Neither of them asked why I chose to leave. They understood. And they supported me without hesitation after that, even when my decisions seemed extreme to everyone else.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, letting the cool surface press against my palms as I exhaled. Five years had passed since that moment in the café. Five years of building a life with careful hands and choices I had to stand by, a life that kept him out, buried his name, and left no space for the ruin he had once made of me. Still, none of that distance had reached the place inside me where he remained. The years had changed my days. They had given me new habits, new responsibilities, a new name, a daughter, and a version of myself I had learned to become. They had not erased him.
When I heard his voice again, when that dark, impossible sound reached me after all this time, something deep within me recognized him with a force that felt almost like betrayal, as though my own body had remembered what my pride had spent years trying to bury. Time had not taken that from me. It had only taught me how to live around it, how to carry the wound quietly, how to hide what had never fully healed.
Morning arrived with pale light slipping through the curtains and the faint chill of late autumn resting against the windows. The apartment felt softer than it had the evening before, warmed by Helena’s voice before anything else. She woke with her usual rush of energy, asking questions before her feet touched the floor and insisting on the yellow sweater with the crooked star she had chosen herself weeks ago.
I helped her brush her silky straight hair, gathering it into a small braid she claimed made her look “very grown,” though she kept turning her head to inspect it in the mirror before I had even finished. While I worked, she told me about the game she planned to invent for her friends that day, explaining therules with complete seriousness and changing them every few seconds.
Routine had a way of pulling the mind back into place. Breakfast, shoes by the door, a missing mitten found under the sofa, Helena narrating every thought as I moved through the morning with the ease of habit. For a few hours, I let myself believe that yesterday had been only an interruption, a strange tear in an otherwise ordinary life, rather than the beginning of a complication that might follow me.
The kindergarten stood on the corner of a residential street not far from our apartment. Helena ran ahead the moment we reached the gate, stopping only to throw her arms around me once more before disappearing through the doors with the fearless confidence children carried so naturally.
“See you later, Mommy!” she called over her shoulder.
I watched until she vanished inside, then returned to my car. The air carried that thin, biting edge that came when autumn was almost over and winter had begun waiting at the door. I sat behind the wheel for a moment, hands resting on it before I started the engine, familiar with the act now to trust myself. Then I drove toward the university, past bare branches, damp pavements, and the muted gray of a city caught between seasons.
By the time I reached campus the morning had fully awakened. Students moved across the courtyard with coffee cups in their hands, conversations weaving through the crisp air as they hurried between buildings. I had two lectures scheduled that day, both in the Foreign Languages Department where I had been teaching since finishing my master’s degree in linguistics. After Helena was born I completed the program while balancing motherhood and work in a way that often felt impossible until it slowly became normal.
The university had given me a beginning. Ashcroft University of London had welcomed me two years earlier as a junior lecturer while I continued my doctoral research, a balance of teaching and scholarship that gave my days structure and kept the past at a manageable distance. Or at least it had.
Today the building felt different the moment I stepped inside. The hallway outside the department buzzed with an unusual level of activity. Several faculty members stood in small clusters speaking in low voices while administrative staff moved quickly between offices carrying folders and hurried expressions.
Something had happened.
I slowed my steps, trying to make sense of the sudden tension in the air. Before I could ask anyone, a familiar voice called my name.
“Edwina.”
I turned to find Giselle approaching from the other end of the corridor, her dark coat moving around her as she walked with the quick energy she carried everywhere. She was small in height, almost minion-like in the way she filled a room without needing to tower over anyone, with long dark hair, big light-brown almond eyes, full lips, and a body shaped with curves exactly where they belonged. We had met two years earlier during my first week at the university, when she helped me survive the mess of paperwork, office keys, classroom assignments, and names I could not yet remember. Since then, she had become far more than a colleague. She had become family.
“Why does everyone look like the building is about to collapse?” I asked.
Giselle looked at me. “Oh, you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“The dean resigned last night.”
I blinked. “Resigned?”
“Effective immediately,” she said, lowering her voice as two professors passed us. “And the board already has a replacement.”
“That was fast.”
“Very,” she said, drawing the word out until suspicion stirred in me.
I waited.
“He’s coming from the United States.”
Something tightened in my chest.
“Do we know who he is?” I asked.
Giselle shook her head. “No one knows much yet. Only that he’s already in London and he’s meeting the faculty later today.”
The hallway noise continued around us while her words settled slowly in my mind. A professor from the United States. The thought appeared at first, almost reluctant to form. And then it refused to disappear. A strange unease moved through me.
