The Way Back

Chapter 1 Elena

Iput down a dog that afternoon.

She was an old shepherd mix whose hips had given up on her long before her heart did, and her owner held her the way you hold something you know you're about to lose.

I see this often enough to know what comes next, to be the last kind face an animal sees, the last gentle touch.

When I slid the needle in, her tail thumped once, as if to say: I know. It's okay. Thank you.

"You gave her a good life," I told the owner. Sometimes that’s the only mercy we get to offer.

He nodded and cried quiet tears that didn’t ask for an audience, and I walked him to the lobby and watched him leave without her.

The clinic was quiet after that. I stood at the front desk for a moment, letting it sit with me, then went back to the routine: lock the medication cabinet, wipe down the exam tables, check the kennels one more time even though I'd already checked them twice.

Angela had left hours ago, coat slung over her shoulder, barely a wave goodbye.

She'd been like that for months now, distracted and scattered, leaving early or coming in late.

Last week she'd double-booked three appointments in one afternoon, and I'd spent my lunch break calling clients to reschedule.

The week before that, I'd handled the supplier invoice she'd forgotten to pay.

Before that, the insurance compliance thing with the new cameras and updated logs, the kind of administrative tedium that made Angela's eyes glaze over whenever I brought it up.

I didn’t mind. I loved this place and its antiseptic-and-kibble smell, its wall of thank-you cards, and how the morning sun spilled into the waiting room.

Angela hired me five years ago when I was fresh out of school and desperate, and over the years we’d become real friends.

She relied on me, trusted me, and now she’d offered me partnership before the end of the year. I’d earned it.

I grabbed my coat from the hook and headed to the back office to get my purse.

Angela's desk was a disaster, the way it had been for weeks now. A miniature liquor bottle lay half-hidden behind the keyboard, the kind people slipped into purses when they didn’t want to admit they needed it.

Wadded tissues overflowed from the trash can.

A bank statement with a number highlighted in yellow peeked out from under a stack of unopened mail, and one of her blazers was draped over the chair, abandoned there days ago, like everything else she’d stopped keeping track of.

I should text her, make sure she was okay.

Tomorrow, I decided. Tomorrow I'd ask.

My purse sat on the filing cabinet where I'd left it that morning, and when I unzipped it to check for my keys, I saw the box of ovulation tests tucked inside. Matt and I had bought them a month ago, standing in the family planning aisle at the pharmacy while he made jokes about his swimmers and I tried not to laugh too loud. He’d been so excited. Hell, we both had been.

I’d taken one this morning before work, and the result had been clear: peak fertility.

I'd taken a photo and sent it to Matt with three emojis. Heart, baby bottle, question mark.

His response had come quickly, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. Not the enthusiasm from a month ago when we’d first talked about trying, when he’d pulled me into his arms and spun me around the kitchen. Just:

I told myself he was probably tired. He’d had a long day, and everyone feels flattened by nine at night.

My phone buzzed in my hand, and I glanced down.

Matt.

Just getting home. Gonna grab a shower. Today’s been nonstop.

Nothing unusual in that. His shifts were unpredictable, the days long. Sometimes he came home buzzing with stories, sometimes he didn’t want to talk at all. Still, I’d hoped for… something more. A call, maybe. One of his dumb jokes.

I typed back and hit Send.

Don’t forget… tonight’s a green light night

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Finally:

The same response. Nothing more.

I stared at the screen for a moment, that flicker of disappointment growing into something heavier.

He'd been like this for a few days now—shorter texts, distracted when we talked on the phone, that faraway look when I caught him staring at nothing.

When did it start? Four days ago? Five? I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment, but I'd felt the shift.

I told myself he was stressed. Life had been busy. We were fine.

No, we were more than fine. We were trying for a baby. A tiny maybe growing somewhere in our future, us building something together. The thought made me smile, soft and stupid, and it warmed me from the inside out.

I slipped my phone into my pocket and turned to the computer to shut everything down.

The security system dashboard was still open from earlier, and I remembered I'd been meaning to adjust the motion sensor settings.

The cameras had been triggering too many alerts lately: shadows, the AC kicking on, that fiddle-leaf fig by the window that swayed every time a car drove past. I clicked into the settings panel and pulled up the activity log to see how bad it had gotten.

There were pages of alerts. Prep room, lobby, exam room two. I scrolled through, clicking on a few at random.

The first one showed the lobby at 3:47 AM, empty except for the plant moving slightly in the draft from the heating vent. The second was exam room two at 6:22 AM: just the tail end of the cleaning crew's vacuum cord swinging into frame.

I shook my head. Definitely needed to dial back the sensitivity.

I was about to close the window when something caught my eye. A handful of prep room alerts clustered together, all timestamped around eleven or later on the same night, four days ago.

Probably nothing. Maybe Angela had come back one night to grab something she'd forgotten, or the motion sensors were picking up the glow from the parking lot lights again.

Still, I was already here.

I clicked on one of the notifications. 11:34 PM.

The video player opened, frozen on the first frame.

I pressed play.

Grainy black-and-white footage filled the screen, the timestamp ticking in the corner.

The prep room was empty for a few seconds, then the door opened and Angela walked in.

She looked rough even in the low-quality footage—shoulders hunched, movements jerky.

She went straight for the cabinet where I kept the cleaning supplies and reached behind the bottles and spray cans, pulling out a wine bottle I’d never seen before.

I’d thought the tiny bottle on her desk was bad enough.

Apparently that was just the tip of the iceberg.

She took a long drink straight from the bottle, then sank down to sit on the floor with her back against the exam table.

My chest tightened. Poor Angela. Whatever was going on with her, it was worse than I'd thought.

I pressed my lips together. It felt wrong to watch her fall apart in private like this, to see her at her lowest when she clearly thought she was alone.

My hand moved toward the mouse.

Then Angela stood up abruptly and crossed to the door. She opened it and stepped back, and someone else entered the frame.

A man. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a uniform.

I frowned. Had she called the police? Was something wrong? Was she—

He stepped fully into the light.

The air left my lungs.

Matt.

My husband was in the prep room of the clinic at 11:34 at night, four days ago, with Angela.

They were talking. No audio, just grainy black-and-white footage of two people standing close. Angela gestured with her hands. Matt shook his head, rubbed the back of his neck the way he did when he was stressed.

He was helping her. That was it. That had to be it.

Angela was upset and she'd called him because Matt was good at this, at talking people through hard things, at showing up when someone needed him.

That's what he did. That's who he was. I was the one seeing things that weren't there, reading too much into footage that probably had a perfectly reasonable explanation if I just gave him a chance to—

Angela reached for him.

And then they were kissing.