Page 59 of What We Don't Say: Part One

Her answer comes fast.

Star?

I press the sleeve over my mouth and smile into the wool before I type back.

Yes.

The dots appear, vanish, and appear again.

Hi, Star.

My face hurts from smiling. I hold the phone with both hands, careful and tight, and send the message again now that she knows it is me.

Dinner is at home.

This time, her answer comes without a pause.

I’m on my way.

I hold the phone against my chest and close my eyes for a moment. Downstairs, Sloane says my name softly, careful not to pull too hard. Garrett answers him in a low voice, and the house fills with the small sounds of people staying where they said they would stay.

Callie is coming home.

I tuck the phone into the pocket of her cardigan, gather the socks in both hands, and stand. My body is still too warm, and the edge of heat still waits under my skin, restless and strange. But when I walk back toward the stairs, the quiet follows differently.

It no longer has to hold me by itself.

Calliope

By the time Mara turns onto my street, I’ve read Theo’s last message four times.

My head aches from the day in that deep, dull way that starts behind my eyes and spreads down into my neck. I’ve answered too many emails, smiled through too many hallway conversations, and spent forty minutes explaining why “the source implied it” still requires a citation. My coat is folded over my lap, my bag is wedged against my feet, and none of thatmatters as much as the little thread of messages lighting my phone.

Theo: I found the blue bowl.

I run my thumb beneath the words without touching the screen hard enough to open the keyboard. I can see him bent over the cabinet, serious and quiet, looking for the one bowl he’d decided belonged to dinner. He’s been doing that all day, sending me pieces of the house in small lines. The sauce. The bread. The bowl. Idris’ instructions. Sloane failing to find something that was probably directly in front of him.

Every message feels like Theo putting a hand out from another room.

Mara glances over as she slows near the lake road. “You’ve got that look again.”

I look up from the phone, but my smile has already ruined any chance of pretending. “He found the bowl he wanted for dinner.”

“That’s sweet,” she says, and this time she doesn’t tease the shape out of it. Her attention returns to the road while rain streaks across the windshield. “He’s been texting you all afternoon?”

“Little things,” I say, opening the keyboard because I can’t leave him waiting while I talk about him. My thumbs hover for a second before I type back. “Dinner things.”

Me: I’m glad you found it. I’m almost home.

The message sends, and I watch it settle beneath his. My chest feels too full for the inside of Mara’s car, and I hate that I’m this easy to read. Theo has been in my phone for less than twenty-four hours, and already the sight of his name pulls me out of whatever room I’m in.

Mara’s voice softens. “You like that he tells you.”

I nod before I think to hide it. “I like knowing where he is. I like that he can reach me when he wants to.” My phone buzzes again,and I look down so quickly Mara gives a small laugh under her breath.

Theo: Idris says dinner is almost ready.

The message is plain and careful, and something about it makes me want to press the phone to my mouth. He doesn’t have to dress the words up. He doesn’t have to make them big. He wants me to know dinner is waiting, so he tells me, and I sit there with my tired hands curled around the phone like he has given me something fragile.