"I was convinced I'd never see you again," I said. "I’d spent years believing you were just... gone. Out there somewhere at the edge of the world, or maybe past it. I’d made my peace with the fact that that was how it ended."
I hesitated for a moment, but then continued. What else was there to do? "And then there you were. In that lobby. And with everything—Cassie, Lily, all of it—" I stopped, the next word catching in my throat. "I was glad. Which is stupid. I know it's stupid. But I was."
He didn't move. He sat so still he could have been carved from the same wood as the table, his eyes fixed on me with a terrifying intensity.
"I just needed to say that out loud," I added. "Just once."
"Maddie," he said. "I?—"
"Not that I've forgotten," I said. "What happened. I haven't forgotten a second of it."
He closed his mouth, the words he’d been about to offer dying behind his teeth.
I ran a hand through my hair. What was I doing? It was four in the morning, Jack had just had the worst night of his life, and I was sitting here unspooling things that had been packed away for twelve years. I was treating his kitchen like a confessional, picking at old scabs as if this were somehow the time or the place for it.
"Sorry," I said. "This isn't—not tonight." I looked away, my heart doing a slow, painful thud against my ribs. "Maybe not ever."
The silence that followed felt… different. Not bad. Just… different. We'd said more than we'd planned to and were now sitting with it.
Jack nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the table as if he were memorizing the grain of the wood. "Maybe I shouldn't... call you like this. Again. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dragged you into?—"
"I'm glad you called," I said. I didn't let him finish the apology. I didn't let him retreat back into that self-imposed exile where he thinks he has to handle the world with nothing but a toolbox and a steady jaw.
He met my eyes.
I didn't say anything else. There was more there, right at the surface, and I could feel it wanting to come out. But I was done. I was hollowed out for one night.
I pushed back from the table and stood. I found my coat and he stood too, following me to the door. In the hallway we stopped.
He was close. Close enough that I was aware of the warmth of him, of the specific way he was looking at me—not asking, not pushing, just looking, the way he'd always looked when he was trying to memorize something.
I put my hand on his arm. Just for a second. Just that.
"Get some sleep," I said.
"Yeah," he said, his voice thick.
I went.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jack
Ididn't sleep.
I lay on top of the covers for two hours after Maddie left, listening to the house settle around me, and somewhere around six I gave up and got up and stood in the shower until the hot water ran out. Then I went downstairs and made coffee and stood at the kitchen window, watching the street go from dark to grey to the pale light of a morning that hadn't decided what it was yet.
I heard Lily at seven. Not the jagged and desperate sound from last night; just the ordinary sound of her moving around upstairs, the bathroom door, the particular sequence of drawers that meant she was getting dressed. I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, listening, and something in my chest unclenched that I hadn't known was still clenched.
She came down in her uniform, her backpack slung low and her dark hair a wild, unbrushed halo around her face. She stopped on the bottom step and squinted at me, her eyes too old for her face.
"You look tired," she said.
"I'm fine."
She held my gaze for another second with that same direct, unblinking assessment I’d seen a thousand times on Cassie’s face. Then she turned, marched into the kitchen, and pulled her cereal box from the cupboard. I watched from the doorway as she sat and ate, her spoon clicking rhythmically against the porcelain in the quiet room.
She was okay. A little quieter than usual, a little more careful in the way she moved, but she was here and she was eating her cereal and she was okay.