Chapter Text
They’re 18 miles from Cousins when the Jeep breaks down.
At least, Belly thinks it’s breaking down, leaning over to find !CHECK TIRE PRESSURE! on the display in blaring red while Jere grips the wheel to keep it from swerving.
“Fuck!” He swears, punching the hazards.
They roll onto the shoulder, car jerking as Jere finally slams the brakes, shifting it into park and throwing open his door.
Belly follows him out of the car, glancing long down either end of the open coastal road before she steps up beside him.
“Tire must've popped.” He says, already typing on his phone. She crouches down beside the flat. It's the back wheel on the driver's side. “Don't touch it!” He shoos her hand away, phone to his ear. Belly stands, irritation burning in her chest that she tries not to let show.
Things had been hard between them lately. And Belly knows it's her own fault, that she could've been clearer. That she could've very easily not let him kiss her in the darkened driveway after the deb ball. But Susannah wanted them together so badly that Belly had almost tricked herself into thinking she wanted it too, until she got a taste of it, so to speak. She remembered it perfectly, how the words had bubbled up on a mortified laugh as she told him it sort of felt like kissing her brother, genuinely thinking he’d agree and that’d be that.
But he hadn’t, and then they'd gone inside and found their moms sat at the kitchen table and things had gone from bad to unimaginable. So, despite his cold shoulder all year, it was hard to feel wronged. That and she'd never been able to stay mad with Jere, especially when she knew he was hurting.
“Con, hey,” Jere brightens as the call picks up. “No, not yet, actually, it's gonna be awhile. We got a flat, so—yeah, I'm about to call AAA, I just gotta find the—wait, for real? Yeah, man, that'd be great! Somewhere off King's Highway—yeah, no, I'll drop a pin right now. ‘Kay cool, see ya.”
“Was that your uncle?” She asks, even though his name had made it obvious.
“Oh, yeah. He's gonna come change it for us.”
“That's nice of him.” She offers, trying to sound appreciative.
Because she is, of course she is, except, well, she’d really missed Jere. Because, even though Belly was an only child, it’d never really felt like it with him around, since they’d been inseparable since diapers and sort of born to best friends, despite the BFFR necklaces from Claire’s she and Taylor had claiming otherwise. Their mothers even sometimes used to call them the twins and, though he’d teased her mercilessly the summer she’d barfed on the Tower of Terror, he was still pretty much her favorite person, or tied, probably, with Susannah. And she’d hardly seen him all year.
She’d understood it, at first, but somehow in her head, the moment they’d been sat down at that table and told about the diagnosis, that there wasn’t going to be any treatment this time, she’d thought everything from moments before would be forgotten. That nothing could be more important than supporting Susannah and each other and getting through this together.
But he’d disagreed. And he hadn’t changed his mind, not when she’d sat outside Susannah’s bedroom in Alice Beck’s pearls and listened to him cry through the door, or after, when he’d looked straight through her as she shuffled out of the church and into their sedan and had to pretend her mother wasn’t crying silently in the driver’s seat as they followed the hearse out of the lot. But the worst part of the whole thing was that she couldn’t even blame him for it, because she’d hurt him first, and however much she missed Susannah, she knew he missed her more.
This summer had felt like a second chance, for her and for their friendship, until the minute she got in the car and it was all Uncle Con this and Con that. So Belly wasn't exactly filled with appreciation that she couldn’t even get a word in between the endless reminders that Jere's favorite person very clearly wasn’t her anymore. Still, at least he was talking to her.
“Yeah, Con's great. I forgot you haven't really met him.”
Except she had.
Not formally, but she’d looked him in the eyes.
She wasn’t supposed to have seen him, just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time when she ended up outside Mr. Fisher's home office, sent by her mother to find him, and heard voices drifting through the not quite closed mahogany.
“-not enough passing off all the planning onto Laurel, now your son is standing out there by himself receiving people at his own mother’s wake?”
“Why aren’t you out there then? Suddenly had enough of being the man of my house?”
“Don’t bring our shit into this! Jere’s still a kid. Your kid, and he shouldn’t have to deal with this because you’re too pathetic to-”
“Pathetic? I’m pathetic for missing my wife? The mother of my child?”
