CHAPTER ONE

The curtains were open.

That registered before anything else. Not the ache in my muscles, not the empty sheets beside me, not the too-bright room. The curtains. Wide open, letting the morning pour in unfiltered when she always, always pulled them closed if she got up first. That was the routine. She moved through the morning quiet, and I stayed buried in sheets until my body decided it was ready to cooperate.

I rolled toward her side. My arm stretched across the mattress, fingers reaching for warm skin... the curve of a hip, the dip of a waist, that steady breathing I could sync my own to when I woke too early.

My hand found cold linen.

I pressed my fingers into the mattress where her body should’ve been. The indentation was still there, faint, barely holding. Fading.

“Yme?”

The word came out wrapped in sleep, rough, barely above a breath. I waited. The bathroom door stayed shut. No running water behind it. No shuffling of bare feet on tile.

I pushed up on my elbow and blinked against the brightness. The hotel room sharpened in pieces. Modern art on pale walls, expensive, meaningless. A plush armchair in the corner with her blazer draped over the back, one sleeve hanging toward the floor. Last night scattered across the carpet. My dress crumpled near the bathroom door. Her belt lay coiled on the dresser. Two wine glasses on the nightstand, one still holding a shallow pool of merlot that had gone dark and flat.

No Yme.

I sat up fully. The sheet dropped to my waist, and the air conditioning raised goosebumps across my arms as I scanned the room again. Slower. More deliberate.

Bathroom door open, dark inside. Her shoes, kicked off near the closet last night, were gone. Her phone, which should have been charging on the desk, was gone. The charger still plugged in, and the cord coiled neatly on the surface.

Her side of the bed wasn’t wrinkled, wasn’t slept in messily. The pillow was fluffed. Comforter folded back at the corner with a precision that didn’t come from tossing covers aside in a hurry. That came from intention. From someone sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, smoothing fabric, removing evidence.

She got up and erased herself from this room.

My molars pressed together. I reached for my phone on the nightstand, and my fingers closed on air. Patted the surface. Lamp base, nothing, nothing. The phone wasn’t there.

An ivory envelope was.

Small. Propped against the lamp. My name written across the front in handwriting I’d recognize if I was blind.

Kalechi.

Not Lee. My full name spelled out in that slanted script she saved for things that carried weight. Birthday cards. Love notes left on the bathroom mirror so I’d find them after she was already gone for the day. The inscription inside the journal she gave me last Christmas that I still couldn’t get through without my throat closing up.

I stared at the envelope. Didn’t touch it. My hand hovered and pulled back.

Somewhere in the sheets, my phone buzzed. Muffled, insistent. I dug through the comforter until my fingers found it near the foot of the bed. The screen glowed with notifications I’d slept through.

Two missed calls from Yme. Both are over an hour old.

One text underneath.

Yme: Don’t be mad. Open the envelope.

I tapped her contact. Brought the phone to my ear. Held my breath.

One ring. Long and elastic.

Two rings. My free hand gripped the sheets, knuckles going pale.

Three rings.

Then her voice. Not her voice. The recording. That low, steady tone threaded with the same confidence that knocked me off-balance the first time I heard it.

“This Kymere. You know what to do.”

Beep. Silence.

I hung up. Called again. I knew what would happen. Knew I’d get the same voicemail. Called anyway because hearing her, even a version that wasn’t live, wasn’t present, wasn’t in this room, was better than the silence she’d left behind.

“This Kymere. You know what to do.”

Beep.

My thumbs moved fast.

Me: Kymere. Where are you? Why did you leave?

I watched the screen. Waited for the three dots. That tiny signal that she was there, present, about to explain everything, and dissolve the knot sitting below my sternum.

The dots didn’t come.

Me: I’m calling you again.

I did. Voicemail.

Me: Yme, I’m serious. What is going on?

Nothing. The screen sat static, her contact photo staring back at me. Zo’s baby teeth showing, Yme’s dimple cutting deep into her left cheek, both of them caught mid-laugh. Three months ago, on a random Sunday morning, being silly. I’d taken the picture, wanting to hold on to that exact feeling forever.

