Chapter 4

Two nights later they cut me loose early. Light board, fewer traumas.

In the ambulance bay a crew was rolling up their lines. Wyatt saw me first.

He didn't ask how I was. He'd heard. Everyone had. "Long night?"

I nodded. "Every one of them, lately."

I drove home in the dark.

Cole's truck sat crooked in the driveway, the door not shut all the way. Every light in the house was on.

And through the open window, music. Not the radio. The anniversary playlist I'd made him. The songs he used to swear were only ours.

I let myself in with my own key. Eight years of trauma bays; my boots know how to move without a sound.

A child's drawing was stuck to my refrigerator with my magnets.

A small pink toothbrush stood in the cup by my sink.

A kid's blanket was thrown over the arm of my couch, still holding the shape of someone small.

A pair of muddy pink sneakers sat on the bottom stair. Lily's.

None of it was waiting for me. It had just moved in around the space where I used to be.

On the table: two plates. Two glasses. A candle already burned to a stub.

Garlic. Butter. Tomatoes going soft on the stove. Cole only ever cooked like this twice. On our anniversary.

And when he'd done something even he couldn't forgive himself for.

A laugh drifted out of the kitchen. Hers. Low, easy, at home. Then his.

"Someone's going to hear," Cole said. Half a laugh in it.

"No." Renee, softer. "She won't."

She won't.

I stood in my own hallway, in the steam drifting out of my own kitchen, and I understood I was already a ghost in this house.

They weren't hiding from me. They'd simply stopped counting me as someone who might walk in.

My heart should have been slamming. It wasn't. It had gone slow and quiet. Not because I was calm. Because something in me had already stopped.

The kitchen door was pushed almost shut, steam curling through the gap, blurring the light on the other side.

One more inch and there'd be nothing left to not know.

I reached for the doorknob.