Page 84 of What You left in Me

Eleanor’s eyes flick to mine and away. “I said I have it.”

“What does ‘it’ include exactly?” The humor slips out of me. I rein it back. “Because if ‘it’ includes sleeping and eating, we might need a second person on that job.”

“I slept,” she says, which is laughable because the woman looks like she’s been etched by insomnia. “And I ate a cracker.”

“Wow. Gourmet.”

She lets out a breath that looks like it might try to be a laugh and then changes its mind. “Ariane.”

“Yes?”

“Please, can you not leave well enough alone? I am just fine.”

“You are not a bonsai,” I say. “You cannot be pruned into invisibility. You’re my mother and you can’t expect that I won’t be worried about you.”

“That’s not what I’m…” She falters and chooses to ignore me. Then, she’s all smoothness again. “You can make me some chamomile tea.”

Right. Chamomile. Fine. The miracle tea that solves grief and secrecy and whatever weird text-alerts keep lighting up her phone screen at two a.m.

I don’t snoop further. I go to the kitchen and wrestle with the tin of tea and pretend none of us are an inch from sliding off the polished surface we keep insisting on is the floor.

At night, repeat my routine. I go back up the staircase, past the guest room (the good linens are on; the bed is untouched), and along the corridor that overlooks the library. The library lights pool on the rug in a warm rectangle. It looks like a stage where no one’s come to say their lines. I stand at the railing and let my hand rest on the smooth banister and imagine Finn’s footsteps on the stairs behind me, the way he moves likehe’s holding a conversation with the architecture, all quiet power and precision. I hate that my skin knows what it’s missing like skin is a separate animal with opinions.

I imagine the conversation I would have if he walked in right now. It varies. Version one:You left.Version two:I know why you did, I think, and I still want to hurt you for it.Version three: nothing verbal at all, which is its own problem. None of the versions end well, though some of them end extremely. I tell myself that means I’ve matured because at least I’m thinking about consequences. Past Ariane would never. Past Ariane believed you could file consequences in a drawer next to receipts and sentimental birthday cards. Present Ariane knows the drawer is a full of bullshit. Ephemeral, ultimately useless bullshit

As I make my way towards my room, Julian’s name lights up my phone again at midnight on day six.Ariane, please. Can we talk? I’ve been speaking with…I stop reading at “with.” The only person I want to speak with is a man who disappeared like he has a contract with vanishing acts, and that is not healthy, so I toss the phone onto the bed, and it bounces, traitorous, back into my palm. I set it face down. It vibrates three times, which is needy. I ignore it. I’m getting good at ignoring things that used to own me.

In the morning, Richard asks for French toast, and I insist of making it even though Maria looks at me like I’ve stabbed her in the heart. I burn the first batch so badly the smoke alarm throws a tantrum. He eats the second batch with the solemnity of a critic and declares it “overly enthusiastic,” which I decide is a compliment. My mother does not comment, which is frankly concerning. She usually has a ranking system for my culinary attempts that rivalsMichelin. She picks at her own plate and then excuses herself to take a call, the word “shipment” floatingbehind her like a ribbon.Gallery business,I think, but there’s no way to know. She keeps leaving to fill the blanks in myself.

The world spins on, even when your family tries to stop.

I walk Richard to the conservatory because the light is better there and he says it makes him feel less like he’s “dying in a tasteful cave.” We sit among potted citrus trees that aren’t thriving because this isn’t Italy, and they need more love than we remember to give. He reaches for my hand and squeezes, eyes crinkled at the corners. “You’re a good girl,” he says. Right now, I take it and tuck it carefully somewhere warm. He drifts off in the chair with a blanket over his knees like an old sloop at anchor, and I watch him carefully. He’s better now, which is what matters the most. The last few days were hell… I’m forgetting how hard things were.

By late afternoon, the house drips with that tired golden light that makes even dust motes look like they have a purpose. I check on Janice’s chart, measure out pills into the little organizer, and don’t make jokes about feeling like a pharmacist because I’ve learned there are moments where levity is a stone you shouldn’t throw. I carry the mail in from the foyer and sort it into stacks: bills, glossy promises of better skin, letters with handwriting that belongs to a different decade. I almost miss the one with the Rhode Island return address before catching it and staring at it like it could sprout fangs. I put it under the bills where Mom will find it because I am brave, but not the right kind of brave for that envelope.

Dinnertime is a quiet, clinking event. Mom eats three bites and sets her fork down in a way that sounds final. Richard says the soup is “reminiscent of Type 2 hospital food, which means edible,” which is another compliment, I think? I draw a tiny smiley face in the condensation of my water glass because my coping skills are advanced.

When the house goes soft and dim after nine, I lie awake thinking about him. About us. About what the hell we thought we were doing. He’s my step-brother, I remind myself. Maybe it’s a good thing he left without a word. We couldn’t last anyway. Still, that night outside the hospital replays in my head like an old film reel I can’t switch off… the rough bark at my back, his hands pinning me there, my body surrendering like it had been waiting for years instead of resisting. Did he wake up the next morning, wipe his conscience clean, and decide I wasn’t worth the ruin?

Maybe he regrets it. Maybe right now he’s calling it a mistake, swearing to himself he’ll never let it happen again. And if he is… he’s probably right. It was a mistake. But my chest aches in a way that doesn’t agree.

The worst part knowing how little I’ve ever mattered in Finn Wagner’s world. He’s the man who never stays, the one who treats women like accessories for his suits: one on Tuesday, another on Friday, none at all the week after because business is more interesting. Always beautiful, always temporary. Why did I think I’d be different? Why did I let myself believe he’d risk everything… his family, his company, his name… for me?

I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until colors bloom behind my lids, violent and bright.God, I’m an idiot.Stupid for missing him. Stupid for thinking, even for a second, that I was something more than another passing distraction.

And yet the cruelest, most humiliating truth is that I still want him to come back.

“Fuck this,” I mutter, then scream it into my pillow, the sound muffled, useless. My chest rises and falls like I’ve just run a mile, but all I’ve done is lie here and unravel.

I roll onto my back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The shadows stretch long across the plaster, and I trace them with my gaze like they’re cracks in me instead of the paint. My heart feels heavy with everything unsaid, everything I never got the chance to ask him.

And then… the crunch of tires on gravel.

I freeze. The sound is so ordinary, and yet it slices through the silence like a blade. I push myself upright, breath caught in my throat. The distant slam of a car door follows, soft but final, and the air around me shifts.

He’s here.

I can hear it in the sound of the heavy footsteps crossing the estate’s front hall, like he knows exactly how much space he takes up and doesn’t care who feels it. My pulse hammers against my ribs, each beat like a warning.