Chương 6
“About what?”
“About the house.”
She waited.
“She said she contacted you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Maya looked at the window.
Snow covered the street.
“She had questions.”
“About what?”
“You should ask her.”
“Maya.”
There was frustration in his voice now.
“I am trying to understand what is happening.”
She almost smiled.
Because that was the first time in months he had admitted he did not know.
“What exactly are you trying to understand?”
“Why my fiancée is suddenly questioning everything.”
Maya was quiet.
There it was.
Not concern.
Not curiosity.
Fear.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing specific.”
“Then why are you worried?”
Silence.
A long one.
Maya did not fill it.
That was another thing she had learned.
Silence was not always something to fix.
Sometimes it was where people revealed themselves.
“She asked about things,” Bryce finally said.
“What things?”
“Things about our marriage.”
Maya’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“Our marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
Another pause.
Then his voice lowered.
“She asked why I never mentioned certain things.”
Maya looked down.
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bryce.”
“I don’t know, Maya.”
The sharpness disappeared.
He sounded exhausted.
“She keeps asking about details.”
“What details?”
He did not answer.
Maya felt something shift.
Not satisfaction.
Not revenge.
Something closer to sadness.
Because she knew exactly what Serena was discovering.
The small pieces.
The things that did not look important alone.
The canceled plans.
The forgotten promises.
The explanations that changed depending on who was listening.
The way Bryce could be incredibly generous in public and strangely absent in private.
“Maya,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you tell her things about me?”
She closed her eyes.
The question hurt more than she expected.
Because even now, some part of him believed the problem was information.
Not behavior.
“No.”
“Then why is this happening?”
Maya looked toward the bakery downstairs.
A customer laughed.
Elena greeted someone by name.
Normal life continued.
“Maybe because she is getting to know you.”
The silence afterward was immediate.
She knew she had hit something.
“Maya.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“You sound like you are.”
She thought about that.
Then she answered honestly.
“Maybe I’m tired of protecting you.”
The words sat between them.
Bryce did not respond.
For years, she had protected him.
From criticism.
From uncomfortable conversations.
From consequences.
She had defended him when friends questioned his long hours.
She had explained his moods.
She had minimized his absences.
She had turned his choices into misunderstandings because admitting the truth meant admitting she had built a life around someone who was slowly leaving it.
“I never asked you to protect me,” Bryce said.
Maya almost replied immediately.
Then she stopped.
Because that was also true.
He never asked.
She had chosen it.
That realization was uncomfortable.
Not because it made her responsible for his actions.
It did not.
But because it made her responsible for the years she spent abandoning herself.
“I need to go,” she said.
“Maya.”
“What?”
“I’m getting married in ten days.”
She waited.
“I know.”
“I don’t know what you think is happening.”
Maya looked at the wedding photograph.
“I don’t think anything.”
“That’s not true.”
“No.”
She stood.
“I think something is happening.”
“What?”
“I think you’re finally having the conversations we should have had years ago.”
After the call ended, Maya did not feel victorious.
She felt strangely empty.
Because closure was not a door slamming shut.
Sometimes it was realizing the person on the other side had been standing there all along, waiting for you to stop opening it.
That evening, Serena sent another message.
“I asked him about the rosemary.”
Maya stared at the sentence.
She did not know why those words affected her.
Maybe because it was such a small thing.
Maybe because a marriage could hide inside small things.
She replied.
“What did he say?”
The answer came after several minutes.
“He laughed.”
Maya waited.
Then another message appeared.
“He said you always remembered random things and made them seem important.”
Maya felt something cold move through her chest.
Not because the comment was cruel.
Because it was familiar.
Bryce had always turned her attention into a flaw.
Her memory.
Her questions.
Her awareness.
She had thought those things made her difficult.
Now she wondered if they had simply made her observant.
Serena sent one more message.
“He said you were always too sensitive.”
Maya looked at the words.
Then she placed the phone down.
She did not cry.
She did not become angry.
She simply sat there in the quiet apartment above the bakery while the snow fell outside.
After a few minutes, she picked up the phone again.
She typed one sentence.
Then deleted it.
Typed another.
Deleted that too.
Finally, she wrote:
“I hope you ask him the questions you need answers to.”
Serena replied.
“I think I will.”
Maya stared at the message.
Then came another.
“But I need to ask you something else.”
Maya waited.
The next message arrived.
“Why did you leave everything behind if you knew he was lying?”
Maya read it once.
Then again.
And for the first time since leaving Seattle, she realized the answer was not simple.
She had told herself she left because she was hurt.
Because she needed distance.
Because she needed a fresh start.
All of that was true.
But there was another reason.
One she had not admitted.
She left because staying would have forced her to become someone she no longer recognized.
She left because staying would have forced her to become someone she no longer recognized.
Maya sat with that thought for a long time.
The apartment was quiet except for the faint sounds rising from the bakery below.
A chair scraping across the floor.
The soft hum of the refrigerator.
Elena locking the front door.
Normal sounds.
Safe sounds.
The kind of sounds that did not demand anything from her.
May you like
She thought about the woman she had been in Seattle.
The woman who checked Bryce’s schedule before making plans.
