21. Fiona
Fiona
The knock came like thunder this time.
Not a polite rap. Not the rhythm she'd known like breath. This was fast. Loud. Impulsive. And it startled her out of the strange, hollow quiet that had settled over her since her conversation with Dean hours ago.
Emma glanced up from the sink, her hands submerged in soapy water. “You want me to?—”
Behind them, Milo appeared in the kitchen doorway, beer still in his hand. His posture shifted—shoulders squaring, jaw tightening.
“I’ve got it,” Fiona said, already moving.
She opened the door, braced for confrontation.
Dean stood on the porch, soaked to the bone. Rain clung to his lashes. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His shoulders were heaving.
For a second, she thought he might say something else. Try again. Beg. But instead?—
He grabbed her hand.
She startled, instinctively trying to pull back, but he pressed something cold and heavy into her palm.
Car keys.
His car keys.
Fiona stared at them, confused. The fob was sleek and modern, dangling from a loop of leather. She blinked.
“What are you?—”
“I should’ve given it to you years ago,” Dean said hoarsely. “It should’ve been yours the whole time.”
She looked up at him, startled. “Dean, I?—”
"Your things," he said quietly. "From the glove compartment. The cup holders."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small collection: her emergency lip balm, the little packet of tissues she kept.
He set them carefully on the porch rail, like they were precious.
"I didn't want you to lose anything else," he said.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked to the curb—toward the beat-up Honda she’d driven into the ground the past five years.
Fiona stepped out onto the porch as Dean opened the door. He slid into the driver’s seat. She watched as he started the engine, headlights flaring against the wet pavement, and pulled away.
The nicer car—his car—was left behind, parked in front of the curb. Like a gift. Like an apology she hadn’t asked for.
Fiona looked down at the keys again.
Emma stepped into the doorway behind her. “What the hell was that?”
Fiona turned the key over in her hand. “I think… he gave me his car.”
Emma frowned. “To win you back?”
Fiona shook her head slowly. “I… I don’t know why.”
She closed her fingers around the fob.
The sound of her old car faded into the rain.
Fiona stood at the front of the classroom, red pen in hand, while her students filed in slowly. Mornings were always sluggish, but this one felt heavier.
Or maybe that was just her.
She capped the pen and set it down beside a stack of ungraded quizzes. “Warm-up is on the board,” she said gently. “Five minutes. No talking.”
A few groans. One exaggerated yawn. The soft rustle of notebooks opening.
She moved between rows, pausing to hand out worksheets, murmur praise, answer a question with a nod. It felt good to move. To be needed in a way that was simple . Direct.
There was comfort in the rhythm of it. The creak of chairs, the soft scratch of pencils. Her world reduced to fractions and equations and a kid named Lucas who couldn’t stop drawing dragons in the margins of his math.
No one here cared what car she drove. No one here knew what she’d left behind on a rainy Sunday night.
And yet, it followed her.
Not like a storm. More like the space after one—the silence after thunder, where everything feels sharper. More fragile.
Her eyes flicked to her desk. The lanyard with her new car key hung from the edge of a drawer, the electric fob catching a glint of sunlight. Sleek. Modern. A little absurd against the clutter of stickers and sticky notes, the half-dried whiteboard markers she’d been rationing for weeks.
Every second of the commute had felt like wearing someone else’s skin. The steering wheel too smooth, the console too quiet, the leather too polished. Even her reflection in the rearview mirror had looked unfamiliar.
But she got to school on time. No disasters. No flat tires. No breakdowns on the side of the road.
Just her. In a car she didn’t ask for. Moving forward anyway.
“Miss Fiona?”
Lucas held up his worksheet. “Is number four supposed to be negative?”
Fiona blinked. Came back to the room. Took the paper from his hand.
“Yes,” she said gently, circling the mistake with her red pen. “Because when you subtract a larger number from a smaller one?—”
“You go backwards,” he finished for her, grinning. “Got it.”
She smiled, and this one felt real.
The bell rang twenty minutes later, and chairs scraped, backpacks zipped, voices rose like birds startled into flight.
Fiona moved to her desk and sank into her chair, just for a moment. Her fingers brushed the key fob.
It still didn’t feel like a gift.
It felt like a debt being paid too late.