Maya #2
Maya put her car in drive. She kept both hands on the wheel, driving carefully. She needed to concentrate on something simple because everything else had become incomprehensible.
Owen's building had a ramp, wide and well maintained.
Maya stood at the bottom of it now with her suitcase and pressed the intercom button.
She could hear the tinny tone of the buzzer echoing in the speakers.
She wondered if he thought she was a criminal. If he was inside the apartment right now, looking at her through the camera and deciding whether he could bear to let her in.
Then the buzzer changed tone, diverting to his mobile.
Another second passed.
Owen’s voice came through the intercom, tinny and distant.
She closed her eyes. “Where are you?”
“Maya, are you okay? Have you left him?”
She looked down at the suitcase beside her. She hadn’t left Reid. It had been the other way around. “No. I… Reid asked me to leave. Can I stay here.”
“Of course.” She heard him swear. “I’m not in town. I’m with the team.”
Of course Owen was away. She’d known he had this trip. He’d been looking forward to it. He loved coaching that team.
“Look, just stay there,” Owen was saying. “I can get a flight back.”
"No." It came out harder than she meant it to. "No, Owen, don't."
“Maya, your husband has lost his mind. The team can manage without me.”
“No, they can’t,” she said sadly. “And even if they could, if you abandon a busload of children, you’d lose your job. And probably be arrested. Like me.” She tried to smile at her own joke, but the expression felt unnatural on her face.
A frustrated breath crackled through the speaker. He knew she was right.
“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “You’re due back tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
A beat. Then, quieter: "This is insane.”
Maya swallowed.
“You’re innocent.”
Her throat tightened.
“I don’t believe any of what Reid is saying,” Owen said. “Not for a second.”
Maya pressed her hand to her mouth, but the sound still escaped her. Small and broken and humiliating.
“Thank you,” she managed.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “And then we deal with this.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Maya. We deal with it.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
The intercom clicked off.
She picked up her suitcase.
She just needed somewhere tonight.
She could figure the rest out tomorrow. Or the day after.
Her phone lay on the table, plugged into a charger. The battery symbol pulsed slowly on the dark screen as it lit and dimmed again, the tiny animation repeating.
Three percent.
The café was busy. Maya sat at a small table near the wall, both hands wrapped around a mug. The coffee warmed her fingers through the ceramic. The sensation felt distant, as if it were happening to someone else.
Cups clinked against saucers, someone laughed near the counter, a chair scraped across the floor. Normal sounds.
The phone screen flickered again.
Four percent.
Maya set the mug down carefully and picked up the phone. This time when she pressed the button, the device powered up.
Maya watched, heart sinking, as the notifications appeared, stacking over each other, one after another.
A dull pressure built behind her eyes.
She just needed somewhere to go, someone to take her in.
Her parents wouldn’t turn her away. Another folding chair at the campsite, another air mattress squeezed into the RV.
The call rang long enough that Maya worried nobody would answer.
“Maya?” Her mother’s voice came through, surprised. “Oh—hi, sugar.”
Maya closed her eyes. Just the sound of her mother’s voice eased the tightness in her chest. “Mom,” she said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. “Could I come stay with you and Dad?”
Maya could hear wind in the background, and the muffled bark of a dog somewhere nearby.
“Of course,” her mother said. “That would be wonderful.”
Her shoulders came down from around her ears as relief spread through her.
She could already feel the cramped familiar chaos of the RV, an air mattress wedged into a corner. It didn't matter. It was family. She could go to them and hide away from this world for a few days. She could sleep.
“How about Thanksgiving?” her mother continued brightly. “You should come spend Thanksgiving with us.”
Thanksgiving was months away. Maya felt tears sting behind her eyes.
“Could I,” she swiped quickly at them, “could I come tonight? Now?”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Sugar, there’s really nowhere for you to stay,” her mother admitted. “Your father converted the dining nook into storage again. We barely fit ourselves.”
Of course.
“But by Thanksgiving we’ll probably be somewhere gorgeous,” her mother said encouragingly. “Maybe Oregon. Or Colorado. We’ll find somewhere that can accommodate Owen. You and your brother will love it.”
Another campground. Another scenic stop her parents would leave behind the second they got restless again.
She probably wasn’t allowed to leave town anyway. She couldn’t remember what the officers, her lawyer had told her. She’d been so focused on getting home to Reid.
Maya pressed her lips together. “Okay,” she said woodenly. She hung up.
She wanted—
Reid.
The Reid who had always believed in her. Who had smiled at her across the kitchen. Who had wrapped his arms around her and told her it would be okay like it was a fact.
She wanted that man.
Even if he wasn’t real.
She stared at her phone. What if he realized she was innocent. What if he was about to call her and ask her to come home?
He wasn’t going to call. Nobody was going to call.
Maya felt tears welling up. The truth was terrifying, impossible to ignore. She didn’t know what to do.
When her phone buzzed in her hand, she answered it immediately.
“I didn’t do it,” Maya said, desperately, as soon as the call connected.
“You are what is wrong with this sector,” Victoria Hale interrupted. Her tone was icy.
Maya closed her eyes. Victoria Hale. The woman who had spoken to her so warmly just days ago.
“Victoria, this is all a huge misunderstanding.”
“The board is formally revoking our offer.”
Maya stared out the window in front of her, not really seeing anything.
Just like that. Everything gone in a flash.
Maya swallowed. “I didn’t do this,” she said again.
This time, the words felt smaller. Her voice sounded thin.
The call ended.
Maya lowered the phone slowly and sat there, the phone in her hand.
Everything she had built, all the goodwill. It was all destroyed.
The café kept moving around her. Milk steaming, cutlery clinking, someone laughing too loudly near the counter.
Nobody knew that her life was falling apart.
Her gaze dropped to the screen again. Messages were still coming in, notifications popping up at an alarming rate, her own startled face staring back at her in social media posts.
The acquisition was gone. The charity was gone. Reid was gone.
A shadow fell across the table.
Maya looked up.
Sandra stood a few feet away, Greg beside her.
Maya had spent hours beside them installing railings and ramps and temporary platforms. She knew the way Greg rested his weight on one hip when he was thinking, the way Sandra folded her arms when she was irritated.
Sandra’s arms were folded now.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she told Maya.
Maya blinked.
“Sandra,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.
Sandra stepped closer to the table. “We trusted you,” she said. “Everyone trusted you.”
There was an edge to her voice that made Maya’s stomach tighten.
“People donated money,” she said. “Their time. Their equipment.”
“I didn’t—”
Sandra laughed once, the sound short and humorless. “Save it,” she said. “You think we’re going to trust anything a conwoman says?”
Greg’s expression hardened into contempt. “No man would arrest his own wife unless she’s guilty.”
“Please, I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t.”
But if Reid, the man who she had trusted the most out of everyone in the world, hadn’t believed her, who would?
Sandra glared at her for a moment longer. “Come on,” she said to Greg.
They walked toward the door without looking back.
Maya sat there. She could feel the attention from nearby tables.
She left the last of her cash on the table.
She needed somewhere to go, somewhere where she could lock herself in a room and not have to face the world until tomorrow. Somewhere she could sleep.
Maybe things would look better in the morning.
They had to look better in the morning.