“Would it?”
“No.”
I stared at a crack in the table, a thin fault line running through the grain like it had been hiding there the whole time.
“I think we’re done,” I said quietly. “And I think we’ve been done for a long time.”
June didn’t gasp. She didn’t flinch. She just nodded like she’d already known.
“You don’t have to explain,” she said.
“I kind of want to.”
I looked at her—really looked. Tired eyes. Worry tucked beneath the skin like something that had learned how to hide. She’d always been the quiet one. The one who made herself small to keep the peace.
I was the one who made myself loud to survive it.
“I spent years making it look like I had everything under control,” I said. “And the truth is, I don’t even know whateverythingis anymore. I don’t know what I’m trying to keep together.”
June was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I feel that way most days.”
We sat in the stillness together. Not trying to fix it. Not offering advice. Just two women with hands full of things they couldn’t carry alone anymore.
Finally, I stood.
She didn’t stop me.
At the stairs, I paused and turned back. “He said something tonight. Daniel. He said I always know what I’m doing.”
June blinked up at me.
I let out a breath. “I don’t.”
Back in my room,I didn’t turn on the light. I just sat on the edge of the bed and stared into the dark like it might give me something I’d lost.
My marriage was over. My career was stalled. My inheritance was wrapped in a to-do list written by a dead woman who knew me better than I liked to admit.
I felt… hollow. Emptied out.
Like all the sharp edges had dulled. Like I’d been holding on too tightly for too long, and now that I’d finally let go, there was nothing left in my hands.
There was a kind of freedom in it.
The terrifying kind.
I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes.
I could still feel the harbor wind in my hair. Still hear Nate’s voice in the dark.
You don’t have to prove anything here.
What would it feel like to believe that?
Tolivelike that?
The next morning,I was the first one up. My body just didn’t know how to sleep in places that felt soft.
I poured a cup of coffee and walked out to the porch. The swing held steady beneath me. The cushion was still indented from the night before. The morning light was thin and silvery, curling through the branches and scattering across the dew-damp grass. The world felt unwashed. Honest. The kind of quiet that didn’t ask you to fill it.