“Fucking spare me-”
“Maybe I'm trying to protect my son, did you think of that? That I needed a moment to collect myself, to keep him from seeing me emotional like this-” Belly hadn’t realized until then that there were tears in his voice. She couldn't even picture it, Mr. Fisher crying.
“That’s right, you save emotional moments for your secretary-”
“Fuck you, Conrad! I loved Suze-”
“Don't say her name, you unfaithful fucking-” Shuffling, stumbling, something maybe falling from the desk, and a groan.
Belly'd panicked, then, not sure what to do. She’d half wanted to go back and tell her mom she couldn't find him, or go hideout somewhere and avoid everyone entirely. But before she could make her decision, it was made for her when the door swung open and out walked Conrad Beck.
Conrad Beck who she hadn’t expected to be so…beautiful.
She’d known of him before that, of course, from eavesdropping on her mother’s phone calls—the only way she ever ended up knowing anything. Belly supposed there was something of Susannah in him, being her brother, but his hair was so much darker that it was hard to tell, and his eyes, swollen red but endlessly green, almost the shade of the shallows on a sunny day. He was the handsomest sadness she'd ever seen.
“Did you hear all that?” He'd asked her, not even a bit shame-faced. “Just don’t tell Jere, alright? I know you two are close and—it’d destroy him.”
“I-I won’t tell.” She’d stuttered, still caught on the fact that he seemed to know who she was.
“Thank you, Belly.” He’d told her with something so tired it was almost tender and the sound of her name on his lips had her ready to agree to anything. But he’d only brushed past her, the heat of him radiating through the dark cotton of his shirt, and it’d been then that she realized he was nursing one of his hands, glimpsed his knuckles already on their way to bruising as he slipped down the hall.
She hadn't been sure what part of the secret she was meant to keep, him punching Adam or why he’d done it. So she'd just kept the whole thing to herself and tried to forget it all, to the point she half wondered whether she’d imagined him. It certainly made more sense than Susannah’s mysterious younger brother coming to blows with her husband. Except now Belly was sat on the side of the road waiting for him, about to spend an entire summer with him, making him very real after all.
It’s maybe twenty minutes later that he comes for them. Belly doesn’t even realize it’s his car, despite it being the first one they’ve seen since they were stranded. She eyes the hood as the engine cuts, RANGE ROVER embossed in silver letters though it’s so old it hardly looks like one, the dark green paint beginning to bubble in spots. Then the driver door’s swinging open, halting any further thoughts of the car.
He’s more tanned than he’d been in April. Almost golden, like he’s spent every moment since she last saw him in the sun.
“Hey! Cool ride!” Jere greets, standing to meet him in a hug.
“Is it? It’s older than you, that’s for sure.” He scratches at his stubble. Even his hair seems lighter, she realizes, set against the dark brown sunglasses he’s just pushed back. He glances between her and his nephew like he expects to be introduced, but Jere’s still on the car.
“Is it a stick?”
“How ancient do you think I am?”
“Well…”
“Funny.” He musses Jere’s curls. “That would’ve been something driving out from The Bay. Probably have given up before Nevada-”
“Right, I forgot. How long’d it take you? Some of the guys and I were maybe thinking of doing Cabo-”
Conrad laughs, sharp and low in a way that Belly feels in her stomach.
“You’re not driving to fucking Cabo. Not even after we change your busted tire. Speaking of,” he leans down to take a look at it, “you hit a pothole or something?”
“Felt like it.”
“Glad you’re both alright.” Conrad says, as he rounds the car. It’s the first acknowledgement of her existence so far. “Unlock the trunk for me? Actually, come back here. I’ll show you, for next time.”
“Next time?” Jeremiah repeats, following him, like the thought of this happening again was already too much to bear.
“Unlatch that there—yep, and then, under there, that’s your jack, and your lug wrench. And now-”
“Wait,” Jere interrupts as Conrad shuts the trunk, “don’t we need another tire?”
His smile is nice, she thinks, catching the gleam of his teeth, until she realizes it isn’t. It’s sort of mean, actually. Belly can’t decide whether she likes it.
“Well, they don’t put these things on here for show.” Conrad tells him, pulling at the cover of the mounted wheel. “But first let’s lift the car. You still got that jack?” Jere nods, holding it up. Conrad pulls at the waist of his jeans, the smooth leather of his brown belt appearing beneath the hem of his white shirt as he crouches down. Soon he’s gesturing Jere down beside him and glances back at her as he does. It’s brief, barely a glance really, but with him looking right at her, it lasts longer somehow.
