went. There was a time when I wished some of that would rub off on me too, but I wasn’t sure if that was really my true desire or my mother’s. I’d long since learned to lean into my strengths and leave the rest behind. If we needed a good cop, Gabe could play it better than me.

  After sitting down, Lily took our orders. Same thing as last time for me, but Gabe switched it up. I had no doubt that if he could find the time, it’d end up on his food review blog, “Gabe’s Good Eats.” The following he had wasn’t large, but as he said it, it was more about the passion and good food than anything else. If people couldn’t see his vision, they still had time to catch up.

  A young boy poked his head out from the back.

  “Mom, can I play games now?” he asked.

  Lily, still busy fussing with a pan in the kitchen, called out to him without turning to look.

  “Did you finish your homework?” she asked.

  The boy hesitated and fidgeted with the telltale signs of guilt. That was answer enough to blow his cover. Tough luck, kid; better luck next time. He must have been one of Lily’s sons.

  “That’s what I thought,” she sighed, shooing him away with a wave of her hand. “No games until you’re done. Be good, okay? Mom has important friends today.”

  As the boy slunk off, I watched with a faint sense of longing. I didn’t know what it was like to be a mother, only what it was like to be on the other side as the child, and my interactions with my mother had not always been as easy. Sins of the father, sins of the son -— a biblical verse I knew well. My mother’s childhood had not been a happy one either, and her pain passed on down to me. Generations of pain and intergenerational trauma left a mark on the youth time and time again.

  Lily turned back to us.

  “My oldest,” she said. “Liam, he turns eight soon.”

  “Already?” I asked.

  I hadn’t realized he could have been that old already. Considering our age, she must have only been in her mid-twenties when she became a mother. That was especially young these days when people put it off as long as they could in the hopes of a better tomorrow.

  “I didn’t waste any time!” she laughed. “Always knew I wanted to be a mother. We had kids as soon as we could.”

  She paused to think a moment before turning back to look at me.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said. “We weren’t ready at all, but I don’t regret it either because they make it worth it every day.”

  Having children didn’t make you an expert overnight, but picking a mother’s brain about the case was starting to look like not such a bad idea. My relationship with my family was complicated, but at the end of the day, I slept easy at night knowing that I was safe, fed, and provided for even if my eccentricities made me feel out of place at times, almost like an alien pretending to be human. Cassie’s family was something else entirely. The way her parents looked at us when we asked them where she was spoke volumes on its own.

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked quietly.

  She could see in my eyes that I was serious.

  “Is it sensitive?” she asked, looking worriedly back and forth between us, but before anyone could answer, she checked the time, untied her apron, and set it aside.

  “Actually, never mind. It’s midday. We’re closing anyway,” she said.

  Gabe wasn’t as familiar with Asian restaurants, so I decided to do him a favor and fill in the blanks like a good friend.

  “A lot of Asian restaurants close right after the lunchtime rush and reopen just in time for dinner,” I said. “Although, I’m surprised we were just on time; if we’d come in just ten or twenty minutes later, we’d have been in trouble.”

  Lily scratched her chin sheepishly.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Well… I might have closed a bit early,” she admitted.

  “Are we intruding?” I asked.

  “No, no, no, no,” she said, waving off our concerns. “It’s fine. It’s slow right now anyway.”

  “It’s always slow when we come, huh?” I asked.

  I frowned. Before, I just chalked it up to the odd hours, but now I was getting suspicious; three times is a pattern. Either they were having trouble attracting customers or having cops in uniform was bad for business. Personally, I had my money on the latter.

  “Just a coincidence,” she insisted, more for my benefit than for hers.

  Lily sat down across from us, and we got to work.

  “We’re working on a missing persons case,” I said, making sure to hit all the key points.

  Everything she needed to give us her take was laid out in plain English with the exception of Cassie’s identifying information — her name, address, and anything else that could have given away who we were looking for. It was important to be discreet while talking about an ongoing case, especially while discussing it with a civilian.

  “Have you ever dealt with a runaway?” I asked, propping up my elbows on the table.

  “Not personally,” she said. “But we’ve all heard stories, haven’t we?”

  She exhaled thoughtfully, glancing back over her shoulder towards the door her son had just retreated through.

  “We’re trying to get into her head,” I said quietly. “Her home life was not a happy one, and she was a misfit, to put it lightly.”

  Lily nodded slowly.

  “It’s different if they ran than if they were taken or lost,” I said. “Kids who run away usually have a reason, but it’s not always what you’d expect. Some are scared, some are acting out, and some just don’t feel safe at home.”

  “It’s a scary world out there,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine my boys somewhere all alone without me...”

  She paused for a moment, swallowing hard.

  “You said her family wasn’t looking for her, right?” she asked, dropping her gaze to the table.

  “No,” I whispered. “They’re not.”

  We could tell that Lily needed some time to digest, and Gabe was perfectly happy to let me do the talking with my old friend, so, for a moment, the three of us sat quietly together until she looked back up at me.

  “Parents are everything to kids. Food. Shelter. Home,” she said, with emphasis. “If she’s gone somewhere, she must have been in so much… so much pain.”

