Page 77 of Mr. Wilde

“Mom?” I shout, my voice sounding too loud for the eerie silence.

I walk into the living room and stop. It’s the heat of summertime in New Jersey, but the ten-foot Christmas tree still stands in the corner, its branches sagging under the weight of glass ornaments and tinsel. It hasn’t been taken down in years. A permanent monument to the last day our world made sense.

My father appears in the doorway of the study. He looks a decade older than he did six months ago. A shell of the man who built an empire.

“Wasn’t sure you remembered the way here,” he greets. No hug. No “how are you?” Just the stilted, hollow dialogue of the walking dead.

“Sorry. Busy with work,” I lie. It’s more of a half-truth. Because work does take up most of my time. But let’s be clear. I’ve looked for any reason to avoid coming back here.

My mother follows him, her movements slow, her eyes detached as they fix on a point somewhere over my shoulder. She looks fragile, as if a sudden breeze from the Hudson would shatter her.

“Max,” she whispers, offering a cheek that feels like cold parchment. “Did you bring her? Did Isla come with you?”

My stomach twists into a hard, cold knot. “No, Mom. Not this time.”

The blame hangs in the air of this room like a physical presence. My father hadn’t wanted Isla to go on that Caribbean cruise. He’d argued she was too young, and it was too far away. Yet Mom had encouraged her.

Enjoy yourself, Isla. Go before the coursework gets harder. Go before you’re tied to an internship.

She could have had no way of knowing she was signing my sister’s death warrant. That we’d never see her again.

The tree stands sentry over the despair residing here like an abandoned lighthouse. I try to ignore its presence whenever I’m here. I want to kick the fucker down and stomp the ornaments to smithereens. It’s hard enough entering this house without that constant flashing reminder as to why it’s still standing.

“We can’t take it down yet. Her presents are still there. Where would we put the gifts?” my mother would cry. “We have to keep it up so she won’t feel like we were impatient for her and moved on until next Christmas.”

Every visit, it’s the same. With each occurrence, I’d look to my father for help. But he would’ve already turned away, retreating into the silence of his office.

So here I am, summoned to the family home without a family. Just empty, heartbroken individuals who roam lifelessly within these walls. The bond we’d shared forever broken.

I’m back in this spiral. The guilt, the grief, and the cold, hard fact that I am the only one left to carry the weight of a family that died the day my sister disappeared.

Hours upon hours I’ve spent online, looking for any trace of her. But nothing. It’s as if she vanished into thin air.

I can solve any number of cases thrown my way, but not the most important one.

Standing in the center of the living room, my eyes catch on the blue lights of the Christmas tree as they reflect in the glass of a framed photo on the mantel. Isla is laughing in the picture, her Princeton sweatshirt tied around her waist, her eyes bright with the kind of uncomplicated future I haven’t seen in years.

It had all started with a brochure for Azure Crest Cruise Lines. Isla was a senior, glowing with the success of her early-admittance letters for grad school. She wanted one last summer of freedom with her roommates before the world got serious.

My father had paced our porch, his jaw tight. “The southern Caribbean. It’s too far, Isla. Why not wait until we can all go together?”

Isla was a daddy’s girl. She knew exactly how to tuck her head onto his shoulder and melt his resolve. “I’ll call you at every port, Dad. I’ll be back before you can even miss me.”

And she’d kept her promise. We had a flurry of photos from the first three stops. Isla with a tropical drink, Isla sunburned on a deck chair, Isla waving from a cobblestone street in Oranjestad.

Then came the stop in Curacao.

The last text my father ever got was a picture of the sunset over the pier. Then, the signal went dead. She didn’t show up for the final dinner. She wasn’t in her cabin when the ship docked in Miami.

Azure Crest security was a joke. Meeting after meeting with flustered staff members, corrupted CCTV footage, and a legal team that circled the wagons before my father could even get a flight to Florida. The official report from the Curacao authorities was a slap in the face:

No evidence of foul play. Subject likely left of her own volition or was lost at sea.

I was a graduate student at Princeton when the call came. On top of my heartache that my beloved sister had gone missing, I had to watch my father crumble, stand by as my mother sank into a deep psychotic depression, the Christmas decorations to remain up like a permanent memorial of our trauma. My mother was convinced that if she kept the house exactly as Isla left it, the universe would have to return her.

Yet I didn’t mourn as they did.

I hunted.