The next morning arrived too bright for the kind of thoughts I woke up with. Sunlight pooled lazily across the kitchen table, turning the sugar crystals on my half-eaten cookie into tiny mirrors. I should’ve been able to enjoy it, the laughter spilling from the kitchen, the sound of my mom teasing my dad about something ridiculous, the faint smell of baked bread and cinnamon. It was the kind of morning that asked to be lived in.
But I couldn’t.
Because my head was still somewhere else, in that dim hallway, standing between Marianne’s stare and Damian’s silence.
I chewed absently on the edge of the cookie, the taste dull in my mouth. My mind replayed every second of that encounter, each word Marianne had thrown at me like shards of glass. He told me he didn’t need you here anymore.
Had
