11. Annie #2
Ellie.
“I want yesterday morning,” I said.
Her expression softened.
“So do I.”
“I want to stay.”
“Even with the photographers?”
“No.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist.
Rachel waited.
Everyone waited.
Captain Pancake sneezed.
“I want to stay with you,” I said. “But I don’t want my staying to turn your life into something you didn’t choose.”
Ellie’s eyes remained on mine.
“And?”
“And leaving is easier.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
I forced myself to continue.
“It’s easier than watching you be angry with me. Easier than waiting while you decide whether anything between us can survive this. Easier than answering questions I should have answered days ago.”
Rachel nodded faintly.
I ignored her.
“So yes,” I said. “I’m leaving because the attention will follow me. But I’m also leaving because running back to work is something I know how to do.”
Ellie was quiet for several seconds.
“That,” she said, “is the first decision you’ve explained instead of selling.”
The words hurt.
They also felt like progress.
“I’m trying.”
“I can see that.”
The phone rang again.
Hank unplugged it from the wall.
“Problem solved.”
Rachel looked at him.
“That may be the first effective communications strategy I’ve seen today.”
He nodded.
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“Learning.”
Ellie turned toward me.
“I’m not asking you to stay.”
“I know.”
“I’m also not asking you to leave.”
“I understand.”
“I need time to work out how I feel when there aren’t strangers searching for photographs of my dead sister.”
The bluntness of it left no room for performance.
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
It was not forgiveness.
But it was not nothing.
Rachel checked the road through the front window.
“We should leave before the photographers arrive.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Twenty minutes, if traffic is kind.”
“Traffic has never been kind.”
“Then fifteen.”
I looked at Ellie.
“Was any of it—”
I stopped.
She waited.
“Was it real for you?” I asked.
The question felt unfair the moment I said it.
Ellie’s face changed.
“Of course it was.”
Relief hit hard enough to make me dizzy.
“That’s why this hurts,” she added.
There it was.
No easy escape.
No version where the past few days had meant less because I had handled them badly.
I reached toward her.
Then stopped before touching her hand.
Ellie noticed.
After a moment, she turned her palm upward.
I placed my fingers against hers.
We did not hold hands exactly.
We remembered how.
“I’m angry,” she said.
“You should be.”
“I don’t know when that changes.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want Sophie turning me into a friend, a dive instructor who happened to be nearby, or a misunderstanding.”
“She won’t.”
Rachel cleared her throat.
“She won’t,” she confirmed. “No statement about Ellie without Ellie’s approval.”
I looked at her.
“Nothing about us at all.”
“Understood.”
“No invented explanation.”
“I said understood.”
“No—”
“Annie,” Rachel said. “I am capable of taking notes.”
Ellie’s fingers moved slightly against mine.
“You’re Annie again.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Rachel called you Annie.”
“She does sometimes.”
“When?”
“When Savannah stops being useful.”
Rachel’s expression shifted.
“That is not how I would phrase it.”
“But it’s true.”
She did not argue.
Ellie looked between us.
Then she gently withdrew her hand.
“You should pack.”
“Will you come with me?”
The answer was already in her face.
“No.”
I nodded.
“I can’t stand in that cottage while you put everything back into a suitcase,” she said. “Not today.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I’m beginning to.”
“That’s irritatingly reasonable.”
“I have occasional moments.”
“Don’t get attached to them.”
A small smile appeared.
Tired.
Brief.
Real.
It made leaving much harder.
I bent to hug Captain Pancake.
He accepted the embrace with the confidence of someone who assumed all emotional scenes were eventually about him.
“You’re a terrible mediator,” I whispered.
He licked my ear.
Hank held out a Reef Rascal cap.
“For the road.”
I stared at it.
“Is this a disguise?”
“No. Advertising.”
Rachel took it from him.
“She’ll wear it.”
“I will not.”
Rachel placed it on top of my head.
Ellie laughed.
The sound was quiet, but it was hers.
I left before I could mistake it for permission to stay.
The cottage looked different when we returned.
Not because anything had changed.
Because Ellie was no longer inside it.
The remains of breakfast covered the kitchen counter.
Two coffee cups.
A bowl with three strawberries.
The disconnected telephone receiver beside the wooden sailboat.
Rachel walked through the rooms collecting chargers and checking drawers while I stood in the bedroom doorway.
One side of the bed was unmade.
The expensive T-shirt Ellie had worn was gone.
She still had it.
I let that mean more than it probably did.
Rachel found the fork beneath the edge of the bed.
She held it up.
“No.”
“It was pie.”
“That explanation has not improved with time.”
She carried it into the kitchen.
I folded the white sundress from our first date.
Then unfolded it because I had done it badly.
Rachel returned and took it from me.
“You are terrible at packing when emotional.”
“I’m terrible at packing generally.”
“That’s why your luggage always contains nine shirts and no underwear.”
“That happened once.”
“Paris remembers.”
She folded the dress properly and placed it in the suitcase.
“I made a mess,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Could you pretend to misunderstand me?”
“No.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
Rachel continued packing.
“I should have told her.”
“Yes.”
“I kept thinking I was protecting something.”
“You were.”
I looked at her.
“For a few days, you protected the version of this that was easiest for you.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It wasn’t all bad.”
She zipped an interior pocket.
“You met someone as Annie. You needed that. But you forgot Ellie was also making choices.”
“I know.”
Rachel glanced at me.
“You may say it this time.”
My phone rested in my hand.
No messages.
Ellie had asked for time.
I opened our conversation anyway.
The last message was from that morning.
Bring coffee. Hank has declared war on the printer.
It belonged to another life.
One that had existed six hours earlier.
I typed:
I’m leaving now.
Then erased it.
She knew.
I typed:
I’m sorry.
Erased that too.
She knew that as well.
Rachel closed the suitcase.
“Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. Honesty is progressing.”
Outside, the SUV waited.
I took one last look around the cottage.
The pies.
The decorative phone.
The kitchen where Ellie had kissed me.
The bedroom where, for one night, I had stopped listening for the next demand.
Then I followed Rachel outside.
We drove past the café.
Rosa stood beneath the awning talking to two people holding cameras. She pointed firmly toward the menu, which suggested they would not receive information without first purchasing breakfast.
The marina came next.
Then Reef Rascal.
I told myself not to look.
I lasted four seconds.
Ellie stood at the end of the dock.
The wind moved her hair across her face.
She did not wave.
Neither did I.
The shop disappeared behind us.
My phone vibrated.
A message appeared.
Ellie: Let me know when you land.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Rachel glanced toward me.
“What did she say?”
I pressed my wrist against the cool window, the green threads bright against the glass.
“She asked me to let her know when I land.”
Rachel nodded.
“That’s something.”
“Yes.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was not a promise.
But it was not goodbye either.