Chapter 36
Thirty Six
Erin drove without thinking about the streets she took.
She kept her hands at ten and two and watched the empty lanes unspool in the wash of her headlights.
The radio was off. Even the low hum of it felt dangerous now, like a tripwire that would send her straight back to the park, straight back to Jamie’s voice saying Lila Grant’s name out loud.
Rain had started again, thin and misty. It pooled on the edges of the windshield and caught in the wipers before smearing into a clear line.
She focused on that, the rhythmic swipe, the neat clean path, the small order of it.
She couldn’t think about the badge she’d left on a desk.
She couldn’t think about Collins’s face, or Vega’s voice, or the way the hallway had felt too long when she walked it.
Her phone lay in the cup holder, facedown. The black screen showed nothing. It might as well have been a stone.
She pulled into her lot and sat with the engine idling.
The clock on the dash ticked over to a time that felt wrong.
She turned the key. The sudden quiet made her ears ring.
When she stepped out, the air was cool and damp and smelled like wet concrete.
She breathed it in until her chest stopped fighting her.
Inside, Leo’s nails clicked on the other side of the door before she even got the key in.
He complained once, eager and warm. When the door opened he pressed his body into her legs like he could shove the day off her.
She put a hand on his head and left it there, fingers buried in his fur until he sighed.
“Hey, buddy.” Her voice sounded thin. “I know. I’m late.”
The apartment was dark except for the glow from the microwave clock and a streetlamp cutting a pale rectangle across the floor. She didn’t turn on the overheads. She toed off her boots and hung her blazer on a hook she usually missed. Tonight she didn’t miss.
Leo followed her into the kitchen. She scooped his food, the metal scoop scraping the inside of the bag. He ate like he always did, steady and intent. A small, ordinary sound that kept the room from feeling hollow.
Her phone sat on the counter where she’d set it down.
She didn’t look at it. She washed her hands and braced her palms on the sink, head bent, water running over her wrists.
She watched the rivulets move along the inside of her forearms and drip off the heel of her hands.
Her arms trembled and she turned the water off.
In the living room she dropped onto the couch and let herself sink back.
Leo finished and loped over, jumping up like he always did even though he knew better.
She didn’t correct him. He tucked himself into the space against her thigh and put his chin on her knee.
She rested one hand on his shoulder and felt the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
On the far wall the TV remote sat where she’d left it that morning. She thought about turning it on and then didn’t. She couldn’t put Jamie’s voice back in the room. She pressed her thumb against the seam of the couch until the skin blanched.
She tried to think about steps. If she kept it to steps, maybe she could keep breathing.
There would be a written notice from HR tomorrow.
She would have to sign something else. She would have to hand over her laptop if they asked.
She had a box in the bottom drawer of her desk that would fit most of her things.
A mug, a notebook, a photo from the academy graduation where she stood in the back row, unsmiling and sure.
She saw herself there and didn’t recognize the certainty.
She’d built this job piece by piece. Early mornings.
Late nights. Briefings no one watched. Meetings where she kept her tone measured while someone repeated her words back to her like they had thought of them.
She outlasted the condescension by being useful.
When people got used to you being useful, they forgot to doubt you out loud.
That had been enough. Most days that had been enough.
She could still feel the weight of the badge in her hand. Cold metal. The sound it made when it touched Vega’s desk. Final and small.
Her chest went tight and wouldn’t release. She shifted her palm against Leo’s shoulder and felt the warm press of him, the reminder that her body was here on this couch, not back in that office. She counted to five. Then she started again.
Her eyes landed on the phone. The screen was still black. She imagined for a second that it was full of nothing. No emails. No missed calls. No texts. No one on the other end of a line trying to ask the question she couldn’t answer without hating herself all over again.
She reached for it and stopped with her fingers on the edge. She could turn it on. She could look. But if she did, she might see Jamie’s name, and that would be worse than anything else waiting for her there. She let her hand fall to the cushion.
She tried to build a version of the night where it had gone differently.
She tried to make herself say she never would have told Jamie.
She saw the scene anyway. The lights. The tape lifting in the wind.
Jamie’s face, open and focused. Erin’s voice leaving her before she could catch it.
It didn’t matter how many times she rewound it.
She handed the match over. Jamie struck it.
A sound scraped at the edge of the quiet.
A neighbor closing a door down the hall.
Water in a pipe. The world turning on without her.
