Page 64
“Sure,” I say, and I really do mean it, mostly because of Poppy and not much else.
I watch their car pull away from the same window I watched it arrive from, and something settles in my chest that isn’t quite disappointment, more like confirmation of something I already knew walking into today.
The visit happened. The performance was convincing enough on the surface. And somewhere underneath all of it, the actual conversation we need to have is still sitting there, untouched, waiting for a day neither of us seems ready to schedule.
Maybe that’s fine for now. Maybe some conversations need their own timeline, the same way everything else in my life has apparently decided to run on a schedule nobody asked me to agree to.
43
HARPER
Caleb texts asking about bringing Poppy by next weekend, three exclamation points and a heart emoji, like nothing about our last visit left anything unfinished between us, and something in me finally decides enough is enough.
I stare at the message for a long moment, thumb hovering over the keyboard, before I set the phone down entirely and pick it back up with a different purpose in mind.
I call him instead of texting back. It feels important to actually hear his voice for this one, not hide behind the safety of typed words the way we both usually do when things get anywhere near real.
My heart’s already going faster than it should be for a phone call to my own brother, some old nervousness resurfacing that I thought I’d left behind months ago.
“Hey!” He picks up on the second ring, easy and light. “Poppy’s excited—”
“I need to say something to you,” I cut him off, “And I need you to actually let me finish before you respond.”
The easy tone drops out of his voice immediately. “Okay. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong right now. Something was wrong for a long time, though, and I never actually told you what it did to me.” I sit down on the edge of my bed. “I need to say it now, because I don’t think I can keep pretending it doesn’t matter just to make our visits easier.”
“Harper, I…”
“You said you’d let me finish.”
Silence on the other end, tight and uncomfortable, and I take it as the closest thing to permission I’m going to get.
“When I disappeared, I was gone for weeks before anyone even noticed I was missing. Weeks, Caleb. My own company thought I quit. My friends thought I just stopped posting for a while. And you, the one person who actually knew me, who actually should have noticed something was wrong, you didn’t call. Not once. Not until I called you, crying, begging you to just talk to me for five minutes, and you hung up on me for a football game.” I press on before he can interrupt again, needing the momentum to carry me through the rest of it. “I’ve never told you what those two weeks actually felt like. Lying awake every night convinced I’d disappear completely and nobody would even notice the gap I left behind.”
“That’s not fair at all, I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know because you never actually ask. You never ask. You’ve never once in my entire life been the person who checks in first.” My voice stays steady even as everything underneath it shakes. “I spent two weeks in a stranger’s house convinced nobody in this world would notice if I disappeared entirely. And I was right about almost everyone. Except him.”
“Him being the exact same guy who kidnapped you originally, you mean.”
“The guy who kidnapped me originally is also the guy who sat with me every single time I fell apart. Who learned things about me in a month that you never bothered learning in twenty-six years. Who noticed when something was wrong before I even said a word about it.” I press my palm flat against my chest, willing my heart to slow down. “I’m not saying that to hurt you. I’m saying it because it’s true, and because it’s the loneliest realization I’ve ever had—that the person holding me against my will somehow ended up caring more than my own brother did.”
The silence stretches long enough that I check my phone to make sure the call hasn’t dropped.
“I don’t really know what you want me to say to that right now.” His voice comes out smaller than I’ve ever heard it, defensive underneath the quiet. “I’ve had a lot going on too, you know. It’s not like I was ignoring you on purpose.”
“I know you weren’t doing it on purpose. That’s actually the whole problem, Caleb. You didn’t even notice enough to do it on purpose. It just happened, the same way it’s always happened, because checking in on me has never been something that occurs to you unless I’m the one doing all the work to stay visible.”
“That’s harsh, don’t you think?”
“It’s honest, and you know it.” I close my eyes, some of the tension in my shoulders finally easing now that the words are out instead of sitting locked inside my chest for months. “I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m telling you because I need you to understand why I can’t keep pretending this didn’t happen. Why I can’t keep acting like everything’s fine every time you show up with a picture of Poppy and expect that to fix it.”
“I’m sorry.” He says it fast, like getting the words out matters more than meaning them, the same rushed tone he’s used for every small apology he’s ever owed me. “I really am. I should’ve called more. I should have noticed something was wrong. I just, life gets busy, and I never thought something like this could actually happen to you.”
I sit with that for a moment, turning it over, waiting to see if there’s more underneath it, some real reckoning finally surfacing after all this time. There isn’t. It’s an apology built entirely out of defense—sorry I made you feel that way rather than sorry for what I actually did—and somewhere in the middle of hearing it, something in me finally settles into a certainty I’ve been circling for weeks now.
This is who he is. Not a villain. Not someone who wishes me harm. Just someone who’s never going to be the person who notices first, who checks in without being prompted, who carries someone else’s well-being the way he carries his own without having to think about it.