“Does Laurel’s girl want to learn too?” He doesn’t even say her name. Belly tries not to let it sting.
“I, um, already learned. Before my driver’s test. But thank you.”
He seems to accept her answer easily enough, turning back to instruct Jere, only intervening with an arm across his chest when he begins to crank it too soon and the jack almost collapses.
“Look at you, man, you’re stronger than me.” Conrad tells him after as Jere works the wrench, the flush of embarrassed frustration not quite gone from his cheeks. “That the football?”
“Probably.”
“You liking it?”
“Yeah…yeah, I mean they’re pretty strict on stuff, you know, during the season, but we still have a good time.” Jere explains, upset easily forgotten as he begins unfastening the bolts on the wheel as instructed.
Conrad’s hands grip his knees as he stands, nodding. “Maybe I can come catch a game in the fall.” Belly's eyes trace his biceps tensing beneath his sleeve as he lifts the wheel off the trunk and leans over to mount it onto the axle. “Alright, now the same screws as before…” After that, it’s not even ten minutes before the two of them are finished with the car, loading the tools and the flat into the trunk.
“Thanks again, Con.”
He pats Jere’s shoulder. “‘Course. I was gonna order a pizza, grab it on the way back. Figure you guys must be pretty hungry?”
“Yes, God, starving.”
“Any requests?”
“Do they have a Hawaiian-”
“I know yours,” he tells Jere, dismissively, dialing up. “I’m asking her.”
Her, it would seem, as in Belly.
“Oh. I’m, um, good with anything.” She tells him, not entirely truthfully, but she'd manage.
He just barely catches her eyes before looking down as the call picks up. “Yes, hello-”
“We’ll see you back at the house,” Jere mouths at his uncle, who nods rapidly, waving them away.
Jere pulls back onto the empty road, a little less carefully than Belly thought he might given the situation, but she’s hardly paying attention, too focused on Conrad Beck leant against the hood of his car with one hand on his hip and the other over the phone to his ear, getting smaller and smaller in the sideview mirror until the shape of him fades into the dusky light.
When they finally pull up to the house, her stomach’s in knots. She’s not sure what to expect, once they’re inside. It was only last Friday Jere'd called, for the first time since everything, to ask her to the beach house for the summer. For her, not for me, he'd made sure to tell her, like he thought she wouldn’t do it just for him, which’d sort of broken her heart. But Belly had also known what he meant. As much as the summerhouse was their place, the four of them, it would always be Susannah’s place first and most. The patterned pillows and the Jo Malone candles went without saying, but even the light through the kitchen window or wind rustling hydrangea bushes bowed over with blooms, somehow it was all her. It's for that reason—though Belly’d agreed to his offer immediately, because there’d never been a question—she still sort of thought being in the summerhouse without Susannah might be worse than never going back at all.
So, when Belly shuffles into the house, Vera Bradley duffel swung over one shoulder, it’s slowly, hesitant, with something in her chest that almost feels like dread. Jere's immediately up the stairs and straight to his room without a word, so she can only follow suit, standing for a moment with her fingers laid still on the cool metal of the doorknob before she twists it open.
It’s exactly as it’s always been, everything as she’d left it last August, down to the messy pile of bracelets overflowing from her jewelry box. And it’s awful, because nothing’s changed, except everything, because it's her that's different. Because Susannah’s in the scrolling wallpaper specially ordered from France and the seashell embroidered pillowcases and every bit of this room she’d once unveiled to her with beaming satisfaction. But she’s not there, and she’ll never be again.
Once Belly’s finished showering, she heads downstairs in pajamas, her wet hair tucked into the collar of an old Cuffy’s sweatshirt. It’s a relief when she steps off the landing and can already hear their voices in the kitchen. It’d felt wrong earlier, too quiet. It still feels wrong, if she’s honest, but the soft glow of the floor lamps and the sound of conversation drifting over the hum of the stereo helps.
“-you want one?” Conrad is in the middle of asking, stood in the open fridge as she nears the kitchen.
“Sure!” Jere accepts gladly, and Conrad nods, two beer bottles dangling from his fingers as he shuts the door, catching Belly hovering on the threshold.
