I’d been awake for a while. I was flat on my back, watching the ceiling, listening to the afternoon quiet of Birchwood Lane. Maddie was asleep against my side. Her breathing was slow, one hand resting heavy on my chest. I didn't move. I didn't even want to breathe too deep.
Her room was neat in the way of someone who’d learned to be careful with space. Two books on the nightstand, one face down. A lamp with a hairline crack in the base she hadn't bothered to fix. A coat on the door, a work bag on the chair, shoes lined up too straight against the wall. It was the kind of room that said:I live here, but I haven't decided to stay yet.
I'd furnished places like that. I knew the feeling of putting things down without letting them settle. Keeping the exit clear. Living somewhere without ever letting it become a home. I'd spent twelve years doing it.
She hadn't unpacked all the way, either. It made me want to put my fist through something—not for me, but for her. Thiswoman had earned everything she had, yet she was still living like she might need to pack a bag by morning.
I looked at her.
She was facing me, her hair dark against the pillow. I’d forgotten this—or I’d spent twelve years trying to. The way her face looked when she was asleep. Like the weight of being Maddie Clarke, surgeon, had just let go of her for a while. Usually, she was three steps ahead, careful and capable, but right now she was just... there.
She stirred. Her eyes opened and found mine. For a second, she just stared, as if verifying a fact she didn’t quite trust yet.
"Hi," she said. Her voice was small.
"Hi."
She didn’t move. Neither did I. Outside, a car passed and the sound faded into nothing.
"We should talk," I said.
Something shifted in her expression. Resolve, that's what it was. She’d been expecting this. She propped herself up on one arm and looked at me, steady.
"Okay," she said.
I looked at the ceiling. I’d rehearsed a dozen ways to start, and none of them fit. Maybe that was for the best. There was no clean way to say it; I just had to say it true.
"That night," I said. "The night the Hopkins letter came."
She went very still.
"I went to my dad's first," I said. "I’d wanted to go for a while. To do something to mark the day, I guess." I paused, the memory feeling like grit in my teeth. "He spent an hour telling me I’d hold you back. That you were moving into a world I couldn't follow."
I looked back at the ceiling. "And instead of telling him he was wrong—instead of going to you—I went to a bar. Becausesome part of me believed him. It was easier to prove him right than to risk finding out he was correct."
I let that hang in the air. "That’s on me. Not him. Me."
The room was silent.
"I went toThe Blue Anchor," I said. "I didn't go because I wanted to hurt you. I went because I wanted to shut the voice up and I didn't know any other way to do it." I stopped, my chest tight. "That’s not an excuse. There isn't one. I made a choice, it was the wrong one, and I've carried it every day for twelve years."
Maddie was staring at the wall past my shoulder.
"I’m not asking you to forgive me," I said. "I just needed you to know it wasn't—that you weren't—" I stopped, searching for the words. "It wasn't about you not being enough. It was about me being terrified I wasn't."
Silence. A long, heavy one.
"I was leaving anyway," she said. "Hopkins, Baltimore, all of it—that was always happening." She looked at her hand on the bedsheet. "But that night, it felt like I was leavingbecauseof you. That’s a different thing to carry."
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
She was quiet for a moment. When she finally looked at me, her eyes were hard.
"And then you were just gone. Twelve years of nothing." She didn't blink. "Do you know what that’s like? To not know if you were okay, or dead in a ditch, or—" She cut herself off, her jaw tight. "I told myself I didn't care. I got very good at believing that."
"I’m sorry," I said. "For all of it. The night, the years. Everything."
She looked at me for a long time.