And then one morning there was blood where it shouldn’t be and the world narrowed to a room and a nurse’s calm voice and a doctor who said sorry in a tone I will hear until the day I die. Jace held my hand so tight I think he left a bruise. He rubbed circles on my back while I stared at a poster about prenatal vitamins I didn’t need anymore.
He stayed and carried every bag. He made every call. He made sure I ate when I didn’t want to. He did everything right.
But after that, something in his eyes shifted—barely, a fraction, like a door that never closes all the way. He looked at me and then away. He leaned in like he might kiss my temple, then changed his mind halfway there. He slept on his side of the bed and didn’t roll toward the middle.
I told myself grief makes ghosts out of people for a while. I told myself time would bring him back to me, or bring me back to myself, or both. I told myself this is what love looks like when it’s trying to survive.
I set the shoebox on the nightstand and close the lid on the past with careful hands; the house is quiet except for the TV murmuring in the other room. Somewhere, a pipe knocks.
After I found out I was pregnant, I thought the baby would fix things. I thought it would bind us.
Instead, it buried the truth deeper.
…………
Present
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to hear her name out loud.
Emma mentioned it first, bright, casual, completely unaware of the way it landed. “Sarah’s back in town,” she said one night after dinner, laughing as she poured another glass of wine.“Took a job at the university. Can you believe they finally convinced her to come home?” I nodded, pretending I didn’t feel Jace go still beside me. Just for a second. Just long enough that I noticed.
She didn’t mean anything by it, just gossip over dinner, but the words landed heavier than she could’ve known.
A week later, we were all at Emma and Ethan’s for dinner—takeout boxes spread across the counter, a game muted on the TV. Emma mentioned Sarah again, mid-conversation, like it was nothing.
“Apparently she’s already running the whole department at the University,” she said, laughing. “They’d fall apart without her.”
Ethan nodded. “Sounds about right. She’s sharp.”
Jace didn’t say a word. Just took a slow sip of his beer, jaw flexing like it wasn’t news.
No one else caught it, that flicker of something behind his eyes… recognition. The kind that saysshit, I should’ve told you.
He didn’t.
And I didn’t ask why.
But the silence after her name came up again hit me differently this time. He didn’t fill it with excuses or small talk. Just let it hang there, heavy and strange, like something we’d both been trying to ignore.
I told myself I was overreacting, that I was dragging an old ghost into something new. But ghosts don’t shift the air like that, don’t make a man look through you like he’s somewhere else entirely.
Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Or maybe it meant everything. I just knew that night felt like the first real crack.
That was why I stopped pretending Sarah was a memory.
She was back. And even if he hadn’t said he’d seen her yet, I knew he already had.
There are nights he’s been in the room, but somewhere else completely. We’d watch a movie and he’d laugh half a second late, like he was catching up to a scene he hadn’t been watching. I’d lean into his side and feel his arm tighten like a reflex, not a choice. He was kind and careful, always. Just not really with me anymore.
Last Thursday, I stopped by his office with sandwiches. He wasn’t there, so I set the bag on the desk and went to leave a note. His browser was still open. A campus newspaper headline filled the screen.
“Meet Sarah Evans: University’s New Director of Communications.”
Her photo sat just below the title, bright, confident, that same easy smile I’d seen a hundred times before in other rooms, on other days that still lived in his eyes. I closed the laptop and told myself it was nothing. People read campus news.
Emma texted me the other night to see if we were coming by The Bar Friday night for trivia. “Sarah’s popping in for one,” she added, like it was just a head count detail. I watched Jace reread the message twice and then tell me he was wiped and maybe we should stay in. We stayed. He flipped channels for an hour and never settled on anything.
That was three nights ago.
