29. Chapter 29
Cate
The house stayed quiet after everyone left.
Not the peaceful kind, nothing settled or calm, but hollow, like the walls were holding their breath along with me.
I locked the door out of habit. Checked it twice. Then a third time, even though John’s keys were still hanging on their hook by the garage door. I touched them without thinking, the cold metal biting into my fingertips.
If I moved them, I might admit something I wasn’t ready to say.
I wandered room to room, not looking for him exactly, just retracing the shape he’d left behind. I picked up a discarded sweatshirt and brought it to my nose.
Cedar. Clean cotton. John.
The smell hit harder than anything else had. Harder than the police. Harder than the empty bed.
I sank down onto the floor and held the shirt to my chest, breathing him in like it might anchor me. Like if I stayed still long enough, this moment could reverse itself.
It didn’t.
At some point, Amy appeared, as if out of nowhere. She hovered in the doorway, unsure, like she didn’t know which version of me she was going to find.
“I made coffee,” she said quietly. “You should eat something.”
I shook my head. Words felt dangerous. If I spoke, something inside me might break all the way open.
She sat beside me anyway, close enough that our shoulders touched. We stayed like that for a long time, neither of us saying what we were both thinking.
Eventually, she stood. “Trevor asked if you wanted him to stay with you.”
“No,” I said quickly. Then softer, “No. I just… I need to be alone.”
Amy hesitated, then nodded. She squeezed my hand once before leaving, the door clicking shut behind her.
I made it upstairs on instinct, not memory.
Baby was cuddled up in our bed and I crawled in beside her, curling around John’s pillow, the sheets still rumpled from where we’d slept the night before.
I traced the indentation his body had left, my fingers memorizing it like I might need proof later that he’d been real.
I told myself he’d call.
That this was a mistake. A misunderstanding.
But somewhere between the quiet ticking of the clock and the slow creep of daylight across the wall, a new thought took root, small and terrifying in its certainty.
No one was coming to explain this.
There would be no moment where it made sense.
I pressed my face into the pillow and let the truth settle, heavy and permanent.
If you love someone, you can still lose them.
If you wait, you can still be left behind.
I didn’t sleep.
I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, and learned something I knew I would carry with me for years…
Waiting doesn’t keep people.
Love doesn’t guarantee safety.
And nothing, nothing, comes with a promise you can count on.
By the time the sun finally rose, I was already different.