The tilt of her head was unmistakable, the way she half-turned toward the camera—sharp eyes, sunlit hair pulled back in a loose knot, the edge of a scarf caught mid-flutter as if she were already walking away. She looked older. Not much, but enough for him to know this wasn’t a file photo or some cruel mistake. She was alive.
Claire Donovan had vanished five years ago covering the siege of Aleppo. Officially: missing, presumed dead. There’d been no body, no final transmission. Only a shell crater near the field office where she’d last checked in. For months, he hadn’t let go. For years, he hadn’t forgiven himself.
And now—this.
Miles stepped back into the apartment and closed the door with the same instinct that might follow a punch to the chest. He stared at the photo a moment longer before setting it on the kitchen counter, next to the coffee filter he’d forgotten to empty. He braced his hands against the edge of the sink, leaned forward, and let the past wrap around him.
She told him on a Tuesday, late afternoon, in the same apartment—six years ago. When he opened the door, she was already there. She’d let herself in with the spare key she still kept on her ring, back when that still meant something.
“I said yes,” she told him as he stepped inside, kicking off his shoes and fishing for a cigarette he didn’t need.
He barely looked up. “To what?”
She turned from the window where she’d been standing, watching the streetlights flicker on one by one.
“The Post. They want me in Istanbul by the end of the month. I’ll be based there, then rotating through Syria, Lebanon, maybe Yemen if things keep sliding.”
He let out a low breath, not quite a laugh. “Congratulations.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No,” he admitted, dropping into the armchair, “I probably don’t.”
There was a pause. Long enough for regret to creep in, but not long enough to stop what came next.
“You knew this was coming, Miles.”
“I knew they’d call. I didn’t know you’d pick up.”
“I’m not you.”
That hit harder than it should’ve, though maybe not as hard as the glass he poured himself five minutes later. She didn’t stop him. He thought she might. That was the thing about Claire—she never interrupted a mistake in progress.
When he woke the next morning, she was gone. But that night, before she left, she crossed the room quietly, kissed his cheek, and said, “Try not to miss the story while you’re chasing the byline.”
He didn’t understand what she meant until long after she disappeared.
Miles sat now at the kitchen table, fingers grazing the edge of the photo. He turned it over. Nothing. No watermark, no initials, no hint. Just Claire, paused mid-stride, as though daring him to follow.
He reached for his phone, thumb hovering over the call log. Maya’s name sat near the top. He hesitated. It had been months since they’d last spoken—nothing unfriendly, just the slow distance of diverging lives. Two Pulitzers, a dozen headlines, and a wrecked administration later, they were no longer partners. Not in print, not in life.
She was back at The Capital Ledger, still fierce, still faster than anyone he knew. He imagined her now, leaning over a desk cluttered with leads, chasing something no one else had spotted yet.
He set the phone down without calling. Instead, he opened the envelope again. There was more: a folded sheet of paper tucked behind the photo. A manifest. Charter flight. Beirut to Ankara. Passenger list redacted except for one name—LINA THURIN.
The name meant nothing. Not yet. But Claire had once used a pseudonym when crossing the border into Idlib. He remembered because he’d helped her write it on the back of a press badge. Something about the way this one looked made his gut tighten.
He folded the paper, slid it back inside the envelope, and walked to the window. Outside, the city moved like it always had—cars crawling, people passing, horns, pigeons, sirens in the distance. But for the first time in five years, Claire Donovan was alive. And someone wanted him to know.
