Chapter 8: A Goodbye She Never Wrote
“Don’t touch anything yet,” Ortiz said.
The words made the room feel smaller. My account was open on my phone, the scheduled message waiting beneath its date and time. Lily stood beside me, her face pale in the glow of the screen.
Ortiz asked me to turn the phone so she could see it without taking it from me.
“Read it,” I said.
My voice came out thin.
She glanced at me before looking down. “If you’re sure.”
I nodded.
Lily moved closer. Our shoulders nearly touched, but neither of us leaned in. The message seemed to fill the little space between us.
Lily, I need you to stop trying to make this harder. I’m staying with Daniel. He’s the one taking care of me, and I’ve chosen my marriage. Don’t contact me again.
For a moment, I heard nothing but the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
Lily took one step back.
I knew those words. Not those exact sentences, perhaps, but the shape of them: stop making this harder. Daniel had said it when I asked why my calls went unanswered, when I worried about the mail, when I wanted to explain something he’d already explained for me.
Recognition rose in me like nausea.
But recognition wasn’t proof.
“I know that phrase,” I said. “I’ve heard him use it.”
Ortiz kept her voice level. “That matters as something you remember. It doesn’t establish who typed this.”
“I know.”
Lily stared at the message. “It says you chose him.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know you’re saying you didn’t.”
The carefulness in her voice hurt more than anger would have. I wanted to reach for her, to grab the years between us and pull them close enough to mend. But wanting didn’t give me the right to decide how fast she could believe me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Not because this message appeared. Because there was already so much silence between us that it could sound like something I might say.”
Lily looked up. “I thought you’d stopped wanting me around.”
“I didn’t stop wanting you.”
“I told myself you had. It was easier than thinking you might want me and still not answer.”
Her eyes shone, but she didn’t cry. Neither did I. We had both spent too long trying to build a story sturdy enough to live inside. Now we were seeing where it had been built over empty space.
Ortiz asked me to photograph the message and the account activity showing its scheduled time. Lily used her own phone to capture the screen, then wrote down the date and time. We saved what we could without changing anything.
When the images were secured, Ortiz looked at me.
“Do you want to cancel the message?”
“Yes.”
“Afterward, we’ll leave the account as it is. Don’t send anything from it while we’re preserving the activity.”
I pressed the cancellation button. A small confirmation appeared. The message vanished from the scheduled list.
It didn’t vanish from the room.
Ortiz stepped into the hallway to take a call. Through the open door, I heard only fragments: “preliminary,” “device,” “not enough to identify the user.”
When she returned, she pulled out a chair but didn’t sit.
“The initial review connects the scheduling session to a device Daniel has used,” she said. “That’s a lead. It doesn’t show who was holding the device, and it doesn’t authenticate every message connected to your account.”
“So it could still be challenged,” I said.
“Yes.”
The answer didn’t comfort me. It did, however, leave the truth where it belonged: partly known, partly uncertain, not something anyone had to inflate to make it count.
Lily picked up the phone with the saved image. “I kept every message because I thought I needed to prove I hadn’t imagined how you sounded.”
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
“I believed you rejected me,” she said. “I wanted not to believe it, but after a while, the alternative hurt too much.”
I lowered my eyes. The table held the remains of our small, scattered evidence: a photograph of a screen, a list of dates, a truth that had taken years to reach us.
“The silence between us was real,” I said. “Even if this message was written by someone else.”
Lily’s mouth trembled. “I don’t know how to get those years back.”
“Neither do I.”
I let that answer stand. No promise could make the missed birthdays happen again. No proof could make every old hurt disappear.
“I want to try,” I said. “Slowly. Not because we’ve solved everything. Because I still want you in my life.”
Lily looked at me for a long moment. Then she pulled her chair closer—not all the way, but closer.
“I can try slowly,” she said.
I nodded. My incision tugged when I shifted, and I rested a hand against my middle. Lily noticed but didn’t ask if I was all right as if the answer would settle everything. Instead, she slid a glass of water within reach.
Ortiz’s phone vibrated in the hallway. She glanced at the screen, then returned to us.
“Everything okay?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Ortiz said. “I need to speak with someone.”
Before she could step away, Lily’s phone buzzed on the table.
She frowned at the screen. “Unknown number.”
“Don’t answer,” Ortiz said.
Lily turned the phone facedown.
It buzzed again.
This time, the preview appeared across the glass. No name. No number we recognized. Just a message meant for her.
Your mother made me this way. Don’t let her make you pay for it.
Lily’s face drained of color.
She didn’t turn the phone facedown. She pushed it toward Ortiz, her hand shaking.
May you like
Ortiz read the screen.
The message had no name attached. But it had found us.
