With that, she left.
She spent the next couple days at home. She didn't go anywhere, didn't talk to anybody, barely ate. She was a wreck. As time went on, her hope of them finding Max dwindled. On her third day of staying home, Officer Leroy called to inform her that they had found his jacket at a nearby park, and that they had sent out search parties to search the entire park area. This gave her a small amount of hope back. Still, she went nowheres and refused to let anyone in when her friends came over to see how she was holding up.
"How would you feel," she said, "if you were a puzzle that sat there for a long long time, and you were only partially complete because half of your pieces were missing. And they weren't the plain filler pieces, either. They were the vibrant, colour filled ones. The ones that made the real picture. The ones that held the story. And you, well, you weren't anything to look at without them."
Her friends soon stopped visiting.
One night, her phone rang. She ran to the phone, because she knew that the only person who would call her now was Officer Leroy with news about Max. Although after nearly 5 weeks of no one hearing from him, she was doubtful that someone had now. Still, she picked up the phone and put it to her ear.
"Hello?" she answered. It was a female voice on the end of the line. It was not Officer Leroy.
"Yes, this is Claire speaking."
Her heart stopped.
Her hands got clammy.
Time seemed to be frozen in place.
She dropped the phone and ran out to her car. She started the engine as she buckled her seatbelt, and then hit the gas.
"This is it," she thought. "No more searching."