The bed was made. Not well — Jack made beds the way he did most domestic tasks, with effort and mediocre results — but he'd tried. Pulled the quilt up, smoothed the pillows. His side was tucked tighter than hers, the way it always was, because he slept like a board and she slept like a tornado.
The closet door was open. The space where his duffel had lived — behind her wintercoat, absorbed into the architecture of her life — was empty. Just a wire hanger and a dust bunny and the faint smell of cedar and soap.
Clara sat on the edge of the bed.
She pressed her hand flat against his pillow. Still dented from where his head had been last night. Still smelled like him — that particular combination of sawdust and salt and whatever cheap shampoo he used that she'd never asked the name of because she'd assumed she'd have time.
That's what got her. Not the mug. Not the pencil. Not the half-finished railing or the empty closet. The pillow. The stupid, ordinary, nothing-special pillow that still held the shape of his head like it was waiting for him to come back.
Clara pressed her face into it and cried.
Not the quiet, dignified crying of a woman processing her emotions with maturity and grace. The ugly kind. The kind that came with sounds — raw, wrenching sounds she was glad nobody was around to hear. The kind that made her whole body shake and left her gasping and wiping snot on her sleeve because tissues were in the bathroom and she couldn't move.
She let it happen. Let it be ugly and loud and unreasonable. Didn't try to manage it or minimize it or tell herself to get a grip.
Then she sat up. Wiped her face. Blew her nose on a corner of the pillowcase, which was disgusting but she didn't care.
She was angry.
Not the numb, defeated anger she'd felt after Sam — the slow-burn kind that sat in her stomach for months like a stone, weighing her down, making her smaller. This was different. This was hot. Alive. The kind of anger that stood up straight and wanted to throw things.
She was angry at Jack. For being honest. For having the decency to tell her the truth — that he loved her and was leaving anyway — instead of just disappearing, because honesty meant she couldn't even hate him properly.
She was angry at his dead brother and his dead father and the grief that had eaten seven years of his life and was now eating hers too. She was angry at Josie for calling. At Dale for mentioning the stupid job. At the universe for sending her a man who fixed things and then broke the thing that mattered most.
She was angry at herself. For letting it happen. For holding his hand on Main Street and sleeping in his arms and saying things likenext summerandSeptemberand letting herself believe that the manwho'd washed up on her beach might be the one who stayed.
She should have known better. She DID know better. She'd had the data — the seven years of drifting, the packed bag, the way he flinched whenever the conversation got too close to the future. She'd seen every warning sign and walked straight past them because he made good coffee and terrible pasta and smiled at her like she was the most interesting thing he'd ever found.
Clara stood up. Walked to the kitchen. Picked up her phone.
Called Lena.
"Hey," she said when Lena picked up. Her voice was wrecked. No point hiding it.
"What happened?" Lena's voice shifted instantly — from casual to alert, the gear-change of a best friend who'd been through this before.
"Jack left."
Silence. One beat. Two.
"I'm on my way."
"You don't have to?—"
"I'm already getting my jacket. I'll be there in thirty minutes." A pause. "Do you need me to bring anything?"
"Wine."
"Obviously wine. Anything else?"
"More wine."
"Got it. Don't do anything dramatic before I get there."
"Define dramatic."
"Don't throw his stuff off the gallery. Don't burn anything. Don't call him."