That photo usually softened everything in me. Right now, it made every edge in the room sharper. Made the silence louder. Made the distance between wherever she was and where I needed her to be feel physical.

She knew better than this.

She knew waking up alone without warning sent me somewhere I couldn’t always climb out of. Not knowing where she was, not being able to reach her, the specific combination of absence and silence that my brain couldn’t separate from the other times people disappeared from my life without bothering to explain.

We’d talked about it. More than once. Hard conversations where I had to peel myself open and show her parts I didn’t show anyone, so she’d understand why certain things hit me sideways.

She did it anyway.

My eyes went back to the envelope. Still propped against the lamp. Patient.

Don’t be mad. Open the envelope.

My jaw tightened. I snatched it off the nightstand, rough enough that the corner crumpled in my grip.

I slid my finger under the seal. The paper resisted, then gave, and I pulled out a single notecard. Same creamy color. Same slanted handwriting.

You woke me up before I knew I was asleep. Go back to where it started. – Yme

I read the words. Read them again. A third time, letting each one sit.

She said that to me once. Early, maybe a year in, back when I was still bracing for impact. I’d asked her why. Why me? Why this? Why stay when I kept handing her reasons to walk? She got silent in that way she got when something true was working its way up from wherever she kept things buried.

Loving you feels like waking up, Lee. I spent my whole life sleepwalking through relationships and didn’t even know it until you forced my eyes open.

I hadn’t known what to do with words that size. Still didn’t. I’d kept them, though. Folded them tight and put them somewhere I could reach when my head started whispering that I wasn’t enough. That eventually she’d see it too.

Go back to where it started.

Thornwood Avenue Library. Where we first crossed paths.

The knock on the door almost took me off the bed.

“Lee! Open up, it’s me!”

Spring. My best friend since freshman year, loud on her quietest day, completely incapable of minding business that wasn’t hers. The excitement in her voice was coming through the door, damn near vibrating off the hinges.

I grabbed Yme’s t-shirt from the floor, the one I’d been wearing when I fell asleep, still carrying a faint trace of her cologne, and pulled it over my head. The hem fell past my thighs.

I opened the door.

Spring didn’t wait. Pushed past me with a carry-on rolling in one hand and a garment bag pressed against her chest with the other. Her energy filled the room immediately. Big, bright, impossible to contain.

“Morning, beautiful!” She spun to face me, grinning so wide it had to hurt. “You look freshly fucked. Love that for you.”

“Spring.”

“What?” Free hand up, pure innocence. “I’m calling it how I see it. Ky put in work last night. I can tell by your whole situation right now.” She gestured at my body, vague and sweeping. “The shuffle. The shirt. The face. Girl, you got handled.”

I folded my arms. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Spring.”

“I’m playing, I’m playing.” She laughed and crossed to the bed, laying the garment bag down and unzipping it with too much ceremony. “I know you got questions. I know you woke up alone and you in your head about it. I need you to hear me when I say everything is fine. Better than fine.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you getting right now.” She pulled items from the bag piece by piece, arranging them across the comforter. Fitted jeans that would sit right on my hips and thighs. A cream bodysuit, simple and clean. Gold jewelry... hoops, a thin chain, a bracelet I’d never seen before. Strappy sandals with enough heel to make my legs look right without wrecking my feet.

The outfit was put together. Specific. Every piece chosen by someone who knew my body, knew what I reached for, knew what made me feel like myself.

“What is all this?”

It came out quieter than I wanted.

Spring stopped arranging and turned to face me. The grin had shifted into something else. Warmer. Steadier. She crossed the room in three steps and took my face in her hands, palms warm against my cheeks.

“Lee.” Her voice dropped low. Serious in a way she rarely let herself be. “I need you to listen to me. Really listen.”

I said nothing. Wasn’t sure I could.

“That woman loves you in a way most people don’t get loved in their entire lives. You know that. I know that. Everybody who’s ever seen y’all together knows it.” Her thumbs brushed my cheekbones, gentle and grounding. “Whatever’s happening today... whatever Ky has planned... it’s not something to be scared of. It’s not something to pick apart, run from or talk yourself out of.”

