Page 114 of Shattered Promise

I’m going after her.

She might slam the door in my face. Hell, she probably should. But I can take it.

I grab my keys and shove my feet into my boots by the door. I snag Theo’s blanket from the back of the couch, tossing it over his head to keep him as dry as possible.

“Alright, buddy. We’re going for a drive.”

The wind has picked up, rattling the porch furniture and blowing bits of gravel across the steps. I shoulder through it, clutching Theo tight, and get him buckled into his car seat with hands that shake a little more than I want to admit. Back behind the wheel, with the storm gnawing at the edges of the world, I turn the key and let the engine rumble beneath my hands until my pulse finds a rhythm to match.

Driving to her place takes longer than walking to it, and tonight it feels even longer. Like the road is stretching just to fuck with me. Every tree flattens itself against the wind, each mailbox blurs by in the dark. Theo babbles from the back seat, not quite crying, just making these soft, uncertain noises that sound too much like loneliness for me to stand.

The wipers can’t keep up. Visibility is shit by the time we hit the cabin’s gravel drive. I park close so I can make a clean dash, then hustle Theo out of his seat and up to the porch, the rain coming at us sideways now, cold and insistent. The porch lightis on, but the windows are dark—no glow from the kitchen, no shadow moving behind the curtains.

I knock. Wait. Nothing.

Theo squirms, pulling his blanket down so he can look at the door.

“Trouble, open up. It’s me.” I knock again, louder, and try the knob. It turns easy, and the door swings open with a brittle little click.

I step inside, blinking against the sudden dark. The hush is absolute, a vacuum that sucks all the sound from the storm the second I cross the threshold. I toe off my boots, so I don’t trail wet prints all over her floors.

At first glance, it doesn’t look ransacked or disturbed—but something’s wrong. A hollow kind of wrong. The edges of the room don’t breathe right.

Theo shifts in my arms, whispering something close to “more,” and it cuts.

I call her name once, then twice. My voice sounds wrong in here, too loud and not loud enough. The kitchen’s empty, so is her bedroom and bathroom. There’s no sign of her anywhere.

The air in the cabin is wrong. Not just empty, but hollowed out. Like someone scooped the living out of it and left the shell behind.

I move through her house again, every sense on high alert. My eyes sweep the room, cataloging the strangeness in real-time: the suitcases are still stuffed in her laundry room, the small pharmacy of vitamins and face serums that always lined her bathroom sink are gone, the row of shoes by the door reduced to a single old pair of tennis shoes, and a bottle of shampoo, still wet from a recent shower were left behind.

Her laptop is still open on the kitchen table, the screen black but the little power light pulsing slow and steady like a heartbeat. Two yellow legal pads sit stacked beside it, a pen laidneatly across the top—her handwriting all over the top page, half a grocery list, half a to-do list, both abandoned mid-sentence. I scan for anything else, any sign she’s just stepped out. But the usual mug she nursed coffee from every morning is missing, and when I open the cabinet, I notice all the mugs are gone except for one chipped travel tumbler shoved in the back. The espresso cans she hoarded are still in the fridge, and I know she doesn’t leave anywhere without those.

I step into her bedroom, my heart hammering like it’s trying to burst through my ribcage. The closet door’s open and half of her clothes are missing.

“What the fuck,” I whisper, eyes scanning, lungs tightening like a fist is closing around them.

I backtrack to the front door, the way you do when you’ve lost your keys and you’re hoping retracing your steps will fix the part of reality that glitched. I scan the floor, the empty hook where her jacket used to hang, the table in the entryway—nothing. But as I shift Theo to my other arm, I notice a flash of white caught behind the leg of the table, just above the baseboard.

It’s an envelope with my name on it.

Mason. Just that. My name, in her handwriting, neat and slanted, nothing like the mess inside my head.

I stare at it for a long time, thumb pressed so hard against the edge I feel the paper cut into my skin. Theo fusses, restless, so I set him down. He goes straight for the living room, crawling fast, making a beeline for the basket of soft blocks Abby left on the rug.

I sit on the edge of her couch, the envelope foreign in my callused hands. I think about all the letters I never wrote. The ones I wanted to send her after she left for college, and the ones I almost sent after Theo was born, every time I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t fucking it up. The letters always started withher name and ended with nothing, because I could never figure out what to say.

I open the envelope, careful not to rip the paper. Inside is a single sheet, folded in thirds, and something else—thicker, heavier. I flatten the paper on my knee and read the first line.

Mason,

I wasn’t sure how to do this, how to tell you. I thought about waiting, I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do. Wait, I mean. But that didn’t really feel right.

I’m still wrapping my mind around it all. It feels a little surreal, you know?

But I wanted you to have the chance to be a part of it from the beginning. If you want to. I know how much it hurt you to not have that with Theo.

I don’t expect anything from you. And I don’t want to pressure you or scare you.

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