I left for Washington DC the next week.
Therapy three times a week. Medication that took months to calibrate. The slow, brutal work of learning that what I'd experienced had a name—postpartum depression, the doctor said.
Even though I'd never gotten to hold my baby.
Even though the term felt like it belonged to someone else.
By the time I was whole again, three years had passed.
My letters to Garrett had thinned to nothing during the worst of it. I'd meant to write. Meant to call. But the depression had swallowed me so completely that reaching out felt impossible—like screaming underwater. Like trying to touch someone through glass.
And then, when I finally surfaced, I looked at the silence I'd created and felt too ashamed to break it.
What would I even say? It's been three years. I'm sorry I disappeared. I'm sorry I left you waiting for someone who forgot how to reach for you.
And then I was offered a position at the Times.
A reason to go back to New York.
The night I came back, I was going to find him. Explain everything.
See if there was anything left to salvage.
I found him at a restaurant in the Village.
Through the window, I could see him at a table near the back. Across from a woman—pretty, dark-haired, laughing at something he said.
He was smiling. That rare, real smile I'd thought belonged to me.
I stood on the sidewalk in the October cold and watched him live the life I'd walked away from.
I could have gone in. Could have crossed that restaurant and said I'm sorry and I'm better now, and please, can we try again?
I didn't.
I turned and walked away.
Told myself it was too late. Told myself I'd lost my chance. Told myself I didn't deserve him anyway—not after the silence, not after the way I'd left.
I'd spent five years believing that lie.
And now I was sitting in his firehouse parking lot, about to walk in and pretend none of it had ever happened.
I grabbed my bag. Squared my shoulders. Opened the car door.
Maybe they'll assign someone else to be the liaison.
Maybe I'll get lucky.
But I already knew I wouldn't get lucky.
I'd used up all my luck a long time ago, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, saying yes to a man who deserved so much better than the woman I'd become.
CHAPTER 5
Sloane
Captain Rodriguez metme at the door himself.
