Maggie smiled despite herself and typed back.
Take your time. I’ll be here, as always…
Evie:You better be. I’m bringing Thai food tonight and I expect you to actually eat it instead of just watching me eat.
Maggie:Noted. I’ll try to remember how to be human. What about if I just want to eat you?
Evie:I can ride with that
The emoji made Maggie laugh—something Evie had been doing more of, adding them to texts like little bursts of personality that refused to let Maggie retreat into formality.
She set the phone down and returned to the journal open on her lap—Sarah’s journal, one of the later entries from the week before she died.
I asked Maggie today what she’d do after I’m gone. She got that look—the one where her jaw sets and her eyes go distant. “I’ll work,” she said. “Keep busy.”
That’s what she does when she’s afraid. She works. She manages. She controls every variable she can reach.
But I don’t want her to just work. I want her to live. I want her to laugh again. To take risks. To let herself be messy and imperfect and beautifully, painfully human.
I want her to find someone who won’t let her hide.
Maggie closed the journal carefully and set it aside.
“I’m trying, Sarah,” she whispered to the empty room. “I found her. And I’m trying.”
By day ten, they’d fallen into a rhythm that felt both natural and impossible.
Evie would leave for the hospital before dawn, pressing a kiss to Maggie’s temple while she pretended to still be asleep. Maggie would lie there for another hour, listening to the sounds of the apartment settling, before dragging herself out of bed to face another day of forced stillness.
The ethics training modules were mind-numbing. Eight hours of clicking through slides about professional boundaries, power dynamics, appropriate relationships with subordinates.Maggie completed them with gritted teeth, her mind wandering to Evie every few minutes.
She’d text randomly throughout the day.
This training is making me want to throw my laptop out the window.
Evie:Don’t do that. Laptops are expensive and windows are harder to replace than you’d think.
Maggie:Voice of experience?
Evie:I plead the fifth. How much more do you have?
Maggie:Three more modules. Kill me now.
Evie:Can’t. Need you alive for tonight. I have plans for you.
The heat that message sent through her was distracting enough that Maggie had to step away from the training for twenty minutes.
When Evie came home that evening—later than usual, exhausted from a difficult case—Maggie had dinner waiting. Nothing fancy, just pasta and salad, but Evie’s face lit up when she walked in.
“You cooked,” Evie said, dropping her bag by the door.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Maggie replied, though she was already smiling. “I’m capable of basic tasks.”
“I know that.” Evie crossed to her, wrapping her arms around Maggie’s waist. “I just like seeing you do normal human things instead of spiraling in your head.”
Maggie kissed her—soft and lingering. “I’ve been doing less spiraling lately. Mainly my mind is filled with you. A lot of you.”
“Good.” Evie pulled back slightly, studying her face. “But you’re still wound tight. I can feel it.”
