Diane’s first hearing was packed to the doors.

Reporters crowded the courtroom benches, obsessed with the gruesome headline:

*Local Restaurant Owner Accused of Hiding Ex-Wife in Walk-In Freezer.*

They did not care about Lucy.

Not really.

They loved the sensational horror of it.

I hated every camera lens flashing in the hallway.

Lucy wore an oversized gray sweater, seated quietly between her lawyer and a victim advocate.

Jack stayed home with my sister Grace.

He had already seen far too much.

When the bailiff opened the side door, Diane entered in handcuffs and waist chains.

Without her tailored blazers, expensive makeup, and absolute control, she looked shockingly small.

Then she looked into the gallery and saw me.

Her face softened into that familiar, practiced look.

“Mark...”

For one brief second, my body remembered trusting her.

Then I remembered Lucy shivering behind plastic freezer curtains.

I looked away cold.

The prosecutor stepped forward and detailed the mountains of evidence.

The burner phone logs.

The padlocked walk-in.

The forged custody petitions.

The emergency trust withdrawals.

The fake, cruel text messages sent from Lucy’s phone telling me to move on.

Diane’s defense attorney stood up and claimed Lucy had arrived at the restaurant voluntarily.

The judge peered over his glasses in disbelief.

“Voluntarily, counsel? In an industrial freezer?”

Bail was denied on the spot.

Diane screamed.

She did not cry out when the prosecutor described Lucy’s hypothermia.

She did not weep when they mentioned the trauma inflicted on Jack.

She shrieked only when the judge ordered her bank accounts to remain completely frozen.

Money.

That was the only place she felt real pain.

After the hearing adjourned, Lucy walked slowly toward the corridor.

I stepped near her.

“Can I do anything, Lucy?”

She stopped and met my eyes.

“Tell Jack the truth when he asks. Not the version that makes you look better. The real one.”

“I will.”

She nodded once and kept walking.

That night, Jack called me from Grace’s phone.

He did not bother to say hello.

He simply asked:

“Did you love Diane?”

I closed my eyes in the dark.

“I thought I did.”

“Did you love Mom?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“Then why didn’t you look for her harder?”

There was no answer in the world that could save me from the shame of that question.

“I should have,” I whispered. “I should have looked harder.”

Jack hung up the phone without another word.