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“What happened to you at lunch?”

Goldyn and I stood across the island from one another, gathering everything to set the table for Lorenzo’s first dinner back with us in two weeks.

She seemed startled by my presence even though I’d been in the kitchen with her for the past fifteen minutes. She dropped her glassy gaze and stopped collecting forks. “I needed to take care of something.”

Her voice was lifeless and so low I had to strain to hear her follow up.

“Alone. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know.”

I frowned at the slight tremor in her hands before she could hide it by balling them into fists.

“You straight,” I excused, still looking her over, searching for an answer to her shifty behavior. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded, swallowing hard. “Mhm. Everything’s okay.”

I showed up at her shop at noon only to find both places pitch black, no workers or Goldyn in sight. I chalked it up to her deciding to come home early to see Lorenzo, but when I texted the group chat with him and Sincere to see if she was home, they told me no.

Whenever I called her phone, it went straight to her voicemail, which was full. Which meant she’d purposely turned her phone off or it died again. Anxiety spiked not knowing she was okay until Sincere texted me an hour later saying she’d just gotten home and went to take a nap in her room.

But the bags under her eyes didn’t look like they belonged to someone who’d slept for a couple hours in the middle of the day. The red rim around them didn’t back that up, either.

Before I could ask another question, Lorenzo entered the kitchen and wrapped her in a hug from behind. The slight flinch she played off could have been read as surprise, but had me on high alert.

Why was she jumpy, and why did she look so sad?

“You okay, mamas? You been quiet today,” Lorenzo noted, kissing her cheek.

“I’m okay. I just missed you,” Goldy answered, smoothly spinning in his arms to bury her face in his chest.

He grinned, tightening the embrace. “I missed you too, Goldy.”

I watched it all with a frown on my face, until they pulled apart and Goldyn went back to collecting silverware.

Something was off, and the brittle smile she flashed me when her eyes darted to mine, begged me to let it go.

So I did. For now.

Goldyn pushed her food around on her plate, passive in every conversation. But Sincere and Lorenzo were so busy catching up on the past ten days, it was easy to miss her distant mood.She didn’t make eye contact. With anybody. A few times during dinner, she placed a hand over her chest like she was trying to calm her heart, and if she kept chewing on her bottom lip like that, blood would be joining the dejected look on her face.

After dinner, her mood brightened a little and she disappeared upstairs with Sincere before Lorenzo joined them.

Maybe I was tripping.

Maybe she really did just miss Lorenzo and tomorrow she’d be her usual bubbly self.

Since it was my night to clean the kitchen, I pressed play on a new audiobook and tried to push Goldyn to the back of my mind. And it was working. I made it through cleaning the kitchen and headed to the gym earlier than usual.

I was in the middle of my first set when I heard a sound at the end of the hall.

When I looked out the cracked door of the gym, light spilled out from Goldyn’s room, and I stayed ducked off at the end of the hall to see if she would come back out.

But I didn’t expect to see her carrying bags when she appeared. Her purse was slung over her body and her overnight bag was clutched tightly in her small fist.

She turned around, careful not to make noise and pulled the door shut with a soundless click before tiptoeing down the hall.

Just like that first day, I traced her steps from a distance, hanging back enough that she wouldn’t hear me.

Still in denial, I reasoned maybe she was just taking her shit upstairs since she spent all her time in my room or with Lorenzo and Sincere. She wouldn’t just leave in the middle of the night without saying anything. We were better than that.