Chapter 5 — The Man She Never Knew

My mother held me until my breathing slowed.

Then she stepped back, keeping one hand on my arm.

"Did somebody hurt you?"

I looked at her face. The small brown spot beside her eyebrow. The reading glasses caught in her hair.

"I'm home," I said.

It wasn't an answer. It was the only thing I could manage.

Dad came down the hallway holding a screwdriver. He had been fixing a cabinet hinge, a job he'd started the evening before I disappeared.

"What's going on?"

I hugged him too.

He patted my back, confused, then stopped patting and held on.

At breakfast I checked the date on my phone.

October 24.

One night had passed here. Five years somewhere else.

My unanswered messages were about an interview I had canceled, a jacket Ben wanted me to repair, a grocery list from Mom. There was no Vivian Wren in my contacts.

No photograph of Maisie.

I searched my camera roll anyway.

Mom put toast beside me without asking why I was crying again.

Later, in my room, I found the blue book on the nightstand.

The missing crescent was exactly where I remembered it. Inside, every page was blank.

I set it on a shelf with its spine turned toward the wall.

* * *

In Bellwether, on the afternoon of October 24, Vivian gave an officer Julian's photograph.

The officer asked about his health, his last known movements, anyone he might contact. Vivian answered quickly until the questions reached his friends.

She opened her contacts.

Wren House employees. Suppliers. Theo's parents. People she hadn't spoken to since a launch party three years ago.

"There must be someone," she said.

The officer waited.

Julian's parents had died the previous year. She had organized flowers for the funeral. She remembered the price, the florist, the delay in delivery.

She couldn't remember the name of the man who had stood beside Julian afterward.

By evening she had called the hospital and left messages with former colleagues. She gave the officer what information she had and took the book home.

Nora met her in the hallway.

"Maisie's asleep. Your aunt's upstairs with her."

"Did he call?"

Nora handed over her phone.

Vivian listened to Julian's message for their daughter.

Grown-up problems belong to grown-ups.

She played it again.

"Why didn't you tell me he was leaving?"

"He didn't tell me that. He made sure I had what I needed."

Nora reached into her bag and took out the folder.

There were copies of notes she'd kept herself, tucked behind Julian's care instructions. Missed calls. Messages about pickups. A screenshot from Theo telling her not to put Julian through during dinner because Maisie needed to adjust to the new household.

Vivian read that one twice.

"You should have come to me."

"I did. You said to let Theo handle the routine."

Vivian remembered saying it. She had been in a fitting, someone kneeling at her feet with pins between their lips.

She had wanted the question to go away.

Nora touched a page in the folder.

"I kept answering Julian. I thought you should know."

The next morning, Vivian told Theo he would no longer collect Maisie or be alone with her. She gave the school the same instruction and asked her aunt to stay with Nora at the house.

Theo stared at her across the kitchen.

"He's done this to punish you, and you're rewarding him."

"This is about what you said to my daughter."

"Our daughter, eventually."

Vivian put Nora's screenshot on the table.

"No. Not yours."

He pushed his chair back.

She let him leave.

* * *

During my first week home, I couldn't work for more than an hour without looking toward the door.

Once, I turned to ask Maisie which color she preferred.

The empty room answered.

I called Ben instead.

He arrived with the torn jacket he'd been asking me to fix and two sandwiches. He didn't comment when I hugged him too long.

"Rough couple of weeks?"

"Something like that."

He sat beside my sewing machine while I unpicked the lining.

"You still going to apply anywhere?"

I looked at the half-finished portfolio on my computer.

"Yes."

I started again with what I could make here. New sketches, new fabric, the old knowledge moving through my hands.

Morgan Ellis interviewed me in November.

She examined my sample jacket inside out before asking about the drawings.

"This pocket pulls when someone sits."

"I can change the angle."

"Show me."

I spent the paid trial rebuilding it. The first alteration improved the line and made the opening too narrow. I took it apart again.

At six, Morgan brought me coffee.

"Better," she said, testing the finished pocket. "Can you start Monday?"

I walked outside and called my parents before I reached the bus stop.

* * *

On October 26 in Bellwether, Vivian found the bookshop while retracing the route from Julian's apartment to the harbor.

She had a list of places he might have gone. Each name belonged to something they had once done together.

She had no list for the life he might have wanted without her.

The bookshop's window displayed a faded blue volume. Close enough to make her stop.

Inside, an elderly woman sat repairing a binding.

Vivian placed The Last Vow on the counter.

"Can you tell me what happened to the print?"

The woman opened it to the back.

A thread of blue ran along the inner edge, too bright to be part of the stitching.

"Someone left," she said.

Vivian gripped the counter.

"Where?"

"Somewhere this story wasn't meant to reach."

"Can I find him?"

The woman looked at her for a long time.

"The way is still open. That isn't the same as an invitation."

Vivian barely heard the second sentence.

"Tell me how."

* * *

By January 24, three months after returning, I had a job, a lease, and a measuring tape I could never find when I needed it.

My parents helped me move into an apartment closer to Ellis Studio. Dad tested the windows. Mom filled a shelf in the fridge.

I waited until they left before opening the last box.

Between two sweaters lay the book.

I had left it on the shelf at their house. I was certain.

I took it downstairs and put it in the building's paper recycling bin. Then I went back up and locked my door.

For an hour, I unpacked dishes.

When I turned off the kitchen light, a thin blue glow was showing beneath the front door.