“Perfect timing,” Conrad tells her, and Jere looks up. “Shower alright?” Conrad asks, eyes on the bottle opener in his hand.
“Yeah, Bells, how was it?” Jere laughs, catching her eyes, and it’s almost like the last year never happened at all. It was a long-running joke, how awful the water pressure was in the kids’ bathroom, mostly because it was pretty much the only imperfect thing in a preeminently perfect house. But the story was Susannah’d had someone out to look at it ages ago and been informed there was no fixing it without removing the tile, which happened to be hand-painted ceramic from Portugal. So, needless to say, it now was as natural as anything for Belly to stand under the shower head for a full minute before her thinnest of hair was wet enough to begin washing.
“It was good.” She says awkwardly, wanting to be polite. She tucks some hair behind her ears as Conrad extends the opened beer to Jere.
“Oh?” Jere says, “That’s a first.”
“I’m glad.” Conrad says simply, “Alright, grab your plates.”
He leads them to sit at the breakfast bar, and Belly is grateful for the silent agreement to avoid the dining room.
“None for you?” Conrad asks as Belly passes the salad bowl without taking any.
“Oh, um. I’m alright, thank you.” She tells him, picking the pineapple and black olives from her slice. It’s a Hawaiian Supreme, Jere’s favorite.
“Belly hates vegetables.” Jere laughs and Conrad’s brow creases.
“That’s not true.” She mutters, cheeks burning. She’s about to eat the green peppers on this pizza, isn’t she?
“Really?” Jeremiah's grin is doubtful, and there’s a humiliation in it, that she’s willing to sit here and be grateful he’s delighted at her expense, because it’s the first time he’s smiled at her in a year.
“S’good for you, you know.” Conrad adds, spearing lettuce on his fork. Yes, she did know. “We should have some dressing-”
She takes the bowl again with a huff, spooning two cherry tomatoes, one leaf of lettuce, and a slice of cucumber onto her plate.
“So,” Conrad starts, standing to stride back over to the fridge. “What’s summer looking like for you two?”
“Surfing, probably.” Jere says mid-swallow. “Dad’s got me at Breaker a couple days a week, but-”
Conrad stops short on his way back to the table. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yeah, he kinda sprung it on me, before I left. Said it’ll keep me from getting wasted every day…or something.” He mumbles the last bit, stuffing a bite of pizza in his mouth.
Conrad laughs, sharp on the end of a breath, scratching at his jaw. “I bet he did. Well, I’m sure we’ll still manage plenty of fun on the weekends.” As the last words leave his mouth, Conrad sets the ranch dressing down beside her water glass before retaking his seat. Mystified and self-conscious, Belly waits a little before drenching her bits of salad in a few shakes of the bottle.
Her phone buzzes on the table, and Jere’s eyes flick to it, something strange overtaking his face as he swallows a bite of pizza. “Who’s that?”
“Just my mom.” Belly says, eyes quickly scanning the text before summarizing. “She says hi.”
As her phone buzzes again, Jere steals it from her hands.
“Hey!” She exclaims, reaching for it, but he blocks her arms easily, brow creasing in confusion, before his mouth falls open on a laugh.
“Oh my god. Is that-” He tilts the screen towards Conrad.
“What—Jere, give it back!” She shrieks, her mind a sudden flurry of ungodly embarrassing things her mother could’ve sent. Conrad's fingers brush his jeans before he takes the phone from his hand, lips twisting as he nods with a little hum.
“Let me see-” Belly protests, and Conrad blinks away from the screen, handing her the phone back easily.
It’s a photograph, glossy and overexposed under the glare of her mother's phone camera flash. Belly and Jere stand in the foreground no more than first-graders, harnesses strapped across their chests from the leashed backpacks they'd been forced into after the second time they’d ‘gotten lost’ at the boardwalk. Jere’s grinning wide at the camera, both front teeth missing, but Belly’s not looking at it all, saving her smile for the person stood between them. The person who has the ends of their leashes tied to the belt loops of his jeans and, despite the unfamiliarity of his boyish and clean-shaven face, is very clearly a put-upon teenage Conrad.
Her phone buzzes again, and Belly taps the second photo, something suddenly thick in her throat at the familiar looping script of Susannah’s cursive across the Kodak-stamped back of the photo. Jeremiah (7), Belly (6), and ‘her boyfriend’ (17) at the boardwalk. Cousins, July 2011.
