My Missing Best Friend

1 We were in the middle of dinner when Mark suddenly set down his fork. He looked at me and asked, “Who is Walter Briggs?” My chopsticks froze in midair. My heart skipped a beat.

Walter Briggs. It was a fake name, something Cecilia and I had invented one drunken night.

We made a pact: if one of us ever got into trouble and couldn't be reached, "Walter Briggs" would be the code. Besides me and her, no one else knew that name.

And Cecilia… had been missing for a month. She said she was going on a trip to Thailand. And she never came back. I looked at Mark’s casual, untroubled face, and my heart sank.

How could he possibly know that name? The name Walter Briggs was born the year Cecilia and I graduated from college.

We’d finished a whole bottle of red wine and were lying on the rooftop, staring at the full moon.

Cecilia had her arm slung around my neck, her words slurring. “Sophie, we need a code.” “A code for what?” “You know… if one of us ever gets into trouble, disappears, and the other one hears the name, they’ll know something is wrong.” I laughed, calling her dramatic.

But we spent the next hour brainstorming until we landed on Walter Briggs. It sounded so oldfashioned and clunky that it couldn't possibly be a real person’s name.

Only two people in the world knew what those words meant. Me. And Cecilia. And Cecilia had been gone for thirtyone days.

She said she was spending a few days in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She’d even videocalled me from the airport, panning her phone across the dutyfree shop. “Sophie!

See anything you want? My treat!” That was the last time I saw her face. After that, my texts went unanswered. My calls wouldn’t go through.

Her last social media post was a photo from a night market in Chiang Mai. I called the police. Her family called the police. The authorities in Thailand were investigating.

But there was no trace of her. No body, no witness, nothing. It was as if Cecilia had simply vanished from the face of the earth.

And now, my husband, Mark—a man who, in theory, had no connection to Cecilia, a man who never even liked her posts—had just casually uttered that name over dinner. “What’s wrong?” Mark asked, noticing my stunned silence.

He smiled. “You look… strange.” “No, it’s nothing.” I lowered my head and put a bite of food in my mouth. It was tasteless. “I’ve just never heard that name before.

Where did you hear it?” “Oh, a friend mentioned it,” he said, taking a sip of water. “Just curious.” He changed the subject, starting to talk about his day at work.

I couldn’t hear a single word. My mind was stuck on one thought. How did he know that name? How? After dinner, Mark went to take a shower.

I sat on the sofa, my palms slick with sweat. The sound of running water echoed from the bathroom.

I glanced at the closed door, then stood and walked to his phone, which he’d left on the dining table. I knew the password. Our wedding anniversary.

My fingers trembled as I unlocked it. I scrolled through his messages, his call logs, his notes. Nothing. It was too clean. Suspiciously clean. No one’s phone is that pristine.

Next, I went for his laptop. It was in the study, and I knew that password too. He’d never tried to hide it from me.

I checked his browser history, his files, his downloads, one by one. Then I opened the cached records of a booking app. And my hand froze.

A month ago, Mark had told me he was going to Shanghai for a threeday business trip. I’d even helped him pack his suitcase. But the booking records told a different story.

He hadn’t bought a ticket to Shanghai. He’d bought a ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand. His departure date was one day before Cecilia’s.

His return date was two days after she disappeared. The water in the bathroom shut off.

I quickly closed the laptop, walked back to the living room, and sat on the sofa, pretending to scroll through videos on my phone. Mark came out, toweling his hair.

He glanced at me. “Still up?” “Yeah, just for a bit longer,” I said with a smile. He went into the bedroom and turned off the light.

I stared at the dark doorway, my fingers digging into the arm of the sofa. Mark. What did you do in Thailand?