After that, something inside me became very still.
I realized that if I survived your absence, I would never again confuse dependence with devotion.
The words cut deeper because they were calm. There was no screaming on the page, no dramatic accusation, no begging. Only a tired clarity that made my excuses sound childish before I could even speak them.
I turned to Daniel.
“You found her?”
His eyes narrowed. “No. She found us.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she called my mother.”
I stared at him. “She couldn’t reach the phone from the bedroom.”
“She didn’t call from the bedroom.”
I frowned. “What?”
Daniel took one step into the living room. His gaze dropped to the wheelchair. “She crawled.”
The word landed harder than anything he had said.
I looked at the stretch of floor between the couch, the hallway, the kitchen counter where the landline sat. The distance seemed enormous suddenly. I imagined Lauren pulling herself across it with one working arm, her hip dragging, her breath shallow, her hair sticking to her face, stopping to rest on the cold floor tiles while the phone sat waiting above her like a mountain.