“What is this?” Belly blinks down at her phone, utter confusion the only thing stronger than the burning mortification under her skin.
“You don’t remember? Junior Mint would be so upset.”
“What are you even talking about, Jere?” She finally snaps in frustration, not sure what her favorite stuffed animal had to do with anything.
“Con won them for us,” he tells her, like she's stupid and he expects her to remember any second, but her mind is blank. “Junior Mint and…god what was mine-”
“It was a shark, I think.” Conrad offers.
“Yeah! Chomps! Wow, I wonder where he is…God, I can’t believe I forgot about that.”
“It was a long time ago.” Conrad picks at the label of his longneck. “Summer before I started Stanford…drove straight from St. Paul's and didn't bother unpacking my boxes.”
“But then—a whole summer?” Belly asks, still reeling from the revelation that this man was part of her childhood at all, much less that she seemed to have had a mortifyingly obvious kindergarten crush on him to the point it’d clearly become a joke between her mom and Susannah. Belly and 'her boyfriend'.
Conrad nods and swigs his beer.
“Really?” Even Jere seems surprised by that. “But-”
“You guys were still pretty little. Off doing your own thing…mostly building a blanket fort in the living room.” It’s a smirky smile, but soft.
“Oh my god, yeah. We’d camp out in there for days.” Jere laughs, and Belly smiles too, remembering. “My mom’d-” He blinks, stopping himself, smile swallowed into something strained and Belly looks down at her fingers where they suddenly twist tight in her sweatshirt.
“Done?” Conrad cuts through the silence, reaching for their mostly empty plates.
Jere nods haltingly, coming back to himself. Belly does too, but he’s not having it.
“One last tomato there, Belly.” His chin dips, gesturing her to take it, and the sound of her name finally slipping from his lips, as easy as it is unexpected, is enough of a shock to her system that she listens, popping it in her mouth without complaint.
Conrad begins cleaning up, waving away their offers to help, so Jere heads upstairs for a shower and Belly follows, mostly to escape the lemon verbena soap bubbles that still smell like a soft palm cupping her cheek. But as she mounts the staircase, Belly lingers on the very top step. As long as she could remember, there’d only been one painting on this wall—of someone somewhere between a boy and a man stood ankle deep in the shallows, staring out at the sailboats in the distance. Belly’d never thought too hard about the painting, about who it could be or whether it was anyone real at all. But now, with the empty space beside him finally filled by her, arms full of the pristine skirts of her debutante gown, and Jere, stood by the pool with a staff of driftwood, she has the strangest feeling she might know after all.
Once she's back in her room, Belly heads straight for her dresser, digging through the bottom drawer for her old bright blue flyback, and soon enough she's dipping into the pool. The water is a perfectly cool relief from the sticky night air, and Belly loses herself to the familiar comfort of the laps, freestyle first and then twisting into a backstroke on her turn to stare up at the sky. It’s a clear night, clear enough that it might've been one that Susannah slipped in with her, to float on their backs and gaze at the stars. Belly takes a deep breath and sinks to the bottom of the pool. It's almost a comfort, her chest burning with stale breath, not leaving room for anything else. When she can't hold it any longer, bubbles escape her nose as she surfaces, night air pricking her face. But there's something different in it now, the whisper of a campfire.
“You still have tea parties down there?” She nearly jolts in the water at the sound of his voice, turning to find a hazy blur hunched over the foot of a pool chair, smoke curling from his mouth that she can't quite make out in the darkness. If he were any further away, she might not be able to see him at all.
“Not anymore.” Belly says simply, hairs on her exposed skin raising at the endless revelation of being known so well by someone she still struggled to think of as more than a stranger.
“It's alright, if I?” He gestures vaguely to the cigarette in his hand, though the courtesy of it is sort of lost in its already being lit.
Belly nods her head, and then realizes he might not see it, and tells him, “It doesn't bother me.”
He shows no sign of having heard her beyond raising it to his lips, elbows on his knees.
“Do you, um, start work soon?” She inquires, politely she hopes. Belly still doesn't know how she feels about all of this, about being here, beyond the way it rankles having to act the guest in this house so unchanged that it still feels more hers than his.
“Who said I was starting work?” It's hardly a response, yet still manages to confuse her. According to Jere, his uncle was back on the East Coast for good.
