Leo’s tail thumped once against the cushion. She rubbed behind his ear. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
The microwave clock ticked over. She realized she hadn’t eaten since noon. The idea of food felt like a chore she would fail. She got up anyway and opened the fridge, then closed it again. She drank a glass of water that tasted like metal. When she set the cup down she did it carefully, like the sound might break something in the room that was still holding.
Her phone lit with the low battery icon and then went dark again. She hadn’t realized it had flickered awake when she moved it. The small flash sent a jolt through her. She picked it up and pressed the side button. The dead screen stared back.
She could plug it in. She could keep it off. She could admit that she wanted to know and that she didn’t want to know at the same time.
She plugged it in. The screen bloomed and the logo pulsed and her pulse picked up with it. She watched it like it was a live wire. When the lock screen appeared she saw the numbers and the date and nothing else yet. The bar crawled toward service. She felt a small wave of nausea hit as she waited.
Before the first vibration could land, she pressed the button and killed the screen. She dropped the phone facedown on the coffee table. Her breath left her all at once. Leo lifted his head and then settled again.
“Not yet,” she said, to herself or the room or the dog. “I can’t yet.”
She returned to the couch and sat forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped. The city was quieter from this side of the window, but she could still hear a siren somewhere far away. She thought about how many times she’d turned a siren into a sentence. Tonight her words had turned into a siren and wouldn’t turn back.
A thought arrived that she didn’t want. Jamie, in the WCVB studio, her IFB in, a producer in her ear telling her they were live in ten. The calm that came over her when the red light blinked on. Erin had seen it, right in front of her. That focus. That surety. It was one of the things she admired most about her, and tonight it had cut straight through her.
She closed her eyes and leaned back. If she let herself picture Jamie any longer she would be tempted to make it simple. Jamie was doing her job. Jamie had to do her job. Erin could deal with anything as long as it stayed in the realm of work. Except that she hadn’t been talking to a reporter when she saidplease. She’d been talking to the woman she loved. She’d trusted that would mean something. She’d put the softest part of herself on the line, and the line had snapped.
She breathed out and felt the breath shiver at the end.
Her mind thinned out to small tasks. She got up again, took Leo out intothe courtyard, stood under the awning while the mist gathered on her hair. He trotted through the wet grass and shook himself, then looked back at her like he was ready to go in. On the way inside a neighbor passed with grocery bags and didn’t make eye contact. She was grateful for that small mercy.
Back inside, she wiped Leo’s paws with the old towel and tossed it in the corner. She turned off the lamp she’d left turned on. The apartment returned to the dim its walls knew best. She stood in the center of the room and listened to the building breathe.
Her phone sat facedown where she left it. She picked it up and flipped it just long enough to see the screen wake. The preview lights were there, stacked one on top of another. She didn’t read the names. She didn’t open the messages. She watched them a second longer and then pressed the side button until the screen went black.
She left the phone on the kitchen counter this time. Out of reach from the couch, but not out of the room.
She pulled a blanket over her legs and leaned into the corner of the cushions. Leo circled once and then fit himself against her hip with a huff. The weight of him grounded her. She let her hand rest on his ribs and counted the slow rise and fall. She’d done this on other hard nights, and it had always been enough to get her through to morning.
She thought of work, then didn’t. She thought of the review, then didn’t. She tried to picture Vega using the wordtemporaryagain and felt a flicker of something close to relief, and then it went out. She didn’t trust the word yet. Not tonight.
Her eyes burned. She blinked and tried to clear the sting. When the tears came they didn’t come all at once. They gathered and slid, quiet and careful, and she let them go because there was nothing left to hold them back for. Leo thumped his tail once, as if to say he felt it too, and she scrubbed her cheek with the heel of her hand.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
The apartment settled around her. Somewhere in the building a pipe ticked. Outside a car door closed and then a second one. The world kept stacking ordinary sounds. She waited for one that would shatter her stillness and nonedid.
When sleep finally pulled at her, it felt like surrender, not rest. She let her eyes fall and kept her hand on Leo’s side and allowed the dark to take her as far as it could.
Her phone stayed dark on the counter.
Thirty Seven
Two days after the slip, the apartment was too quiet. Erin moved through it like she was trying not to wake something. Coffee went cold on the table. Leo followed her from room to room, nails clicking across the floor, then settled with a sigh whenever she finally stopped.
The table by the door was bare now. Her badge, radio, and notebook had all been surrendered when she left the station. The space looked wrong without them — too neat, too still. She kept catching herself glancing over, the way a phantom ache reminded you where something used to be.
She could still hear the captain’s voice in that small conference room, the careful tone from HR, the pauses to make sure she understood. Two weeks off. Reprimand in her file. Review of media protocols. She had nodded until her neck locked. She said she understood. She’d said nothing else.
The TV murmured with the morning show she always kept on. She didn’t watch it. She watched the light move across her living room as the sun climbed then faded. At some point she muted the sound and left the closed captions running. The emptiness of the words felt easier than the noise.
Her phone stayed facedown on the coffee table. She kept it on in case the department called — that was the rule she gave herself. It wasn’t for anyone else. It wasn’t for Jamie.
It buzzed anyway. Once. Twice. Then again. She didn’t have to turn it over to know who it was. The pattern was familiar. Late night. Early morning. Midday, when Jamie might be between hits. Erin could picture her pacing the newsroom, phone in hand, thumb hovering as she tried to find a new way to say the same thing. Please. Can we talk. I’m sorry. Are you okay.
Erin closed her eyes and heard the word that started all of this — the one that leaped out of her mouth before she could pull it back. She had watched it land, watched Jamie’s face change, watched herself reach and ask for something she had no right to ask for. Now the phone buzzed and buzzed, and Erin let every message sit ondelivered. It felt cruel. It also felt like the only choice she could trust herself to make.
