I WALKED OUT TO THE Osthorne staff quarters with the weight of seventeen years of estrangement—and many more to come—resting heavy on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure if I could carry it. Not because I’d just spent a little over a week being drugged and lied to and manipulated in every way that these goddamned mages could think of. It wasn’t that I was angry and hurt and exhausted. It wasn’t that.
It was that I didn’t know what to do next. How to keep going. I told myself that nothing had really changed: I was the exact same amount of alone as I’d been when I took the case. I’d never had anything, not really. Not with Rahul, and not with Tabitha. Both of those relationships had been fledgling at best. Rahul was a guy I had been excited about, sure; infatuated with, definitely; turned on by, no question. But I hadn’t developed a real relationship with him yet. I didn’t even know his middle name. And Tabitha—it had been nice to imagine becoming friends with her, rekindling that sisterhood we’d lost. I’d been like a kid playing house. I’d been living a ridiculous daydream where I was something more, where I had something more. But it had only been a week, and I had logged more hours in dreams of future closeness than actual interactions with her.
I pictured myself going home and lying on the floor in the dark of my living room, staying there until my bones dissolved into the carpet. That, at least, felt like a worthwhile daydream.
Before I could do that, I needed to pack up the Osthorne apartment where I’d been staying. I opened the door and froze.
At first, I thought I’d walked into the wrong place. But then I realized that I was seeing the apartment through the eyes of a stranger—of a civilian. It hit me like a blow. My chest ached as I took in how far I’d let things go. The story the place told wasn’t a good one. Files carpeted the floor. Horrible photos of Sylvia’s body were taped to the walls next to notes about the particular arrangement of the corpse. Empty bottles lined the kitchen counter: rum, gin, wine, wine, wine, wine. A trail of papers led down the hall.
The bedroom was down the hall.
My knees felt loose. I walked across the living room on far-away feet, shoved a pile of half-crumpled notebook paper off the couch, and let myself collapse into the cushions. I needed to leave. I needed to clean the place up and get out.
I needed to go home.
I started sobbing, and I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t want to stop, because stopping would mean trying to find a way to comprehend all of the things I’d learned, and all the things I’d seen, and the broken place that my mind had become over the course of the past few weeks. It would mean looking ahead, to the drive home, to the flat-pack furniture in my empty apartment, to the bar where my favorite bartender pretended to give a shit about where I’d been and why I hadn’t come around for a while.
And then a laugh bubbled up out of me, because maybe the bartender really did give a shit, and God, I actually felt a pang of guilt at the idea of disappearing. At the idea of making him worry. I was feeling guilty about the way I’d been neglecting the most important person in my life, the person who knew me best. A person I tipped for his time.
People don’t stick, I thought, that old bruise I couldn’t stop pressing. But pressing that bruise didn’t give me the same sense of satisfied, aching relief that it was supposed to.
Because it wasn’t people who didn’t stick.
It was me.
It had always been me. I had always slipped away unnoticed, a guest leaving the wedding before anyone can ask her to make a toast. People didn’t stick because I was made of fucking Teflon. I’d always told myself that it was better that way, that being alone was easier. That I wasn’t a coward for easing my way out of friendships before they could really start.
I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at the mess I’d made. I sat in the dark, and I waited for the worst of it to be over. I’d been alone for years. I’d been cleaning things up on my own for as long as I could remember.
This was nothing new.
I waited for it to pass.
It wouldn’t stick.
The next night, I came back.
I had a bottle of wine in one hand, and a bag of takeout pho in the other.
I passed by the door to my apartment—no, not mine. Sylvia’s. I’d stayed there, but it wasn’t mine. It never had been. I reminded myself, and it didn’t sting as badly as I thought it would. Already, it was less raw. Soon it would turn into a new bruise to press, a bone-deep ache that would throb every time I remembered the place that had never been my home.
I passed by the door to that apartment, which was empty now.
I passed by the door and kept on going, around the courtyard, to the door I wanted. I tucked the wine under one arm and knocked.
Rahul didn’t answer. I knocked again. No sounds came from inside.
I sat down on the porch to wait for him, the bottle between my palms, the takeout hot against my thigh. He would come home from work, and I would find out if he was willing to hear an explanation. Maybe he wouldn’t be interested—maybe I would leave, drive back up to my neighborhood. Check in with the bartender. Weave home later than I’d planned. Lie awake in the dark pressing on bruises.
But maybe he would be willing to hear an apology. Maybe he would be willing to let me try.
I watched as the late-afternoon light went gold, then gray. I waited.
Maybe this time, I would stick. Maybe this time I would tell the truth.
Maybe this time would be different.