Page 58 of What You left in Me

Julian is out there somewhere, wearing his decent face, telling himself he’s the good guy because he wrote thank-you notes and learned which fork to use. He’ll leave town tonight and think distance is safety. It isn’t. It’s an opportunity.

I press my palm to the glass, and the town prints itself across my skin, small and cold. My father would say go light a candle. I just lit a fuse. Maybe that’s prayer in my language— asking the universe to listen while I make a mess it can’t ignore. Whatever the fuck “sin” means, I’m fluent. There’s no going back. There never was.

Chapter 18 – Ariane – The Week on the Clock

Evening settles like a heavy hand over a weary face. Streetlights flick on, the hospital’s windows turn into gold squares, and the parking lot looks scrubbed of its drama. Julian opens the car door for me without his usual grin, just a small nod. He straightens the strap of my bag, checks that my skirt isn’t caught in the door, and buckles me in with muscle memory.

“You’re shaking,” he says, soft. “Cold?”

“Hospital chairs,” I say. “They’re built to punish.”

“I’ll give you a massage later,” he promises.

He slides into the driver’s seat, adjusts the mirror, and we roll away. The hospital shrinks behind us until it’s a block of light with sirens somewhere near it, not for us. I text Penny.

Me:She’s okay. Coming home tonight.

Penny replies back in seconds.

Penny:Good. Proud of you. Do you want to swing by my Airbnb?

I type back, tilting my phone away and out of Julian’s line of sight.

Me:Tomorrow?

Me:Julian is leaving tmrw

Julian keeps both hands on the wheel like a textbook and merges perfectly. He doesn’t talk much when things are intense. Sometimes he says it’s because he doesn’t want to crowd me. Sometimes I wonder if he just doesn’t know how to sit in messy feelings unless he can fix them with a calendar. Tonight, he glances over every few blocks, checking. He has a face for that. Concern that doesn’t bruise.

“You can sleep,” he says. “I’ll wake you when we get there.”

“Sleeping is advanced,” I say. “I’m at ‘remember to blink.’”

His mouth tips. “Blinking is acceptable.”

Silence curls up in the car, giving my mind enough time to go back to the hell of a day I’ve had.

###

After Julian ducked out, confused and polite and grateful to be given a reason to leave, the man at the foot of my mother’s bed took his time standing up. He scratched his jaw with a thumbnail that had never met a good habit and grinned like he’d found a twenty in yesterday’s jeans.

“One week,” he said, conversational. “Then I come back.”

“For what,” I asked. My voice came out flat because if I let it wobble, I wasn’t sure I’d get it back under me.

“For what’s mine.” He looked delighted with himself. “Cash. Keys. Maybe a deed. I’ve got my eye on a porch somewhere I can rock on and lie to myself about how I paid for it.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” I said, and stepped closer to the bed. He had leaned toward Mom like he could smell her fear. “There isn’t anything for you.”

“I saw you on TV,” he went on, like we were swapping recipes. “Screaming your lungs out in front of this place. I was flipping channels and there you were in pearls. Big man with the bad ticker, all the cameras arrived like a parade. Name banner did the rest for me.”

Mom’s hand found the sheet and clenched. Every part of her went still. That’s how I knew we were past anger and into the spot where you remember exactly how scared you know how to be.

“Get out,” she said.

He watched her for a beat and then looked back at me the way a cat looks at a glass on a table. “One week,” he repeated, and pushed off the frame. “Don’t make me be inventive.”

He left the curtain swinging like a taunt. A nurse arrived with the exact smile people use when they smell smoke. “Everything okay in here?”