She’d told herself it was the right thing to do. That leaving was the only way to make it stop hurting. But endings don’t stay clean when you drive away still wishing you’d stayed.
She went to work anyway. That was what she did.
Desk duty was simple, quiet, forgettable. She answered emails, updated briefing notes, kept her head down. Her computer screen glowed with a dozen half-written sentences that didn’t mean anything. Vega checked in once, gave her a nod that said he wouldn’t ask, and moved on. She was grateful for that.
The noise of the precinct should’ve helped. Phones ringing, officers trading shifts, the printer that always jammed. But it only made the silence in her head louder. Every sound found its own echo. She’d type a sentence and hear Jamie’s voice in the back of her mind, asking the kind of question that used to make her laugh.
By the second day she’d stopped pretending to eat lunch. She just sat with her coffee and stared at the bulletin board until her eyes blurred. Afew people stopped by her desk, asked if she was doing okay, but she kept her answers short.
“Fine.”
“Just tired.”
“Long week.”
None of it was true.
At home, she slept too much. The apartment dimmed around her, curtains half-drawn, dishes gathering in the sink. She stopped setting alarms. Leo started waking her instead, whining for food or pressing his nose into her hand until she remembered that time was still moving.
Sometimes she’d feed him and crawl back into bed before the coffee even finished brewing. Sometimes she’d stay there until the light shifted on the wall and it was evening again.
When she did get up, the world felt too bright. The fridge hummed too loud. The weight of a spoon felt wrong in her hand. She’d open the door to take Leo out and then stand in the hall for a second, trying to remember how to look normal in front of neighbors.
On the fourth morning she made it halfway down the block before she had to stop. The sky was too sharp a blue. The smell of someone’s cooking hit her wrong. Leo looked back at her, tail low, waiting for a cue. She crouched and pressed her forehead against his.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “We’re fine.”
It didn’t sound convincing.
Inside, she tried to clean. She scrubbed the counter, rearranged drawers, threw out mail she hadn’t opened. But every surface she touched reminded her of something Jamie had been near. The coffee mugs, the doorframe, the towel she’d used that one night after the rain. Erin wanted to tear the place apart just to stop seeing her.
When she ran out of things to clean, she sat on the couch with the TV on mute. She told herself she was catching up on the news, but she was really waiting for Jamie’s face to flash across the screen. It didn’t.
That should’ve helped. It didn’t.
She tried to be angry. It was the only thing that kept her upright. Angerhad edges. It gave her something to hold when everything else blurred.
She was angry at Jamie for breaking her trust. Angry at herself for letting it happen. Angry that part of her still wanted to hear that voice again, the one that could make any sentence sound like something worth believing.
When she caught herself staring at her phone, she’d shove it in a drawer. “No,” she’d say out loud. “We’re not doing this.” Leo would lift his head from his bed and blink at her like he was trying to believe it too.
By the end of the week, people had stopped asking how she was. That was easier. The fewer questions, the less she had to lie.
She worked quietly, fingers flying over the keyboard, typing fast enough to keep from thinking. She handled assignments before Vega could finish asking for them. She edited, organized, scheduled. The rhythm felt like control.
What she didn’t say sat heavier than what she did.
The younger officers avoided her desk. She heard them whisper sometimes, not about the case but about her tone. The clipped answers, the way she cut off small talk before it started. She caught one of them mimicking her expression once and had to walk away before she said something she couldn’t take back.
The silence in her apartment followed her into the precinct. It clung to her clothes, to the smell of coffee, to the way she moved through hallways without looking anyone in the eye.
She wasn’t sleeping right. When she closed her eyes she saw headlights. When she did manage to rest, she woke up too fast, pulse hammering like she’d been running.
She tried to tell herself she didn’t miss Jamie. That she was angry, not grieving. But anger never filled the space long enough. It would flare, bright and sharp, and then burn out, leaving her hollow again.
At her desk, she scrolled through an email chain about an upcoming press briefing. Her cursor hovered over the name she didn’t want to see. WCVB.
She forced herself to open it. Routine. Nothing personal. The body was asking about access time, footage clearance, same as always. Erin typed out a professional reply, clear and detached. Then she saw the signature line.