  Pain. I think we all knew what that felt like. Even those with a happier or more comfortable life could still suffer; there was no magic formula to live a life free from suffering.

  “It’s not normal,” she said definitively. “To want to be anywhere else.”

  That took me aback. She wasn’t wrong; kids didn’t run away from happy homes. They always clung to their parents, desperate to please -— often even when they lacked safety, care, or opportunity — just for the chance of belonging. They had to suffer endlessly, years on end, before the dam would finally break and they’d pack their bags, willing to try their luck anywhere else because anything would be better. That’s the way we all were; it was in our blood, buried deep in our DNA.

  I was one of those kids once. I was one of those kids who dreamed about being anywhere else. Where? I didn’t know. How? It didn’t matter. When? The sooner, the better. It wasn’t well thought out — just the hungry cravings of someone who felt like they didn’t belong. Things weren’t always easy with my parents. My dad was never home, always working late, and how could I ask him to do anything else when his work was so important? People depended on him; lives hung in the balance. On the other hand, my mother wanted me to be something I wasn’t — smaller, more demure, and absolutely perfect. Once in a while, when I did something especially egregious, she’d chastise me in that small, unspoken way that never needed to be said aloud.

  “No, it’s not,” I murmured, echoing her sentiment. “There’s always something broken.”

  “A lot of parents will say they’re surprised, but no one changes that fast,” she said. “There’re always signs somewhere, maybe ones no one wanted to see.”

  Signs. There were so many — her special interest in what her religious community forbade, her isolation, and her collapsed demeanor. For anyone to have missed them, they must have been blind or willfully ignorant. That was an answer that led to a new question: what if there was someone out there who didn’t refuse to see?

  We had already finished our food, but I kept cutting up what was left into smaller and smaller pieces, dissecting it like the thoughts in my head. Children who ran away often cried out for help first because even if a part of them wanted to go, a part of them also wanted to be found. It was like a rabbit running away from a fox, looking back over its shoulder, hoping that the creature chasing after it would save it instead.

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said, shooting Gabe a pointed look; it was time to go.

  Lily almost just watched us leave, but just after Gabe stepped out the front door, she called out to me.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  I paused mid-step, briefly considering walking out anyway, but hesitation and curiosity got the best of me, and I let the door swing shut as I turned around to face her.

  “Are you going to come back?” she asked.

  An awkward tension hung in the air; neither of us knew the right thing to say. There were countless conventional niceties for skating around small talk, but none for saying what really mattered. We weren’t about to ask about the weather or comment on how nice the day was, and we sure as hell weren’t about to tell each other we should do this again sometime if we didn’t really mean it. There was a limit to how much you could hide what needed to be said under the guise of polite society.

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “But I’d like to.”

  She nodded, and then we just stood there.

  “Sorry,” I said, breaking the silence. “I always bring bad news when I come by.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t be, Lana. It’s been fun seeing you again.”

  “Why?” I asked, the human embodiment of a bad omen.

  My business was in the dead and missing, the things that went wrong, and the people who needed to pay for them. I had been staring into the abyss for as long as I could remember, drawn to the things that went bump in the night and the ugly truths that people refused to see. Staring that long into the blackness of others’ hearts stained me black too. Maybe, charitably, I could have left out my youngest years when I was still too naive and innocent to know how cruel and rotten the world could really be, but who I was now was not exactly a bundle of sunshine and roses.

  “I guess...” she said. “It’s one of the only times I get to feel more than just a wife and a mother.”

  She waved her arms defensively in front of her, more for herself than me.

  “Don’t get me wrong!” she cried. “I love it here, my kids, my husband! It’s just that sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I had done something else… something bigger. And sometimes I feel like I get so wrapped up in what I’m supposed to be that I forget to be more than that. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said, letting the tension ease from my shoulders. “If there’s anyone that would understand that, it’s me.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because we’re the same,” I admitted. “See you around.”

  The door slammed shut behind me, and then there was a lightness in my body as I breathed in the cool autumnal air. Lily understood me. Somehow we had ended up taking completely different paths and ended up in the same place. It wasn’t in the details, just the same existential dread. Then again, you never really knew what someone else was thinking, not exactly anyway. I was reminded of that every day. No matter how hard I tried to read everyone around me, desperate to control my environment, there were always signs I missed, misread, or overthought.

  Gabe was lounging against the wall, perfectly content to give me a little extra time to catch up with an old friend.

  “Something good?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” I said. “But you wouldn’t get it. Girl stuff, no boys allowed.”

  He chuckled and pushed off the wall, rolling his shoulders to work the kinks out. Behind him, I caught sight of a girl peeking at us from behind a corner. It seemed we were a magnet for that sort of thing. I quirked a brow at Gabe, and he gestured back towards her with his head as he pulled an arm across his chest to stretch.

  “She’s been doing that for a while,” he said. “Wanna see what her deal is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sounds like fun.”

  It wasn’t long before an uncanny feeling of déjà vu kicked in. I’d seen those eyes before. A feeling was building up in my gut the same way I’d felt back in that school’s courtyard. It was then that I’d recognized her — the last girl, the one who had lingered a little longer than the others, staring at us wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. If Cassie did have a friend, and if this was her, then she might know something.

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