Chapter 4: The Friend Who Went Quiet
The diner’s front bell gave a tired little jangle when Lucas came in. He spotted Ethan and Mara in the back booth, stopped with one hand still on the door, and looked as if he might turn around.
Ethan didn’t wave. He didn’t look away, either.
Lucas came over. His jacket was zipped to his chin despite the warm evening, and he kept his eyes on the empty seat before sliding into it.
“Thanks for meeting us,” Mara said.
Lucas nodded. His hands disappeared beneath the table.
A waitress approached with a coffee pot. Lucas ordered a soda without looking at the menu. When she left, the silence settled in again, thickened by the clatter of plates and a baby fussing near the window.
“I don’t know where to start,” Lucas said.
“Try with why you stopped answering,” Ethan replied.
Mara watched Lucas take the hit. His eyes flicked to Ethan’s face, then dropped to the scratched tabletop.
“I’m sorry.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “That’s not an answer.”
“No.” Lucas swallowed. “It isn’t.”
He rubbed his thumb over a pale mark on the table, back and forth, as if he could wear it away.
“Your dad called me after Sophie died. He said talking about her was hurting everybody. He said you were already struggling, and I shouldn’t bring her up or keep pulling you back into it.”
Ethan went very still.
Mara felt the old, familiar impulse to reach across the table and put a hand on his arm. She kept her hands in her lap. He deserved the space to hear this without being softened for it.
Lucas looked at him. “He said the family needed quiet.”
“And you believed him?” Ethan asked.
“I did.” Lucas’s voice broke on the word. “I was scared of making things worse. I thought if I stayed out of it, I couldn’t hurt you.”
“You didn’t stay out of it. You disappeared.”
“I know.”
The waitress set down Lucas’s soda. The glass sweated onto a paper coaster. He didn’t touch it.
“I kept thinking I’d call tomorrow,” he said. “Then tomorrow turned into weeks. Then I’d see your name on my phone and feel sick because I knew I should’ve answered. I’m not saying that makes it okay.”
Ethan’s gaze shifted to the window. Outside, headlights passed in a slow ribbon of light.
Mara watched the hurt in his face stay where it was. It didn’t lift just because Lucas had finally named it. But something in Ethan’s shoulders loosened, barely.
“You could’ve told me you were scared,” he said.
“I should have.”
“Instead you let me think you didn’t care.”
Lucas flinched. “I did care.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“I know.” Lucas’s eyes shone. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”
This time Ethan didn’t answer right away. He pulled a napkin from the dispenser and folded it once, then again, pressing a crease with his thumbnail.
“I don’t know if I can just go back to how we were,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to.”
The answer seemed to surprise Ethan. Lucas pushed the soda away without drinking.
“I just wanted to tell you the truth. And to say I’m sorry to your face.”
Mara glanced at her son. His fingers had stopped working the napkin. He was still angry; she could see that. But the anger no longer seemed to be holding up the whole weight of him.
“What did you mean when you said Daniel told you to stay away?” she asked.
Lucas’s eyes moved to her. “He said Sophie was private. That the rest of the family didn’t want to keep hearing about her. He said bringing her up would make the loss harder for you.”
Mara’s stomach tightened. She saw the red dress draped over the kitchen chairs, the note folded in her purse, the name on the silver charm. Daniel had not only asked for silence. He had handed it to other people and called it kindness.
“Did he tell you Sophie wanted to be forgotten?” Ethan asked.
Lucas hesitated. “Not in those words. He said she wouldn’t want people making a big thing of it.”
Ethan’s eyes sharpened. “A big thing of what?”
Lucas glanced toward the counter. The waitress was filling a coffee cup, her back turned.
“I didn’t know what to say,” he murmured. “I thought maybe your dad knew what Sophie wanted. I thought maybe I’d be disrespecting him if I pushed.”
“You could’ve asked me.”
“I should have.”
There it was again: the apology, true and still too small to repair what it named.
Lucas looked down at the table. “The dress—”
Ethan’s face changed at once.
“What about it?”
“I remember when Sophie was working on it. She kept making you stand on a chair so she could check the hem. You kept complaining that your feet hurt.”
“I was nine,” Ethan said.
“You were dramatic.”
“So were you.”
A thin, surprised smile crossed Lucas’s face, then vanished. “She’d pinned the inside seam and you kept shifting around. She got annoyed and told me to hold the fabric still.”
Mara could almost see it: Sophie bent over the red cloth, pins between her lips, Lucas trying to obey without laughing as Ethan squirmed.
“She’d stitched your initials inside,” Lucas said. “Not where anyone would see them. She said the dress had to fit you properly.”
Ethan’s eyes dropped to the table. His thumb moved once along the edge of his folded napkin.
“She made that for me,” he said.
“She did.” Lucas took a breath. “She wanted you to have it.”
The words landed gently, but Mara saw the cost of them in her son’s face. The dress had been more than fabric before graduation; it was more than fabric now. And Lucas, who had seen Sophie making it, had carried that knowledge alone while Ethan wondered whether his friend had simply stopped caring.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ethan asked.
Lucas’s answer came out almost too quiet to hear.
“Because your dad called again.”
Mara felt a cold line move through her.
Lucas looked at Ethan. “A while after the funeral. He asked if Sophie had said anything to me before she died. Then he asked if she’d left me anything.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him she’d sent me a voice message.”
Ethan sat forward. “A message?”
“Before she died.” Lucas’s fingers tightened around the edge of his glass. “I didn’t tell him what was in it.”
Mara heard the refrigerator motor kick on behind the counter. The diner’s noise seemed to draw farther away.
“What did he say?” she asked.
Lucas stared at the wet ring beneath his glass.
“He wanted me to delete it. He said hearing her voice would only make things worse.”
Ethan looked at his friend, searching his face for something Lucas hadn’t said. “Did you?”
For a moment, Lucas said nothing. Then he lifted his eyes.
“I couldn’t.”
His phone began vibrating against the table.
Lucas glanced at the screen. The color left his face.
Daniel.
The phone stopped. A breath passed. Then it started again.
Lucas didn’t pick it up.
“He’s been calling me all afternoon,” he said.
Ethan’s hurt softened by a fraction—not into trust, not yet, but into something closer to understanding. “You kept the message?”
Lucas nodded.
“I kept it,” he said. “I’ll find it.”
May you like
The phone shuddered against the tabletop once more.
Daniel was calling again.
