Two Months
Three minutes. He went to the bathroom for three minutes, and then she was gone.
Her face is plastered everywhere: on billboards, on the news, and on fliers. The police department has been scrambling. Volunteer groups have sprung up.
Half of New York City is looking for Elizabeth Anderson-Hummel, but no one has found a trace.
Kurt can't look him in the eyes anymore. They sleep in the same bed still, but neither of them sleep well, and rather than touching each other, they gravitate out towards their separate sides.
Last night, he woke to feel the bed shaking from sobs wracking Kurt's entire body, saw his husband stuffing his fist in his mouth to be more quiet, but he felt no need to help or comfort. There is never pull to Kurt anymore, no desire to touch him.
They treat each other like furniture.
A routine begins once they go back to work, a steady blur of missing child duties and therapist appointments mixed in with an echo of the life they'd had. Lizzie's preschool emails once a week, as do the play group parents, but soon even that stops, and the only signs that they ever had a child are the pictures on the wall and a closed bedroom door.
Four Months
"It's unlikey at this point that we will ever find your daughter."
Someone finally says the words, and as soon as they leave the lips of the police chief, it's like Kurt is a new person. He cooks dinner every night, takes up pottery, and starts to go to yoga classes. He kisses Blaine on the cheek every morning, and they try sex, but it's empty. Everything is empty in their lives, no matter how full Kurt tries to make them. They just don't work as a couple anymore, but they're both too afraid to say it.
Blaine goes out searching one night when he can't sleep. He walks all the way to Central Park in the rain, and searches every tree, every bush, even though he knows how well they've all been checked. He knows Lizzie is four months away now, if she isn't dead, but some part of him needs a body. Maybe if he keeps looking he'll find a body.
There was never a funeral. What if she never gets a funeral?
Blaine is the one who is lost this time. Finn is the one who finds him, brings him home.
Lizzie never came home.
His therapist recommends antidepressants the next day.
Six Months
Blaine doesn't go to work one day. Instead he goes into Lizzie's room and imagines that it still smells like her and a layer of dust isn't covering her toys. He grabs her stuffed duck, sits on her bed, and closes his eyes, trying to picture she and Kurt (the old Kurt, the one that was a dad) in the kitchen baking cookies until he falls asleep.
When he wakes up, Kurt is staring down at him, the mask he's worn for months broken.
"She's not coming home?" he asks, tears trailing down his cheeks, but for once Blaine isn't crying, nor does he feel the need to.
"We need to move," Blaine states simply, and his voice doesn't quaver.
"Where?"
"Massachusetts sounds good. Anywhere but New York."
They leave the house two days later. Blaine never thought it would feel so good to see the city of their dreams disappearing behind them.