Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mac was halfway up her porch steps when she heard her name called.
“Mac?”
She turned, one hand on the railing. The landlady, Edith Kowalski, stood on the walk with a stack of mail tucked against her hip, reading glasses perched low on her nose. She looked exactly as she always did—tidy, observant, faintly apologetic about existing in anyone else’s business.
“Oh, hi,” Mac said, surprised. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, yes.” Edith waved a hand, already reassuring. “Nothing urgent. I just wanted to catch you before I forgot.”
Mac stepped back down a stair, waiting.
“I was speaking with Connor earlier,” Edith continued. “About the sublease.”
“The sublease?” she repeated.
“Yes.” Edith shifted the mail to her other side. “He’s got another month, maybe six weeks, before it’s up. He mentioned he may not renew.”
The words settled with the soft, blunt weight of fact.
“‘May not,’” Mac repeated, the words thinner than she intended.
She hadn’t heard that before.
Edith nodded. “He said he’s keeping his options open. Seattle, I think he said. Or…somewhere out West.”
Mac blinked once
“I just wanted to check in,” Edith added, kindly now. “About whether there’s any overlap or flexibility needed. Sometimes couples like to…coordinate.”
Mac almost smiled at that. Almost.
“We’re not—” She stopped.
Not because what she’d been about to say was untrue.
Because she didn’t know how to finish it.
Edith didn’t press. She never did. “Of course. Well, just let me or Harold know if you need anything.”
She handed Mac a piece of mail from the stack and gave her a small, polite nod before turning to walk away.
Mac stood there for a moment.
Seattle.
She pictured him standing in the marina sunlight, sleeves pushed up, easy smile like he belonged exactly where he was.
The image hurt more than she expected.
He hadn’t said a word to her.
Not as a warning.
Not as a plea.
Not as a test.
Just…a plan made quietly. Thoughtfully. Without asking whether she wanted to be part of it.
She walked up the rest of the porch stairs slowly, unlocked her door and stepped inside.
The apartment felt the same as it had an hour ago. Sunlight through the window. The chair she’d moved earlier still angled wrong. Her shoes by the door, neat, deliberate.
She set the envelope, unopened, on the counter and leaned her hands against the edge, shoulders dropping as if they’d been holding something up for longer than she’d realized.
He wasn’t leaving because she’d taken the job.
He was leaving because she hadn’t let him stand beside her while she chose.
Because she’d been so careful not to need him that she’d taught him how not to need her back.
Mac closed her eyes.
She thought of all the ways she’d learned to be valuable.
To contribute.
To justify the space she took up.
She’d believed—honestly believed—that love stayed safest when it didn’t ask for anything.
And Connor, who knew better than to step into someone else’s decisions, had heard exactly what she’d been saying.
I’ve got this.
I don’t need your help.
This part is mine.
So he was respecting her boundaries all the way back to Seattle.
Mac opened her eyes and stared at the blank wall across from her, the quiet pressing in now—not heavy, but final in the way consequences often were.
This wasn’t about him leaving.
It was about what she’d taught him was allowed.
Only now did she feel the full cost of making the decision to take the analyst job alone.
And she knew—quietly, unmistakably—that if Connor stayed, it wouldn’t be because either of them had everything figured out.
It would be because they were willing to figure it out—together.
Mac hadn’t planned to go to the square.
She found herself there anyway, the sound of the fountain reaching her before she saw it.
The three women stood just beyond the fountain’s edge, cast in bronze and motion—Gladys in the middle, head tipped back in laughter, Ruby and Katherine angled toward her like they were in on something private and good.
None of them stood apart.
Someone had tucked fresh flowers at the base. A ribbon fluttered against the metal in the breeze.
Mac stopped a few feet away.
She’d tossed a coin in that fountain. Made a wish she hadn’t really named. Standing in the same place felt different now, her chest tight and her thoughts loud.
She folded her arms. Unfolded them.
“I didn’t think it would feel like this,” she said in a low voice.
The water in the fountain moved, steady and unbothered.
“I thought if I didn’t ask for anything,” she said, watching the water move, “then nobody could disappoint me.”
She let out a quiet breath. “If I just handled my own stuff. Made my own calls. Didn’t ask anyone to rearrange theirs… or stay when they didn’t want to.”
That felt closer to the truth.
Connor had stepped back.
He was respecting the distance she’d taught him to keep.
“I don’t know how to let someone stay without feeling like I should make it easy for them to leave,” she said.
That one hurt on the way out.
She pressed her tongue to the backs of her teeth, grounding herself. The air smelled faintly of lake water and metal and late summer.
“I keep thinking if I’m solid enough—capable enough—then it won’t cost anyone anything to be with me.” Mac took a small breath. “Like love should be easy for everyone but me.”
She glanced up at the statue. The women didn’t look guarded. They didn’t look like they were bracing.
They looked like they trusted one another to stay.
Even when things changed.
Mac slipped her hand into her pocket and found a coin she didn’t remember putting there. It was warm as she rolled it between her fingers.
“I asked for courage,” she said quietly. “Not certainty. Just…enough courage.”
She didn’t toss the coin.
She closed her fist around it instead.
“I don’t want him to stay because it’s convenient,” she said. “I want him to stay because he chooses to. And that means I have to stop pretending I don’t need him.”
The admission didn’t fix anything.
But it felt honest.
Mac slipped the coin back into her pocket and stood straighter.
“I guess this is where I stop acting like I don’t need anybody,” she muttered.
The fountain kept moving. The ribbon lifted and fell.
The women stood there, caught in their laughter, as if they’d decided something together and had never regretted it.
Mac took one last look—not wishing this time. Just noticing.
Then she turned and headed toward home.
She didn’t have the speech worked out.
She didn’t have a plan.
But she was done waiting for Connor to guess what she hadn’t said.