Chapter 41
Forty One
The fight wasn’t loud. It hadn’t needed to be. The words themselves were enough to split something open. Jamie’s voice had cracked, Erin’s had gone too calm, and the silence between them had done the rest.
Now it lived in her body, a low echo she couldn’t shake.
It sat behind her ribs, in her hands, in the hollow of her throat.
Every time she blinked, she saw the parking lot lights, the red of her own taillights fading in the mirror, Jamie shrinking in the rearview, still standing there, still waiting for something Erin couldn’t give her.
She’d told herself it was the right thing to do. That leaving was the only way to make it stop hurting. But endings don’t stay clean when you drive away still wishing you’d stayed.
She went to work anyway. That was what she did.
Desk duty was simple, quiet, forgettable.
She answered emails, updated briefing notes, kept her head down.
Her computer screen glowed with a dozen half-written sentences that didn’t mean anything.
Vega checked in once, gave her a nod that said he wouldn’t ask, and moved on. She was grateful for that.
The noise of the precinct should’ve helped.
Phones ringing, officers trading shifts, the printer that always jammed.
But it only made the silence in her head louder.
Every sound found its own echo. She’d type a sentence and hear Jamie’s voice in the back of her mind, asking the kind of question that used to make her laugh.
By the second day she’d stopped pretending to eat lunch. She just sat with her coffee and stared at the bulletin board until her eyes blurred. A few people stopped by her desk, asked if she was doing okay, but she kept her answers short.
“Fine.”
“Just tired.”
“Long week.”
None of it was true.
At home, she slept too much. The apartment dimmed around her, curtains half-drawn, dishes gathering in the sink. She stopped setting alarms. Leo started waking her instead, whining for food or pressing his nose into her hand until she remembered that time was still moving.
Sometimes she’d feed him and crawl back into bed before the coffee even finished brewing. Sometimes she’d stay there until the light shifted on the wall and it was evening again.
When she did get up, the world felt too bright. The fridge hummed too loud. The weight of a spoon felt wrong in her hand. She’d open the door to take Leo out and then stand in the hall for a second, trying to remember how to look normal in front of neighbors.
On the fourth morning she made it halfway down the block before she had to stop. The sky was too sharp a blue. The smell of someone’s cooking hit her wrong. Leo looked back at her, tail low, waiting for a cue. She crouched and pressed her forehead against his.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “We’re fine.”
It didn’t sound convincing.
Inside, she tried to clean. She scrubbed the counter, rearranged drawers, threw out mail she hadn’t opened.
But every surface she touched reminded her of something Jamie had been near.
The coffee mugs, the doorframe, the towel she’d used that one night after the rain.
Erin wanted to tear the place apart just to stop seeing her.
When she ran out of things to clean, she sat on the couch with the TV on mute. She told herself she was catching up on the news, but she was really waiting for Jamie’s face to flash across the screen. It didn’t.
That should’ve helped. It didn’t.
She tried to be angry. It was the only thing that kept her upright. Anger had edges. It gave her something to hold when everything else blurred.
She was angry at Jamie for breaking her trust. Angry at herself for letting it happen. Angry that part of her still wanted to hear that voice again, the one that could make any sentence sound like something worth believing.
When she caught herself staring at her phone, she’d shove it in a drawer. “No,” she’d say out loud. “We’re not doing this.” Leo would lift his head from his bed and blink at her like he was trying to believe it too.
By the end of the week, people had stopped asking how she was. That was easier. The fewer questions, the less she had to lie.
She worked quietly, fingers flying over the keyboard, typing fast enough to keep from thinking. She handled assignments before Vega could finish asking for them. She edited, organized, scheduled. The rhythm felt like control.
What she didn’t say sat heavier than what she did.
The younger officers avoided her desk. She heard them whisper sometimes, not about the case but about her tone.
The clipped answers, the way she cut off small talk before it started.
She caught one of them mimicking her expression once and had to walk away before she said something she couldn’t take back.
The silence in her apartment followed her into the precinct. It clung to her clothes, to the smell of coffee, to the way she moved through hallways without looking anyone in the eye.
She wasn’t sleeping right. When she closed her eyes she saw headlights. When she did manage to rest, she woke up too fast, pulse hammering like she’d been running.
She tried to tell herself she didn’t miss Jamie. That she was angry, not grieving. But anger never filled the space long enough. It would flare, bright and sharp, and then burn out, leaving her hollow again.
At her desk, she scrolled through an email chain about an upcoming press briefing. Her cursor hovered over the name she didn’t want to see. WCVB.
She forced herself to open it. Routine. Nothing personal. The body was asking about access time, footage clearance, same as always. Erin typed out a professional reply, clear and detached. Then she saw the signature line.
Jamie Garrison, WCVB News
Her chest tightened. She read it three times. The words blurred, not because they hurt but because she hated that they still could.
She closed the email without sending her reply. Then she reopened it, deleted the draft, and started again.
Professional. Polite. Cold.
She signed her name, hit send, and watched the message disappear from her outbox.
The relief lasted maybe a second before the guilt slid in behind it.
She leaned back, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “You’re fine,” she muttered. “You’re fine.”
Leo would have looked at her like he didn’t believe her.
She stayed late that night, long after most of the office emptied. Vega passed by once, said something about not burning herself out, and she nodded without looking up.
When she finally shut her computer down, the glow of the screen left a ghostly imprint on her vision. The walk to her car felt longer than usual.
In the driver’s seat, she stared at her hands on the steering wheel until the quiet started to ring.
She was furious at Jamie for showing up that night. Furious at herself for caring that she had. Furious that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t erase the sound of her voice.
The anger didn’t fade when she got home. It sharpened. She threw her keys too hard on the counter. She dropped her bag and left it where it fell. She filled a glass of water and didn’t drink it.
Leo padded in from the bedroom, tail slow, head tilted. He watched her a long moment before nudging her leg.
“I’m fine,” she said again.
He huffed like he didn’t buy it.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Me neither.”
She turned off the kitchen light, the glow from the street spilling faintly through the window. It made everything look softer than it felt.
Erin stood there until the silence filled the room again. It was almost a comfort now, the one thing that stayed when nothing else did.