Chapter 28 #3
It was nothing. Of course it was nothing.
In which case, it wouldn’t matter what Mei Lin discovered. A thin excuse, but she tapped the banner and opened the messaging app.
The most recent messages had just come in. She read them again, then scrolled up and read others that’d been delivered today.
Thinking of you.
Above that, from yesterday…
Praying.
Above that…
I made the soup you liked. It doesn’t taste good without you here. I’ll save you some in the freezer.
Mei Lin felt sick to her stomach, but she kept scrolling.
The day before, there’d been four messages, and the day before that, six. One was a scripture.
“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.”
Holly had added a red heart at the end of the verse. She was a praying woman, a Christian.
The messages continued.
Ethan hadn’t responded to her since the day he must have left the States to meet Mei Lin.
I’ve got a family emergency. I’ll be out of town for a few days. I’ll reach out when I get back.
After that, they were all from Holly.
But before, Ethan and this woman had been texting back and forth.
There were short messages—Praying. Be safe. Sleep well. And longer ones about whatever Holly’s days had held. There was a photograph of a small white dog and of two mugs on a table in a coffee shop.
She studied another photograph of her husband, taken from across that same table, looking over a menu with a half-smile.
For Holly.
Mei Lin scrolled back farther and faster.
She found jokes she didn’t understand and a photograph of a sushi platter with a cat emoji beneath it. She found can’t wait to see you tonight and running late, sorry and seven works, I’ll grab a table.
She sucked in a breath, only then realizing that she’d stopped breathing.
She shouldn’t have done this. This was wrong. And obviously, whatever had been going on with Holly was over. She just must’ve missed the text where he told Holly the truth. Or maybe he’d called her.
She scrolled back down through days and weeks and months of text. She was almost back to today when she stopped.
In the middle of the screen, her own name appeared. She forced another breath and read.
Holly
I saw Mei Lin’s parents in the stairwell this afternoon.
They were hugging and crying, and I realized that whatever you’re doing, wherever you are right now, it must be about her.
I can’t imagine how hard this is for all of you—not knowing where she is, never being able to say a proper goodbye.
It makes sense now why you haven’t reached out.
It’s all right, Ethan. Of course you loved her.
I hope you finally find the answers you’ve been looking for and the closure you need.
Just know that I’m still here, and my feelings for you haven’t changed.
I’ll keep praying for you. I know you’ll call when you’re ready to talk.
I love you, Ethan. You are worth waiting for.
I love you, Ethan.
The letters seemed to get bigger as Mei Lin stared at them.
I love you, Ethan.
Present tense. I love you, not I loved you. The woman who’d written it loved Mei Lin’s husband this week. She loved him right now. She had been loving Ethan while Ethan had been buying protein bars in a Chinese market and feeding them to his wife.
There was no message from Ethan, no I can’t do this anymore, no I have something difficult to tell you. There was no message from him at all. He’d simply stopped writing to her.
Obviously, he hadn’t called her.
He’d let Holly worry about him and pray for him. He’d let her see a Chinese couple grieve and put together her own kind, generous, wrong story about why her boyfriend had disappeared.
How had Holly seen her parents? That didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
No, that wasn’t true. One thing made far too much sense.
Mei Lin set the phone face-down on her knee. She shouldn’t have read those messages, but now that she had, she couldn’t un-know what she’d learned.
It wasn’t that he’d been dating. Of course that bothered her, but he’d thought she was dead.
It was that she’d asked him. She’d asked him! They’d been standing in that hotel room, her cheek still warm from his hand, and she’d asked him if there was another woman.
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
What a careful answer he’d come up with, and so quickly. She was almost impressed.
The question was, why? Why not tell her the truth? Why keep Holly a secret? And why not tell Holly what was going on?
Maybe he would have a good excuse for lying to her, but he had lied. Could she trust him to tell her the truth now? All of it?
Maybe he hadn’t told Mei Lin or Holly exactly what was going on because he wasn’t sure which one of them he wanted. He was keeping his options open.
Mei Lin closed the app and locked the screen. The dark glass caught her reflection—a too thin Chinese woman with short, flat hair and eyes she didn’t recognize.
She set the phone back in the center console exactly where she’d found it and faced the window and tried to figure out what she was going to do now.