Chapter 5
The subway ride back to my apartment was quiet, the car nearly empty save for a few exhausted night-shift workers staring blankly at the floor.
Every bump and shudder of the tracks felt like a physical echo of the silence sitting in my chest.
When I unlocked my apartment door, the space was dark and cold.
I didn't turn on the overhead light.
I dropped my keys on the entryway table and walked straight through the living room to my small bedroom in the back.
My desk sat in the corner, half-buried under a stack of old utility bills and unread mail.
I didn't hesitate.
I pulled out the bottom drawer, the wooden runners scraping softly against the frame, and reached all the way to the back.
My fingers brushed against the familiar, worn leather binding of my black Moleskine notebook.
I pulled it out, brought it into the dim glow of the streetlamp filtering through the window, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
My hands weren't shaking anymore.
They were entirely, unnervingly still.
I flipped the pages, past the brisket rub ratios, past the fermented chili experiments, until I found it.
Page forty-two.
Roasted Peach-Skin Ash Glaze.
There it was, scrawled in my own slanted, hurried handwriting from a Tuesday night three months ago.
And right beside it, tucked against the margin, was the sentence I had read on Kara's phone just an hour ago: Less honey next time.
Theo said the smoke disappears when it gets too sweet.
I stared at the ink.
How had Kara known that?
She hadn't been working with us three months ago.
She had only been hired a month prior, brought on strictly to handle social media analytics and short-form video clips.
She had never set foot in this apartment.
She didn't know my handwriting.
She didn't know about the peach-skin ash.
Someone had given it to her.
My mind flashed backward, skipping past the festival livestream, past the food truck, searching desperately through the past few months.
When?
When would Theo have had the time and the access to open this drawer and photograph that page?
Suddenly, the room felt smaller.
My gaze drifted from the notebook to the nightstand beside my bed.
Resting on the corner of the wood was a small ceramic dish where I always dropped my spare keys.
Two months ago.
It was a Tuesday, right in the middle of a brutal summer heatwave.
I had been running a fever for two days, my skin hot to the touch, my throat raw and choked with a flu that left me shivering under a heavy duvet.
I remembered fragments of those forty-eight hours through a haze.
I remembered coughing until my ribs ached.
And I remembered Theo.
He had stayed over.
He had canceled an afternoon meeting, rolled up his sleeves, and stayed by the bed.
"Just sleep, Sienna," he had murmured, pressing a cool, damp washcloth against my forehead.
"Don't even think about the kitchen. I've got everything handled."
I remembered him getting up in the middle of the night to boil water, returning with a steaming mug of tea and a small bowl of broth.
I remembered feeling an overwhelming, tearful wave of gratitude—a rare moment where he wasn't talking about logistics or profit margins, but was simply taking care of me.
He had stayed in the apartment all day while I slept.
He had cleaned the kitchen counter.
He had tidied up the living room.
How long had he been alone in this room?
I looked down at the notebook in my lap.
The warmth of that memory didn't just fade—it twisted into something cold and unrecognizable.
Did he make the tea, and then walk into this bedroom?
Did he stand by this desk while I was asleep in the other room, turning the pages one by one?
My chest tightened so hard I couldn't draw a full breath.
I closed the notebook, the leather cover making a soft thud in the silent room.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, breaking the heavy silence.
I picked it up, expecting Nia, or Maya.
Instead, it was an incoming call from an unassigned local number.
I let it ring three times.
Then, with my thumb hovering over the screen, I pressed accept.
"Sienna," Theo's voice came through the speaker, low and cautious.
"I saw some clips from tonight. Looks like it went well. You okay?"
I didn't say a word.
I sat in the dark on the edge of my bed, holding the black Moleskine notebook tightly in my left hand, feeling the sharp edge of the leather binding bite into my palm.
"Sienna?" he asked, a nervous tremor creeping into his tone.
"Are you there?"
"The night you stayed over when I had the flu," I said.
My voice didn't shake.
It came out level, cold, and entirely hollow.
"Two months ago."
There was a brief pause on the other end.
The background noise—the faint hum of a hotel lobby—suddenly vanished behind a wall of absolute silence.
"Sienna, I—"
"You were in my bedroom," I said.
Theo was silent for a second.
"I was taking care of you."
I looked down at the black Moleskine in my lap, trying to calculate the damage.
How much of this notebook had he seen?
"Did you open my desk drawer?"
The line went quiet.
Not confused.
Quiet.