Except the room wasn't empty.
Grace sat on the floor, her back against the cabinets, knees pulled up to her chest. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were red, swollen, staring at nothing.
She didn't look up when I came in.
I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. I crossed the kitchen, lowered myself to the floor beside her, and sat.
Close enough that our shoulders touched. Close enough that she could feel I was there.
The kitchen was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the old clock above the stove—the same clock that had been there since her grandmother's time. The same kitchen where I'd eaten a thousand Saturday breakfasts. The same floor where Grace had probably learned to walk, to bake, to become the person she was.
“Eleven years,” she said finally. Her voice was flat and hollow. “He left for someone he's known for three months.”
Something hot flared in my chest. Eleven years, and he'd thrown it away for someone he barely knew. I wanted to find him, drag him back here, make him look at what he'd done. Make him see her sitting on this floor, shaking, alone. But that wouldn't help. Nothing I could say would help. So I just stayed.
Her hands were shaking. I noticed that—the fine tremor in her fingers, the way she kept pressing them against her knees like she was trying to hold herself together.
“I knew,” she said. “Some part of me knew. Since she showed up. Maybe before that. I just didn't want to see it.”
I bit down on the anger and stayed quiet. She didn't need my rage right now. She needed someone to sit with her in the wreckage. So I pressed my shoulder against hers and let her talk—or not talk—whatever she needed.
I couldn't take the pain away. Couldn't rewind the years she'd lost on someone who didn't deserve them. But I could sit here on this cold kitchen floor for as long as she needed me to. It would have to do.
She leaned her head against my shoulder. A small surrender. The kind you only make when you're too tired to hold yourself up alone.
I stayed still and let her rest there.
We sat on the kitchen floor until my legs went numb and the light outside faded from dusk to full dark.
Grace didn't cry again. Just breathed. In and out. In and out. Like she was learning how to do it all over again.
Somewhere around midnight, she fell asleep against my shoulder. I didn't move. Didn't want to wake her. Just sat there in the dark kitchen, listening to her breathe, watching the shadows shift across the walls.
I stayed because leaving felt wrong, because sixteen years of friendship meant something.
And because leaving wasn’t an option.
CHAPTER 6
Grace
Three weeks,and I was still moving through the days like a ghost.
I woke at four every morning, the same way I had since Marcus left. Sleep came in fragments now, shallow and restless, full of dreams I couldn't quite remember but that left me feeling hollowed out. By the time the sun started to lighten the sky, I'd already given up on rest and made my way downstairs to the kitchen.
The routine saved me. Sifting, stirring, watching the dough rise and fall. The familiar alchemy of flour and butter and heat. Muscle memory took over when my mind couldn't be trusted. I didn't have to think about Marcus when I was counting teaspoons of cinnamon. Didn't have to feel the emptiness when my hands were busy shaping rolls.
The kitchen was the only place that made sense, at least in my head.
Most mornings, the rhythm held. But sometimes my hands would pause mid-knead, remembering the time Marcus had tried to help me make bread for Thanksgiving. He'd gotten flour everywhere, in his hair, on his expensive watch, and laughedabout it. Really laughed, the way he used to before work consumed him. Or I'd pull cinnamon rolls from the oven and think about the morning he'd surprised me by getting up early to make breakfast, burning the bacon but trying anyway. Those moments made it worse somehow. Easier to grieve someone who'd been all bad. Harder when you had to reconcile the good parts with the man who'd walked away without looking back.
I served breakfast with a smile that didn't reach my eyes. The guests didn't seem to notice, or maybe they were too polite to say anything. Mrs. Patterson noticed. She always did. But she didn't push. Just watched me with those sharp, kind eyes and made sure to compliment the pastries every morning, as if reminding me that I was still capable of making good things.
Elena picked up extra shifts without being asked. She'd appear at seven instead of eight, already tying on her apron, already prepping vegetables for the next day's breakfast. When I disappeared to cry in the pantry, she'd cover the front desk and pretend she hadn't heard anything when I came back with red eyes and a fresh cup of tea.
“Take your time,” she'd say. Nothing else. Just that.
I didn't know how to thank her. Didn't have the words. So I just kept showing up, kept going through the motions, kept pretending I was holding it together when we both knew I wasn't.
