She’s always been mine.
I step back, take in the wall as a whole. It looks obsessive, even to me.
Good.
It is.
There’s a photo dead centre, at eye level—the last one we took together before everything went to shit. We’re on the hood of my car, her legs over mine, his hoodie on her shoulders, summer air hot and heavy around us. She’s laughing at something I said. I’m looking at her instead of the camera.
I always looked at her instead of the camera.
I reach out and tap the glass over her face with two fingers.
“You want to know why I’m really coming back?” I ask her. The room doesn’t answer, but my pulse does. “Because you broke me,” I say calmly, “and I’m going to make you watch while I break this life you built on top of my bones.”
It doesn’t sound like rage.
It sounds like certainty.
I cross back to the nest of letters on the floor, crouch down, and sift through until I find a blank envelope at the bottom of one of the boxes. Greyside’s return address is still printed in the corner.
Cute.
Poetic.
I grab a pen. The cheap ballpoint scratches against the paper as I write her name in the centre.
Scarlett
Underneath it, smaller:
Summer.
I don’t need to post it.
The postman has had enough of us.
I’m going to hand-deliver this one like I did the last.
Inside, I slide a single sheet of paper.
No explanations.
No pleas.
No apologies.
Just one sentence.
You don’t get to drown alone.
I fold it once. Slide it in. Seal the envelope with my thumb pressed hard against the gum.
When I straighten, my phone lights up on the floor where I left it.
Screen locked.
No new notifications.
