I scraped the chopped chicken into the mixing bowl and reached for the celery, dicing it next—tiny green half-moons lined up like fallen soldiers on the cutting board.
Ashley had texted a few times, but she hadn’t asked for an explanation.
Mom hadn’t either.
Why would they? The whole world already knew my business.
This quiet avoidance was something my mother and I had always been good at.
Not talking. Pretending.
One stiff hug followed by two days of tight smiles and awkward silences.
Two days of knowing that the trip I’d been encouraged to take hadn’t been for me at all, but for them.
From somewhere in the back of the house, I heard the sounds of puzzle pieces being dumped out of their box onto the dining room table—my mother’s latest way of passing the time. She’d much rather be outside in her garden or attending one of her charity meetings, but she wasn’t quite there yet. Not while she was still recovering.
Mom could mostly get around fine with her cane now, but she still had to avoid the stairs, so I’d quietly claimed the guest room upstairs—my old room—which ultimately worked out for both of us.
I smirked to myself. Being upstairs also meant fewer run-ins, fewer conversations. I’d overheard her on the phone telling Ashley that I was hiding again.
But I wasn’t.
Not this time.
I reached for the fresh tarragon, running the leaves through my fingers before chopping, and inhaled the fragrance. It reminded me of Gran’s kitchen.
I didn’t care if the entire world thought I was hiding!
Somewhere, while staring into the void from 35,000 feet in the air—over Indiana or Ohio, not sure exactly where—I had made a decision.
When everything blew up at the station, I didn’t just walk away. I had fallen into a massive black hole. No, I hadn’t fallen, I’d jumped.
And it had been easy to blame Leo. Easy to put it all on him.
But the truth—the part I hadn’t wanted to face—was that part of me had known. I’d seen the signs, and then…ignored them.
That was what really paralyzed me.
Not just the betrayal—the shame that I let it happen.
But ever since that plane landed, a slow resolve had been building inside me.
The mayo mixed with a satisfying softness as I stirred it all together. Familiar motions. Predictable.
Babs, for all the ways she’d blindsided me, had been right about my breakup all along. There had been multiple cracks long before The Incident.
Not just cracks, canyons…grand ones.
And Noah had been right too, when he’d said The Incident was probably the best thing that could have happened.
Because otherwise…
How long would I have kept pretending?
How long would I have gone on building my life on the sand?
I wasn’t going to do that anymore.
