Karen went back through all of Charlie’s things as Hauck had asked her. She opened the cartons she had kept piled in the basement, doing her best to avoid the attention of the kids. Heavy, boxed-up files that Heather, his secretary, had sent with a note: You never know what’s in them. Maybe something you’ll want to keep. Brochures for trips they had taken as a family. The ski house they rented one year at Whistler. Letters. A kazillion letters. A bunch of things on the Mustang, which Charlie had asked her in the will he left not to sell.

Basically, the sum of their lives together. Stuff Karen had never had the heart to go through. But nothing that helped. At some point she sat in frustration with her back against the concrete basement wall and silently swore at him. Charlie, why the hell did you do this to us?

Then she went through the computer that was still sitting at his desk. She turned it on for the first time since the incident. It felt weird, invasive—as if she were prying into him. His signature was everywhere. In a million years she would never have done this when he was alive. Charlie never kept a password. Karen was able to get right in. What on earth had there ever been to hide?

She scrolled through his stored Word documents. Mostly they were letters he’d written from home—to industry people, trade publications. The draft of a speech or two he’d given. She went on his AOL account. Any e-mails he might’ve written before he disappeared had probably long since been wiped away.

It felt futile. And dirty, going through his things. She sat there at his desk, in the messy study, much of it still just as he’d left it a year before, where he’d paid the bills and read over his trade journals and checked his positions, the desk still piled with trade sheets and prospectuses.

There was nothing. He didn’t want to be found. He could be anywhere in the fucking world.

And the truth was, Karen had no idea what she was gong to do if she even found him.

She contacted Heather, who was working at a small law firm now. And Linda Edelstein, whom Karen still occasionally used as a travel agent. She asked them both to think back on whether Charlie had made any unusual purchases (“a condo somewhere, as crazy as that sounds, or a car?”) or booked any travel plans in the weeks before he died. She concocted this inane story about discovering something in his office about a surprise trip he’d been planning, an anniversary thing.

How in the world could she possibly tell them what was really in her mind?

As a friend, Linda scrolled back through her travel computer. “I don’t think so, Kar. I would have remembered at the time. I’m sorry, hon. There’s nothing here.”

This was insane. Karen sat there among her husband’s things at her wits’ end, growing angry, wishing she never had watched that documentary. It had changed everything. Why would you do this to us, Charlie? What could you possibly have done?

Tell me, Charlie!

She picked up a stack of loose papers and went to throw them against the wall. Just then her gaze fell to a memo from Harbor that was still there from a year before. Her eye ran down the office distribution list. Maybe they knew. She spotted a name there—a name that hadn’t crossed her mind in months.

Along with a voice. A voice she had never responded to, but one that now suddenly echoed in her ears with the same ringing message:

I’d like to speak with you, Mrs. Friedman…. There are some things you ought to know.