My eyes burned. I blinked hard.

“It’s something to receive.” She held my gaze, refusing to let me look away. “Can you do that? For one day, can you let yourself have something good without fighting it?”

The tears came anyway. Hot down my cheeks, caught against Spring’s palms.

“I don’t know.” My voice was barely there. “I don’t know if I know how.”

“Then today you learn.” She pulled me in tight, arms locked around me, chin hooked over my shoulder. “I got you. She got you. All you gotta do is show up.”

I held on and let myself shake.

•  •  •

The shower helped. Enough.

I stood under the rainfall showerhead and let the water beat against my shoulders, my back, the knots that had been living at the base of my skull for weeks. Steam curled thick and warm, filling my lungs.

My body unclenched in stages. My mind stayed locked.

Go back to where it started.

Thornwood Avenue Library. Four years ago.

I could still feel the weight of that day pressing on my memory.

Six months pregnant. Belly round beneath whatever dress still fit. Ankles swollen. Lower back screaming every time I shifted wrong. Exhausted beyond what sleep could ease.

Spade had shown his colors that month. The cheating I’d suspected for weeks, confirmed not through confrontation or confession but through carelessness. A text on his phone he didn’t bother to delete. A receipt in his jacket pocket from a restaurant we’d never been to together. The slow, quiet accumulation of proof I couldn’t keep pretending didn’t exist.

I was going to be a single mother. That reality was settling into my bones, whether or not I was ready.

Work brought me to the library that day. A foster care placement meeting in one of the private study rooms. Paperwork for a case that had been tangled in red tape for three months. The little boy attached to that file was seven. He was quiet, how kids get quiet when they learn early that silence keeps them safer than sound. Big brown eyes that watched everything and offered nothing.

I set up the documents on the table. Faint smell of old books and lemon cleaner. My back ached when I leaned forward to point something out to the foster mother.

Then I felt it.

A prickle at the back of my neck. Warmth that had nothing to do with the stuffy room. The unmistakable sensation of being watched.

My fingers went to my neck, searching blindly against my skin. I let my eyes move across the room. Casual. Slow. Rows of bookshelves. Clusters of tables with students and laptops, and retirees with newspapers. The overhead lights hummed faintly above it all.

Nobody was looking at me. At least nobody I could catch.

The feeling didn’t leave. Stayed pressed against my skin for the rest of the meeting. Warm, persistent. Every few minutes I’d glance up, scanning. Every time I came up empty.

It wasn’t until after the meeting ended and I was gathering my things that I found her.

She was sitting in a leather armchair near the biography section. Dark jeans, white button-up cuffed below her elbows, lineup so sharp it looked fresh from that morning. A book open in her lap, something thick. She wasn’t reading. Her eyes weren’t anywhere near the pages.

They were on me.

My hands stopped. The folder I’d been sliding into my bag hung suspended in the air between us.

She didn’t look away. Didn’t smile. Didn’t pretend she’d been doing anything other than exactly what she was doing. Watching me. Studying me. Taking me in with an intensity that should’ve felt invasive but didn’t. Nowhere near.

Three seconds. Maybe four. Our eyes held across the length of the library, the space between us filled with dust and the low hum of the air conditioning.

My heart tripped over itself. Stumbled into a rhythm I didn’t recognize.

I looked away first.

My hands started moving again, clumsy now, fumbling with papers that weren’t cooperating. I shoved everything into my bag with less care than it deserved, slung the strap over my shoulder, and walked toward the exit without looking back.

I felt her. The whole way to the door. Her eyes were on my back. Warm. Heavy. Unhurried.

I told myself it meant nothing. I was six months pregnant by a man who couldn’t even stay faithful. A whole mess of a life waiting for me outside those doors. What business did I have feeling anything about a stranger in an armchair?

My hands gripped the steering wheel all the way home. By the time I pulled into my driveway, they still hadn’t loosened.

•  •  •

I turned the water off and stood in the steam for a minute. Let the memory settle.

The outfit Spring laid out fit the way I knew it would. Somebody who loved me had picked every piece. The jeans sat right on my hips; the bodysuit skimmed without clinging. The chain settled against my throat, warm from my skin almost immediately.