“But you're a doctor—aren't you?” The doctor brother that'd moved in with the Fishers after Susannah's diagnosis. The one her mother spent all year speaking lowly to over the phone, late in the evenings after she made of show of wishing Belly goodnight.
“You sound unsure.” He exhales, finally turning to her, and something about it is absolutely infuriating, a challenge she can't help rising to.
“I'm not. It's just, I thought doctors were supposed to be…” She stops herself.
“What?”
Working, she supposed. But Belly's not sure that's even the real source of her confusion. It is strange he seems to be on sabbatical, since she didn't think doctors did that, but it's not like Belly knew many doctors. She actually might not know any at all, beyond her pediatrician and the ones on television. She'd only met hospice nurses when she was in Boston. But despite her lack of knowledge, there's still something about it that doesn't fit him, some quality she'd imagined doctors to have that isn't yet evident to her in Conrad Beck. A magnamity maybe, a kind of nobleness? Teaching was meant to be the noblest profession, of course, but both of Belly’s parents taught for a living and had never overmuch given that impression. They’d certainly never liked helping her with her multiplication tables.
“I had an attending,” he says after a moment, drawing her from her thoughts, “one of my rotations. Pediatric surgery. He hardly ever told the story, but there was an earthquake, years ago, that collapsed a bridge in the East Bay. He’d driven out there in his own car filled with medical supplies and found a boy barely alive and in so much pain he was practically comatose. He was trapped in a vehicle by a crushed limb, both his parents dead in the front seat, and my supervisor performed an emergency amputation on him in the middle of a caved-in freeway….so the kind of people you seem to be imagining in medicine certainly exist. But I’m sorry to tell you they’re few and far between.” There's something so measured in how he describes it, a sober simplicity despite the bottle of Sam Adams at his feet, making an unimaginable situation into a fact of life in a way that, even as he seems to agree with her, has Belly wondering if she'd underestimated him after all.
“Did he…?”
“Hmm?”
“The little boy? Did he-”
“Oh. Yes, he made it.” He says, like he'd meant it to be inherent in the story, like she should know he’d never have told her if that wasn’t the case—except she didn’t know him well enough to know that, didn’t really know him at all.
Belly nods, biting her lip, stomach hollow as she stares into the burning cherry of his cigarette in the darkness and imagines the other end, where his lips wrap around it. She sucks in a deep breath, about to push off for another lap, when he speaks.
“At the house, after the service…I’m sorry you had to see that. My actions were…inappropriate.” She can hear in his voice, in the intent rigidity of it, that telling her this is why he'd come outside, why he began talking to her at all.
“I don't know...” she says, something in her easing at the thought of him unsure how to act around her, almost taking pleasure in being able to absolve him. “It kinda sounded like he deserved it.”
A laugh startles out of him, and her legs twist together underwater, Belly suddenly meaning the words even more than when she'd spoken them moments before. After all, she'd never been Mr. Fisher's biggest fan, mostly by virtue of her mother not being much of one either. That and, in the time since it'd all happened, Belly had become sort of bittersweetly convinced it was just the sort of dramatics that Susannah might’ve loved, had she read it in one of her romances, had it not been her own family wrestling with the loss of her.
“You’re a sweet girl, Belly.” His tone is so different from before, warm. She sort of shivers, crossing her arms over her chest when her nipples suddenly stand up. She tries to smile in response but feels a little too mortified and hyperaware of her body to manage more than grimace. “…or do you prefer Isabel? Maybe a middle name…” There's a hesitance to it that has her head shaking in vehement assurance.
“No, no,” she tells him, bobbing in the water, “Belly is—you can call me Belly. I mean, no one really calls me Isabel, and my middle name is…actually it’s, um, her name…” She trails off, bracing before she says it. “Susannah.” It sounds different now.
“Ah…that does sound like Laur.” He exhales then, and she follows the smoke until it dissipates in the air. “I hope you know that she…” He never says so but Belly immediately knows he’s no longer speaking of her mother. But the sentence goes unfinished, the glowing ember of his cigarette suddenly stubbed out, the wooden lounger groaning as he stands.
There's a long silence, and Belly thinks he must've already slipped inside, unable to distinguish his dark blur lingering on the threshold until his voice comes again.
“You were very special to her.”
Then the door slides shut, and he’s gone.
🜼