I draw in a breath. “Thank you.”
The words feel too small the second they leave me. Too light for everything I mean.
Maeve’s eyes narrow immediately, suspicion flashing through the softness.
“For what?”
I glance down at my hands, then back at her.
“For everything.” A grateful, trembling smile spreads across my face. “You changed my life. Yousavedme.”
A flicker of offense crosses her face. “No,” she says immediately. “No, Nora.”
She leans forward, her hand closing over mine. “Youchangedmylife,” she says, her eyes locking onto mine, refusing to let me look away. “You made me shut up and actually listen. You made me stop thinking I know everything about someone five seconds after meeting them.”
A breath leaves her. “You made me better. Kinder. More patient. Less… full of my own assumptions.”
Emotion builds in my throat, thick and hard to swallow.
“And I didn’t save you,” she adds, her voice dropping, turning fierce in a way I’ve never heard before. “You did that yourself.”
My vision blurs at the edges.
She leans in closer, her eyes searching mine, making sure I hear her. “Youwalked through that door,” she says. “Youasked for a job.Youworked.Youkept showing up. Every single day, even when it was hard.” Her hand tightens on mine. “Both our lives would look very different if you hadn’t done that.”
I swallow, my throat tight, unable to form a response.
“That was brave,” she says. “Even if you didn’t feel it at the time.”
I sit with it for a moment, then ask the question that’s been sitting at the back of my mind for years.
“Why did you hire me so easily?”
She blinks, caught off guard for a second, then smiles. “You looked like you had a story,” she shrugs. “And I wanted to know it.” Her expression shifts, a flicker of guilt passing through. “And then you told me, and I reacted like an idiot.”
A laugh slips out of me. “You did.”
She groans immediately, dropping her head into her hand. “I really did.”
“You learned,” I say. “That’s what matters.”
She lifts her head, watching me for a second longer than usual. Then she stands. The chair scrapes back across the floor, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
And before I can react, she pulls me up and into her arms.
It’s sudden. Tight. Real.
Her arms lock around my shoulders, her fingers spread across my back like the roots of a great tree taking hold of the earth, and I feel the bones of her, the solidity of her, that stubborn, unyielding presence of her.
My arms come around her just as tightly, and the tears I’ve been holding back, hot, stinging, finally spill over. They fall without sound, without resistance, soaking into the shoulder of her sweater. I can taste salt at the corner of my mouth.
“I love you,” I say, the words pressed into her.
“I love you too,” she says, her voice shaking now, open in a way she rarely allows. Her voice cracks on the second word, and I feel her throat move against my temple. “So much.”
Her grip tightens, as if she can keep me here just a little longer if she holds on hard enough.
We stay like that.
