But instead, she said nothing.
And Olivia, ever graceful, didn’t push.
She reached over, brushed a crumb from the table near Catherine’s hand, then gave a small smile.
“Well, if you change your mind, I’m here.”
And then she left, her absence quieter than Roz’s, but far more painful.
Catherine stared down at her coffee. It had gone cold.
The door clicked shut behind her with a soft, final thud.
Catherine set her keys in the glass bowl by the entry table, her movements automatic. The hallway light flickered on by motion sensor, casting clean, cool light across the pristine wood floors of her condo. Everything was exactly as she left it.
She toed off her shoes, walked barefoot across the quiet space. Her heels echoed in her mind even after they were gone, as if the sound had lingered behind her like a ghost.
The living room was still.
The kitchen gleamed.
The silence was absolute.
She opened the fridge. There was a single bottle of white wine, unopened, and a glass carafe of filtered water. A few yogurt cups sat at the back, precisely aligned on the middle shelf. No meals. No leftovers. No signs of anyone else ever having stood in this kitchen.
She closed the door without taking anything.
Wine wouldn’t help. Water wouldn’t fix it.
Not tonight.
Her hand reached, without thinking, for her phone on the counter. She picked it up and stared at the screen. No messages. No calls.
Just the soft glow of the time: 10:47.
She hesitated, her thumb hovering above Sloane’s name in her recent contacts.
A single tap and the call would begin.
But she didn’t.
She locked the phone, dropped it face-down on the counter.
Instead, she walked over to her work bag and pulled out a file from the hospital, some donor paperwork she’d already reviewed twice but hadn’t yet annotated. She took it to the dining table, sat down in the exact center chair, and began to flip through it.
The silence swelled around her like water.
She read the same sentence three times. They didn’t land.
From the corner of her eye, something caught her attention: the small leather journal.
It sat quietly on the edge of her bookshelf, where she had placed it days ago after the market. Still unopened. Still untouched.
She stared at it for a long moment. She didn’t move.
Catherine had never kept a journal. What would she write? Notes? Sketches? Secrets?
Sloane had smiled as she handed it to her, her eyes gleaming with mischief and softness.
