Picked it up again. Put it downagain.
The room was very quiet. Outside, a car passed on the street. Someone laughed in the parking lot. The ice machine hummed through the wall.
Jack lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. No plaster cracks. No character. Just flat, featureless white — the ceiling of a room that didn't know him and wouldn't remember him.
He thought about Clara's ceiling. The spiderweb cracks he'd been planning to patch. The old iron light fixture he could have restored if he'd had the right parts. The way the morning light hit the plaster and turned it gold, and Clara's hair spread across the pillow, and the whole room smelled like salt and her shampoo and the coffee he'd made while she was still sleeping.
He closed his eyes and replayed the conversation. Every word. Her face when she saw the bag. The way she'd set down her pen — aligned it with the edge of the table, buying herself time. The steadiness in her voice when she asked if this was about the job or about fear.
You're doing the math alone and calling it love.
The accuracy of it had hit him at the time. Now, lying on a motel bed in Belfast, it hit harder. Because she was right. He'd looked at Clara and calculated what she could handle and decided to leave because the math told him to. His math. His formula. The one he'd beenrunning for seven years: attachment plus time equals loss, therefore minimize attachment.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
He picked up the phone. Not the Camden number this time. Josie's.
She picked up on the fourth ring. Background noise — TV, a child's voice, the clatter of dishes. Normal life.
"Jack?"
"Hey, Jos."
A pause. She was reading his voice. Josie had always been able to do that — decode him in two syllables, the way their dad used to read wood grain at a glance.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I left."
"Left where? Left the lighthouse? Left Clara?"
"Yeah."
The TV sound disappeared. A door closed. When Josie spoke again, the background was quiet. She'd moved to another room. Given this her full attention, which meant she already knew how bad it was.
"Tell me whathappened."
So he told her. The job in Camden. The bag. The conversation — his fear, Clara's line in the sand, the boat ride to the dock where she'd told him not to say anything kind. Walking through town. Hitching a ride. The motel room in Belfast where he was currently lying on a bed that smelled like industrial detergent and the stale passage of time.
Josie listened. The whole time. Didn't interrupt once, which was so unlike her that it scared him more than yelling would have.
When he finished, the silence stretched. He could hear her breathing. Could picture her — leaning against the wall of whatever room she'd escaped to, pinching the bridge of her nose, doing the mental math of how to handle a brother who was very good at building things and catastrophically bad at keeping them.
"Jack," she said. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me honestly."
"Okay."
"Do you love her?"
He didn't hesitate. "Yes."
"And she loves you?"
"Yeah. She does."
"And you left because you're afraid that if you stay, something bad will happen. That you'll lose her. The way we lost Dad. The way we lost Joel."
His throat tightened. "Yeah."
