The Wrong Kind of Right

chapter 5

I found the photo by accident.

I hadn't meant to snoop — I was looking for a spare charger in the den, which doubled as Ethan's makeshift office, all invoices and boat schematics pinned to a corkboard. But tucked into the corner of a drawer I'd opened looking for an outlet adapter was a photo, half-hidden under a stack of receipts: Ethan, younger, laughing, arm around a woman with dark hair and a easy, confident smile. On the back, in careful handwriting: E + C, July.

I put it back exactly where I found it. I didn't need a name to know who she was.

I didn't bring it up at dinner. I didn't bring it up the next morning, either, even though it sat in the back of my mind all through breakfast, watching Ethan pour his coffee with the same careful, controlled movements he did everything with, like precision was armor.

It was his younger sister, Maya, who finally said something — not to me directly, but I was in the kitchen when she mentioned it to their mom, thinking I wasn't paying attention.

"Has he said anything about Claire lately?"

"Not a word. You know how he is."

"It's been eight months. He can't just—"

"Maya."

"I'm just saying, someone left him at the altar, and he's acting like nothing happened. That's not healthy."

I set my mug down very quietly and pretended I hadn't heard anything.

Left at the altar.

It rearranged something in me — not pity, exactly, but a sharper understanding of the walls I'd been running into all week. The careful distance. The way he flinched, almost imperceptibly, whenever anything got too close to real.

That evening, I found him on the dock, alone, staring out at the water like it owed him an explanation.

"Hey," I said, sitting down beside him without asking. "Room for one more?"

He glanced at me, something unreadable in his expression, then shifted slightly to make space. "Depends what you're here for."

"Just the view," I lied.

He didn't call me on it. We sat there in silence for a long while, the lake turning gold, then pink, then dark, and for the first time since I'd arrived, I didn't feel like an outsider in his careful, guarded world.

I felt like I was being let, slowly, quietly, in.