Sometimes, he doesn’t even look at me when he speaks, but I flinch anyway. I’ve done things I shouldn’t have. Things that would make this worse if he ever realized.
I keep my son close. I whisper nonsense to him, sing a silly song, make him laugh, anything to keep him from noticing. He shouldn’t see it. He can’t.
I try to tell myself it’s nothing, that I’m just tired, but it isn’t nothing. Every step I take feels like it matters too much. Every pause, every glance, every snap of a cupboard handle makes me feel small and pinned.
I stay quiet. I smile when I have to. I do what I need to. But the fear is getting heavier, like the walls are closing in, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep breathing.
She was quiet for a beat then nodded and went back to the pages. “He was definitely suspicious.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed a hand down my face.
“Maybe…” Her fingers curled tighter around the journal. “That’s what pushed him over the edge. This definitely wasn’t an accident. Why didn’t the real father come back? And who is he?”
I sat up straighter. “I don’t know. Maybe he got scared too. She said before that he needed more time.”
Ellie’s thumb rubbed the corner of a page, thoughtful. “You think the real dad’s still alive?”
“I mean, even back then, he could be anyone between, what? Twenty and maybe forty, realistically. We don’t know anything about him. It’s possible he’s still out there somewhere.”
I watched her reread a line again and again, like she was trying to memorize it.
“You okay?” I asked.
She exhaled, slow and uneven. “I don’t know. It’s just… She kept it all inside, as if the second she told the truth, it’d get her killed. Except it wasn’t her who died.”
I nodded.
“This whole time, we’ve been treating it like a mystery,” she went on, her voice quieter. “Like a puzzle to solve. But this wasn’t just clues in a journal. She was begging someone to hear her.”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You want to stop?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I want to keep going. I just…” She closed the journal and held it against her chest. “For once, I’m ready to put this down for a moment instead of wishing we could read another page.”
“Yeah…I’ve got to start getting ready soon anyway.”
She blinked, like the shift in topic caught her off guard. “Right. The game.”
“Yup. NFC Championship today.”
She sat back a little, as if she was recalibrating. “Is this the furthest you’ve ever gotten?”
“Yeah.”
She squeezed my arm. “How are you feeling?”
“Excited, mostly.” I let out a breath. “We’ve made it this far before, but we’ve never pulled it off. This is my last shot.”
“You’ve got this.” She leaned in to press a quick kiss to my cheek.
But I wasn’t in the mood for quick. I caught the back of her neck and pulled her closer. Her lips met mine, and her hand pressed into my chest. She leaned in without hesitation, and for a moment, it was just her, me, and the way we fit together.
The game, the noise, everything else—it didn’t matter. Not with her here, letting me take a little more. For a second, I let myself imagine I could have both: her and the win.
But I knew I wasn’t that lucky.
I eased back, though it took more effort than I cared to admit.
“My family’s coming today,” I said. “They’ve got an extra ticket. You should come.”
