CHAPTER 16
Maya
I couldn't bein that apartment anymore.
Everything there reminded me of him. The couch where we'd watched terrible movies, his arm around my shoulders. The kitchen where he'd made pancakes, flour on his nose, grinning at me like I was something worth waking up for. The door I'd closed in his face while he begged me to let him explain.
The door I hadn’t opened since then.
Zoe had been careful around me all week. Quiet. Watching me with those too-old eyes, asking questions I couldn’t answer.
‘Where’s Shane?’
‘What happened?’
‘Why won’t you talk about it?’
I didn't have answers. Not ones that made sense. Not ones that didn't make me sound like exactly what the article said I was: desperate, clingy, too much.
So I was here. At school. Grading papers at seven PM in an empty building because at least my students' research reports about their neighborhoods didn't make me cry.
Except I was crying anyway.
Silent tears dripped onto Marcus's paper about his apartment building.My neighborhood has a laundromat, a bodega, and a park with no swings. My mom says it used to have a bookstore but it closed. Eleven families live in my building. I know because I counted the mailboxes.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Smeared the ink. Had to start over.
‘You're too much work. No one's going to want your mess.’
David was right.
He’d always been right.
I ruined everything. I'd ruined my marriage. I'd ruined whatever I had with Shane. I'd seen a photo and hadn't even let him explain.
I shut the door like I’d been waiting for an excuse.
Maybe I had been all along.
Maybe I'd spent our entire relationship waiting for proof that he'd leave, and when something that looked like proof appeared, I'd grabbed it with both hands. It was easier to end it myself than to wait for him to figure out what everyone else already knew.
Teen mom energy, desperate to lock him down.
He'll be gone in a month.
I set down my pen and pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars.
Then I heard my phone buzz. It was a text from Officer Delgado.
Officer Delgado
Another school fire. PS 112 in Astoria. All units responding. Leaving post.
My stomach dropped.
Another fire. Tommy really hadn't moved on. He was still out there, still burning, still angry.
I grabbed my bag, my keys, my phone. I wasn't staying here alone. Not tonight. I'd go home, lock the doors, hold Zoe, and wait for this nightmare to be over.
