32. Noah
Chapter thirty-two
Noah
No words. Just a photo. The new oven, door open, empty racks glowing orange inside.
I sit up in the dark and look at it for a long time. I don't call her.
I don't ask if she's okay, or why she's awake, or whether she wants company. Six weeks ago, I would have been in a car before I finished reading it.
I type: Looks good on you.
Then I delete it. Too much. I settle on nothing instead, and put the phone face down on the nightstand, and lie there wide awake until the sky turns gray.
Three weeks. That's how long it's been since I've called her, fixed anything, reached for a single lever to get near her. She's the one who broke the silence tonight, not me. I hold still, because holding still is the only thing I've learned to do lately that's worth anything.
The thing I finally understood, alone at this window the night she walked out, still won't leave me. Protecting means trusting someone to handle her own life. Controlling means deciding for her. I've run that sentence so many times it's worn smooth, like a coin in a pocket.
The hardest part isn't staying away. I could do that in my sleep. I've spent a lifetime perfecting distance. The hard part is staying close without reaching for the levers. Watching a problem exist and not solving it.
***
Wednesday, Michael sends a routine update out of old habit. He still feels obligated to keep me informed on Linda Linford's financial situation, since I once told him to keep an eye on it. I read the first line. Then I close the file and tell him to stop sending them.
"You want me to close it out completely?" he asks.
"I want you to stop watching a woman who isn't asking to be watched," I say. "She's not mine to manage."
He doesn't argue. He's worked for me long enough to know when I mean it.
***
I go to the gym at 5:00 a.m. the way I always have. The bar still hits the rack the same. My body still knows exactly how much weight it can take before it breaks something. That part of me hasn't changed and I don't think it should.
But there's a version of control that keeps you alive, and a version that just keeps you afraid, and I'm learning, slowly and badly, to tell them apart.
***
I call my mother on Thursday, unprompted, which she points out immediately.
"You're calling me for no reason," she says. "That's new."
"I don't have a question this time."
"Then why call?"
I don't have a good answer. I just wanted to hear a voice that's never once lied to me about what I am. She lets the silence sit instead of filling it, which is its own kind of gift.
Eventually she asks about the fund, and I tell her about the fund, and it's the most ordinary conversation we've had in years.
***
Friday, I drive past the bakery. Not stop. Drive past.
The lights are on. Marcus is behind the counter. I can't see Karissa from the street.
I don't slow down long enough to look for her. Looking for her from a car outside her building is exactly the kind of thing that got me here in the first place.
I keep driving.
It takes everything I have.
Sylvia catches it before I say anything. She's been reading me differently since the donor lunch. Not with pity, which I couldn't stand, but with something closer to caution, the way you'd watch a man recovering from surgery lift something heavier than he should.
"You didn't ask me to schedule anything with press this week," she says.
"No."
"Or call in a favor from Holt."
"No."
"Are you sick?"
"I'm trying something else."
She studies me for a second like she's deciding whether to push. She doesn't. "Well," she says. "It's quiet. I like it."
I think about grand gestures. Everyone in my position defaults to them eventually: the idea that if the wound is large enough, the apology has to match it in scale.
Flowers arranged to fill an entire room.
A public statement. Something with my name attached to a number, because a number is the only language I've ever trusted completely.
I don't do any of it.
***
Saturday morning, I show up at Theo's basketball court at 9:00 a.m., the way I said I would, back before any of this broke. I don't call ahead. I don't know if Karissa will be there.
I go because I told a sixteen-year-old I'd watch him play, and for the first time in longer than I can measure, keeping a promise matters more than what it might cost me.
Theo sees me from half-court and doesn't smile, exactly, but he doesn't wave me off either.
"Thought you disappeared," he says, after.
"I've been working on some things."
"She's not here today."
"I know." I did know. I checked the schedule three times before I let myself come, made sure this was about him and not a way in through the side door.
"I came for you."
He looks at me a long moment, weighing that the way his sister weighs everything: the string attached, the angle, the thing I'm supposed to want in return. He doesn't find one.
"Okay," he says, finally. "You can rebound for me, then."
I rebound for him for forty minutes. I don't check my phone once.
***
Sunday night, alone in the apartment, I stand in the kitchen where she once told me to stop running the math and stay in the room. I stay in the room now, by myself, and let it be quiet instead of filling it with a plan.
I don't know if this is working. I don't know if patience is a thing I'm capable of long-term, or if it's just the newest form of control: waiting quietly instead of fixing loudly, still convinced that if I hold still long enough she'll come back to me, which would just be the old want wearing different clothes.
I try to sit with that possibility instead of arguing myself out of it. My mother would call that progress. I'm not sure yet.
What I know is this: I haven't called Karissa in three weeks. I haven't sent anything, fixed anything, bought anything, or leaned on a single person who owes me a favor to get near her. It's the longest I've gone in three months without trying to solve her.
It doesn't feel like winning. It feels like standing perfectly still and choosing, every single day, not to reach for the thing I want to grab.
My phone lights up at 10:52 p.m. Not her number.
Mother: Karissa called me tonight. We talked for an hour. You should know that.
I read it twice. Then a third time, looking for what my mother isn't saying, because she never says the whole thing on the first pass.
I type back: “About what?
The reply takes four minutes. Long enough that I stand up from the couch and start pacing before it lands.
Mother: That's not mine to tell you. But I'll say this much: she asked about you first. Before she asked about anything else.
I sit back down slowly, phone still in my hand, and for the first time in three weeks I let myself believe that standing still might be getting me somewhere.