"I should go over there," I said slowly.
"Yes, you should." Beth stood up, suddenly businesslike. "But you can't show up empty-handed. That's weird. You need a prop."
"A prop?"
"A casserole. Something that says 'friendly neighbor checking in,' not 'I've been having a mental breakdown about you for seven days.'" She disappeared through a door I hadn't noticed and returned with a foil-covered dish. "Frozen lasagna. My mother's batch-cooking phase. It's perfectly mediocre. It'll do."
I took the cold dish, something between a laugh and a sob building in my throat. "Beth?—"
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when you've figured out what's actually going on." She squeezed my shoulder. "Go. Be brave. And text me the second you know anything."
The Cameron house looked different in the late afternoon light. The curtains were drawn, the lawn slightly unkempt, the whole place radiating a kind of held-breath stillness. I sat in my parked car for three full minutes, clutching Beth's lasagna like a shield.
"You can do this," I said aloud. "You're just checking on a friend. A completely normal thing that normal people do."
My hands were shaking. I ignored them.
I walked up the familiar path, mounted the porch steps, and stood at the door where I'd stood a hundred times in high school, waiting for Miles to emerge with that smile that made everything else disappear.
The old fears tried to surface.He might not want to see you. He might tell you to leave. He might?—
I pushed them down. This wasn't about proving my worth. This was about choosing action over paralysis. Choosing to be present in my own story.
I shifted the lasagna to one arm, took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell.
The chime echoed through the house. I waited, heart pounding, listening for any sign of movement.
Silence.
Then, footsteps. Slow and deliberate, growing closer.
My pulse kicked into overdrive. This was it. No more spiraling. No more waiting for someone else to decide my fate.
The door handle turned.
The door swung open.
And there was Miles, pale, exhausted, his eyes widening with the semblance of shock and hope and fear all tangled together.
"Charlotte?" His voice came out rough, disbelieving. "What are you?—"
"You didn't call," I said simply. "So I came to you."
He stared at me, and I watched something surface behind his tired eyes.
6.Miles
Ifound my keys in the refrigerator on Monday.
Not near the refrigerator. Not on top of it. Inside it, nestled between the milk carton and a block of cheddar cheese, like that was a perfectly reasonable place for them to live. I stared at them for a long moment, the cold air raising goosebumps on my arms, trying to reconstruct how they'd gotten there.
Nothing. The memory was simply gone.
"Okay," I said aloud. "That's fine. People misplace things. It's normal."
It wasn't normal. I knew it wasn't normal.
"Shut up," I told myself, and grabbed the keys with fingers that had already started their morning tremor.
