Cracks in the Facade

Detective Harding found himself staring at Mary Miller’s bedroom wall, the pale blue paint mocking him with its overwhelming ordinariness. It was the color of a thousand other teenage girls’ rooms, a blank canvas for a life that, according to her parents, had been equally unremarkable. He’d interviewed them for hours, the Millers, a study in controlled panic. Mr. Miller, his jaw tight, his eyes darting around the room as if expecting Mary to materialize from behind the floral curtains. Ms. Miller, a delicate bird, fluttering nervously, her answers soft, evasive, tinged with a grief that felt both genuine and somehow performed.