She wanted to be angry, and some hot sharp piece of it was there, but it kept catching on the ache that sat heavy in her ribs.
She’d begged. She could still feel the shape of the word in her mouth.
She’d asked for the one thing that wouldn’t cost the world anything, and Jamie had looked at her and chosen the job.
She swallowed and it hurt.
Leo’s tail thumped once against the cushion. She rubbed behind his ear. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
The microwave clock ticked over. She realized she hadn’t eaten since noon.
The idea of food felt like a chore she would fail.
She got up anyway and opened the fridge, then closed it again.
She drank a glass of water that tasted like metal.
When she set the cup down she did it carefully, like the sound might break something in the room that was still holding.
Her phone lit with the low battery icon and then went dark again. She hadn’t realized it had flickered awake when she moved it. The small flash sent a jolt through her. She picked it up and pressed the side button. The dead screen stared back.
She could plug it in. She could keep it off. She could admit that she wanted to know and that she didn’t want to know at the same time.
She plugged it in. The screen bloomed and the logo pulsed and her pulse picked up with it. She watched it like it was a live wire. When the lock screen appeared she saw the numbers and the date and nothing else yet. The bar crawled toward service. She felt a small wave of nausea hit as she waited.
Before the first vibration could land, she pressed the button and killed the screen. She dropped the phone facedown on the coffee table. Her breath left her all at once. Leo lifted his head and then settled again.
“Not yet,” she said, to herself or the room or the dog. “I can’t yet.”
She returned to the couch and sat forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped.
The city was quieter from this side of the window, but she could still hear a siren somewhere far away.
She thought about how many times she’d turned a siren into a sentence.
Tonight her words had turned into a siren and wouldn’t turn back.
A thought arrived that she didn’t want. Jamie, in the WCVB studio, her IFB in, a producer in her ear telling her they were live in ten.
The calm that came over her when the red light blinked on.
Erin had seen it, right in front of her.
That focus. That surety. It was one of the things she admired most about her, and tonight it had cut straight through her.
She closed her eyes and leaned back. If she let herself picture Jamie any longer she would be tempted to make it simple.
Jamie was doing her job. Jamie had to do her job.
Erin could deal with anything as long as it stayed in the realm of work.
Except that she hadn’t been talking to a reporter when she said please.
She’d been talking to the woman she loved.
She’d trusted that would mean something.
She’d put the softest part of herself on the line, and the line had snapped.
She breathed out and felt the breath shiver at the end.
Her mind thinned out to small tasks. She got up again, took Leo out into the courtyard, stood under the awning while the mist gathered on her hair.
He trotted through the wet grass and shook himself, then looked back at her like he was ready to go in.
On the way inside a neighbor passed with grocery bags and didn’t make eye contact. She was grateful for that small mercy.
Back inside, she wiped Leo’s paws with the old towel and tossed it in the corner. She turned off the lamp she’d left turned on. The apartment returned to the dim its walls knew best. She stood in the center of the room and listened to the building breathe.
Her phone sat facedown where she left it.
She picked it up and flipped it just long enough to see the screen wake.
The preview lights were there, stacked one on top of another.
She didn’t read the names. She didn’t open the messages.
She watched them a second longer and then pressed the side button until the screen went black.
She left the phone on the kitchen counter this time. Out of reach from the couch, but not out of the room.
She pulled a blanket over her legs and leaned into the corner of the cushions.
Leo circled once and then fit himself against her hip with a huff.
The weight of him grounded her. She let her hand rest on his ribs and counted the slow rise and fall.
She’d done this on other hard nights, and it had always been enough to get her through to morning.
She thought of work, then didn’t. She thought of the review, then didn’t. She tried to picture Vega using the word temporary again and felt a flicker of something close to relief, and then it went out. She didn’t trust the word yet. Not tonight.
Her eyes burned. She blinked and tried to clear the sting.
When the tears came they didn’t come all at once.
They gathered and slid, quiet and careful, and she let them go because there was nothing left to hold them back for.
Leo thumped his tail once, as if to say he felt it too, and she scrubbed her cheek with the heel of her hand.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
The apartment settled around her. Somewhere in the building a pipe ticked. Outside a car door closed and then a second one. The world kept stacking ordinary sounds. She waited for one that would shatter her stillness and none did.
When sleep finally pulled at her, it felt like surrender, not rest. She let her eyes fall and kept her hand on Leo’s side and allowed the dark to take her as far as it could.
Her phone stayed dark on the counter.