Chương 8
I looked at him.
“You kept him because you thought I would return.”
Ryan did not answer.
He didn’t need to.
Jordan looked between us.
“So what happened that night?”
Ryan’s fingers moved against the table.
“Evan came over.”
“And?”
“And we talked.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“About Biscuit?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
Ryan looked at the window.
“About whether I should call you.”
The answer surprised me.
Because for a moment, I remembered something I had forgotten.
That night, after the fight, Ryan had called.
Not once.
Seven times.
I never answered.
I had sat in my sister’s guest room staring at the screen.
Waiting for the fear to pass.
It never did.
“What happened after Evan left?”
Ryan went quiet.
Too quiet.
My chest tightened.
“Ryan.”
He swallowed.
“He took something.”
The words changed the air.
“What?”
Ryan looked at me.
“Your notebook.”
I felt my face go blank.
“My notebook?”
The one with the blue cover.
The one I kept in the kitchen drawer.
The one where I wrote grocery lists, work notes, random thoughts, things I didn’t want to forget.
“The notebook where you wrote that note,” Ryan said.
I looked down at the paper.
Biscuit is not a reason to stay.
“You had it?”
“No.”
“Then why are you saying Evan took it?”
“Because I saw him.”
My heartbeat increased.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ryan looked ashamed.
“Because I didn’t know what he did with it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
He closed his eyes.
“I was angry.”
Again.
That word.
A word that had become a doorway into every mistake.
“You were angry so you hid something from me?”
“Yes.”
The honesty was almost unbearable.
“Why?”
Ryan looked at me.
“Because I was afraid.”
The answer was so human that it made me angry.
Not because he was wrong.
Because fear had always been the excuse behind the damage.
My fear.
His fear.
Everyone hurting each other because they were afraid of what would happen if they stopped.
“What did Evan do with it?”
Ryan shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“But someone sent it tonight.”
“Yes.”
“Someone who knows about the notebook.”
“Yes.”
Maya crossed her arms.
“Then maybe Evan knows.”
Ryan’s face tightened.
“I don’t know where he is.”
That sentence made everyone look at him.
“What do you mean?”
Ryan hesitated.
“He moved.”
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Ryan looked down.
“Because after that night, we fought.”
“About what?”
“About you.”
I waited.
“He told me I was making everything worse.”
The answer surprised me.
“Evan said that?”
Ryan nodded.
“He said I was trying to punish you instead of accepting you were leaving.”
A strange sadness moved through me.
Because even someone who barely knew our marriage had seen something we had both ignored.
“What did you say?”
Ryan gave a small, humorless smile.
“I told him he didn’t understand.”
“And?”
“He said that was my favorite thing to say.”
For a moment, nobody spoke.
It was such an Evan thing to say.
Direct.
Annoyingly accurate.
I looked at Biscuit.
He was lying under the table now.
His head rested on my shoe.
The simple weight of him grounded me.
Seven years.
Seven years of routines.
Seven years of mornings.
Seven years of ordinary life.
A dog remembered things people tried to forget.
My phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Same unknown number.
This time there was no sentence.
Only a photo.
I opened it.
My breath stopped.
It was a picture of my blue notebook.
Open.
On a table.
Beside it was a handwritten page.
Not mine.
Someone had written across the top.
You deserve the truth about what happened after you left.
Maya leaned closer.
“Can you tell where it was taken?”
I zoomed in.
The background was blurry.
But there was something familiar.
A dark wooden table.
A small crack near the edge.
A coffee stain.
Ryan saw it.
His face changed.
“What?”
He stood too quickly.
The chair scraped against the floor.
“That’s Evan’s table.”
The entire restaurant seemed to stop.
“How do you know?”
“Because I built it.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
Ryan stared at the picture.
“I built that table when we were kids.”
Nobody moved.
“I gave it to Evan when he got his first apartment.”
His voice became quieter.
“He still has it.”
Maya looked at the address from the earlier message.
“The old apartment.”
Ryan nodded slowly.
“No.”
His eyes lifted.
“That address wasn’t the old apartment.”
“What?”
“It’s Evan’s place.”
The realization hit all at once.
The message had not sent me back to the place where everything broke.
It was sending me to the person who saw it happen.
Ryan grabbed his coat.
“We need to go.”
I looked at him.
“We?”
He stopped.
For a second, I saw the old Ryan.
The man who assumed I would follow.
Then he caught himself.
His shoulders dropped.
“I mean…”
He looked at Biscuit.
“You need to know.”
I stood.
Maya picked up her bag.
“I’m coming too.”
Ryan looked at her.
“Maya.”
“No.”
Her voice was firm.
“You don’t get to drag my sister into another night where everyone knows something except her.”
Ryan looked like he wanted to argue.
Then he didn’t.
That was new.
Outside, the cold air hit my face.
Biscuit stepped beside me.
Ryan stood a few feet away.
Not leading.
Not controlling.
Just waiting.
I realized something as we walked toward the cars.
For the first time in years, Ryan had no idea what was going to happen next.
And neither did I.
The drive to Evan’s apartment was only twenty minutes, but nobody spoke for the first ten.
Maya sat in the passenger seat of my car, staring out the window.
Biscuit lay in the back seat, occasionally lifting his head when we stopped at traffic lights.
Ryan followed behind us.
That felt strange.
May you like
For twelve years, Ryan had always been beside me.
Even when we were fighting.
