That night, while Evie slept soundly in my bed, I sat in the bedroom with the lights off, listening to her breathing. The house felt too big without Jess’s humming, too quiet without the soft shuffle of her slippers against the tiles.
I don’t know why I opened the drawer in my nightstand. Maybe I needed something familiar. The inside was mostly old receipts and paperbacks with cracked spines.
That’s when I saw it. Tucked inside the copy of “The Things They Carried” was another folded piece of paper.
Maybe I needed something familiar.
“Callum,
If you’re reading this, it means I couldn’t say it to your face. Maybe I should have. Maybe I owed you more than this. But I was scared.
I don’t remember his name. It was just one night. I was lost back then. You were gone, and I felt like I was drifting. And then you came home, and I wanted to believe that none of it mattered.
That we could still be us.
“If you’re reading this, it means I couldn’t say it to your face…”
And then Evie came. And she looked like me. And you held her like the world was okay again. I buried the truth because Addison said you’d fall apart if I didn’t. Your mother is rarely wrong.
