The tension in my shoulders eases, just slightly. At least she hasn't lobbed another grenade into Asha's life. But the one she already threw? That's a nuke. And I'm holding the detonator.
"Maybe nothing's happening between you and Warricknow." I step closer. "But that doesn't erase what did happen. You can't ask me to keep that from my wife." I see her pull in a shaky breath and watch fear flash across her face. "I won't lie to her, Syd. But I'm not the one who's going to tell her." Her eyes go wide. "Youare."
She presses her lips together, crosses her arms, not in defiance, but like she's physically holding herself together. I don't have to ask what she's thinking. It's written all over herface. She doesn't want to lose her best friend. Not after she just lost the man she clearly loves.
CHAPTER THIRTY
TRIGGER
ONE WEEK LATER
I'm on horseback, but really, I'm not here. I'm still sitting on those station steps with Warrick.
Yesterday, I'd parked outside the police station, hands gripping the steering wheel like it was the only solid thing left in my world. I was ready to make it official, to turn her absence into paperwork and send out search parties. I was tired of feeling helpless. There was literally nothing else I could do to bring her back, so that was my solution. But Warrick was there on the steps before I'd even killed the engine, waiting for me.
I remember asking how he knew where to find me. ‘I've walked in your shoes,’ he said, as if that explained everything. And maybe it did.
The week Maya got her diagnosis, she disappeared too, vanished the same way Asha has now. No note, no warning, just gone. Two weeks, Warrick told me, sitting on those station steps. She was gone for two weeks, the longest two weeks of his life. And he'd had a daughter to take care of then, who neededher father to hold it together even as his world crumbled around him.
I try to imagine the weight of it, and I can't. I don't have anyone else depending on me. Just this emptiness where she should be.
My horse, Knickers, shifts beneath me, adjusting to the terrain, and I shift with him.
We sat there, on those station steps, for what felt like hours. Maybe it was. Maybe it was only twenty minutes. Time has lost all meaning. Hours feel like days. Days stretch into small eternities without her.
I'd asked where Maya had been during that time. It was possible Asha was destined to run to the same places, but Warrick couldn't say for certain. He suspected she drove, mostly.Maya loved road trips. They cleared her mind, helped her think. He said it so simply, like it was just a fact about his wife, not a confession that he'd let her go without demanding answers. He told me that when she returned, they never talked much about where she had been. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the time she had left.
‘That's another reason I know she'll come back.’He'd looked at me when he said it, really looked at me, and something in his expression had shifted. ‘She's her mother's daughter. Stubborn as hell. She'll come back if for no other reason than to tell you how to feel and how to go on without her.’
The thought of beingwithout her. It had stolen the air from my lungs. Still does.
‘Is that why Maya reached out to Daruka Arora?’I'd asked. ‘She didn't want you to be alone.’
He'd nodded. She always believed she knew what was best.‘It's why I couldn't trust her letters.’
He'd gone still at that. I remember that stillness.
‘I'm surprised you kept them at all,’I confessed.
‘I considered that,’he'd said, his voice careful. ‘Opening them and resealing them, that is. But I couldn't. I didn't want confirmations. Didn't want to be angry. I just wanted to find peace.’
Peace. As if such a thing exists when the person you love has already written your ending.
It had seemed strange to me then. Warrick, of all people, hadn't demanded answers about her whereabouts. Hadn't needed explanations. Hadn't torn open those letters to know what she thought their daughter deserved to hear.
But sitting here now, facing the same fate, swaying with Knickers’ steady movement forward even though I have nowhere to go...I understand. If she came back tomorrow, I don't think I'd demand answers either. I think I'd just be grateful. Grateful she was back. Grateful that I was still worth coming back to.
The reins go slack in my hands, and all I can do is trust that Knickers knows the way home. And hope that wherever Asha is, she's finding her own way back to me, back to us.
The thought lands heavily in my chest.Us.Not just me and her anymore. There's a third heartbeat now, barely formed, barely real, but real enough that she ran, not from the new life itself but the math of it. The possibility that this child might one day feel their own time running out. I know this terrifies her—I know this because it terrifies me too.
Sprinkles hit the back of my neck, and Knickers doesn't wait for direction. He turns off the muddy trail and carries us under the canopy where the leaves catch most of the rain.
Warrick never told Asha about the diagnosis that could be in her future. Instead, he bartered with his wife and sent his daughter away when he thought she was getting too close to the truth. He let Asha grow up believing her mother had died of something sudden, something that couldn't be passed downlike a family heirloom you never wanted. I've contemplated that choice countless times over the past week. When I think about Asha, all I see is that honesty is the only right answer because people deserve to know what they are carrying.
But when I think about my unborn child, my answer wavers. It's not so black and white anymore. All I see are timelines, a future on borrowed time. Do I want them counting down to some invisible deadline? Seeing every birthday cake, every Christmas morning, every scraped knee, and first day of school through the lens ofhow many of these do I have left?
The rain hits the leaves a little harder now, and I can't be sure which way we're going, but without Asha at home, I have nowhere to be, and right now getting lost feels like the only place where I can begin to be found. So, I let Knickers lead the way.