Spring did my hair while I was still half-dressed, her fingers quick and practiced, twisting sections into something that looked effortless and absolutely wasn’t. Makeup was minimal. Mascara, gloss, enough to look put together without looking like I was trying to be somebody else.

“You look good as hell.” Spring appeared behind me in the mirror, chin hooking over my shoulder. “Stupid good. Ky’s gonna lose her mind when I send her these pictures.”

“I still don’t know what’s happening.”

“And that’s the whole point.” She squeezed my shoulders and stepped back. “Car’s downstairs in five. You got everything?”

My purse sat on the bed. The notecard tucked inside, pressed against my wallet, my keys, and all the ordinary things that made up my life. I grabbed the strap and slung it over my shoulder.

“I guess so.”

“You do.” Spring grabbed my hand and held tight. “Lee, I’m serious. Whatever happens today... stay open. Don’t let that voice in your head win. You deserve this. You deserve her.” She paused. 

“Now go.”

The SUV was black, sleek, and idling at the curb. An older man with short salt-and-pepper hair leaned against the passenger door. He straightened when he saw me, smiled, sincere and easy.

“Ms. Kalechi?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Ron. I’ll be driving you today.” He opened the back door and gestured. “First stop is Thornwood Avenue Library. About fifteen minutes, depending on traffic.”

I slid into the back seat. Cool leather against my bare arms. Air conditioning humming. A neo-soul playlist drifting softly through the speakers. Jill Scott singing about being loved, being seen, being held.

Ron closed the door. We pulled away from the curb, and I watched the hotel shrink in the side mirror until it disappeared.

My phone sat silent in my purse. No calls. No texts. The lock screen showed the photo of us from Zo’s second birthday, all three of us frozen in a moment I’d wanted to hold forever.

I pressed my palm flat against my sternum. My pulse was still going too fast.

•  •  •

The Thornwood Avenue Library hadn’t changed.

Same red brick. Same tall windows. Same concrete steps leading to the entrance. I climbed them with my hand on the iron railing, feeling the metal’s warmth from hours of morning heat.

Inside, the smell wrapped around me. Old paper, lemon polish, that musty sweetness of books handled by thousands of hands over decades. My footsteps were quiet on the worn carpet as I moved blindly toward the section I hadn’t stood in since that day. 

The biography section. The leather armchair. Tucked between two tall shelves, angled toward the center of the room.

Empty now.

An ivory envelope rested on the seat cushion. Placed with care. My name is across the front.

I picked it up. My fingers had steadied since the hotel. Barely.

Inside, a notecard.

You weren’t ready yet. Neither was I. But I saw you, Kalechi. Even then. I saw you handle that boy’s file like it mattered. Like he mattered. I watched you look at him like he was worth something, even when the world had already decided he wasn’t. I saw you put your hand on your stomach when you thought nobody was watching. Protective. Terrified. Brave as hell, even though you didn’t feel it. I didn’t know your name. Didn’t know your story. Didn’t know a single thing about you except that I needed to. Go where I finally stopped watching and opened my mouth. – Yme

I read it twice. The second time, the words blurred.

I stood there with the notecard pressed between my fingers, the paper softening from the heat of my hands. The library hummed around me. Pages turning somewhere. The soft click of a keyboard. A child whispering loudly and being shushed.

She’d been watching me handle that case file. She’d seen me touch my belly. She’d noticed all of it, and she’d remembered. Carried it for years, wrote it down in her own hand, and left it on this chair for me to find.

I tucked the notecard into my purse beside the first one. Wiped my face with the back of my hand. Took one breath that went all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

The air outside was thick and warm when I pushed through the doors. I squinted against the glare, one hand coming up to shield my eyes. My thumb was smudged with ink from the notecard. Black against my skin. Her handwriting transferred to my body.

Ron was waiting at the curb with the back door already open.

“Tony’s Bookshop?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I climbed in. “Tony’s Bookshop.”

The door closed. The SUV pulled forward. The library slid away behind us, and I let it go.

My thumb still carried the ink.