Eleven Missed Calls

CHAPTER FOUR: Thirty Days

HANA'S POV

One month in Maplewood looked like this.

I woke up at six every morning.

The house was always quiet at that hour. The light coming through the kitchen window was soft and grey. My mother would already be awake. Coffee came first. Always. Then flour on the counter. The radio playing quietly in the background. The peaceful sound of hands working without needing to think.

I baked every day.

I didn’t overthink why. I just did it. When my heart didn’t know what to do, my hands did. So I made croissants. Cinnamon rolls. Honey cornbread for my father. Lemon pound cake for my mother to take to church on Sundays. I covered every counter with something fresh from the oven.

My parents never commented on how much I baked. They simply ate it. We all understood that it wasn’t really about the food. It was about keeping my hands busy. It was about staying grounded.

After a few weeks, I felt like I had slowly settled back into Maplewood. It happened gently. The town still felt the same. The streets hadn’t changed. The pace of life was still slow and calm. The afternoon sunlight here felt different from anywhere else. It stretched longer. It didn’t rush away.

Every evening, I went for a walk.

Down Sycamore Street. Left on Mill. Through the small park where my father used to push me on the swings. Where my mother would sit on the bench with a book open in her lap, but she rarely read it. She watched me instead.

I walked and let the town hold me. Maplewood never demanded anything from me. It didn’t expect explanations. It just let me exist.

Ethan’s letters started coming during the second week. He found out where I was. Possibly from Simone.

The first one was careful. Very controlled. Every sentence felt planned. It said he was sorry, but it didn’t say exactly what he was sorry for. That told me something. It meant he was still protecting himself. Still editing his feelings before putting them on paper.

I read that first letter by the mailbox. Then I folded it and put it in my pocket and walked home without stopping.

The second letter was better.

The third was even better.

By the fourth letter, something had changed. The words felt real. Not polished. Not controlled. Just honest. It sounded like the man I had seen once in the dark of our bedroom — tired, open, unsure. Not the businessman everyone admired. Not the man who worked ten hours a day building something huge and impressive. Just Ethan.

I read that fourth letter sitting on the porch steps. I stayed there for a long time before going inside.

I wrote back.

Twice.

My letters were short. Honest. I didn’t forgive him. I wasn’t ready for that. But I told the truth. It felt like the only place to begin.

Jake started coming by every other day.

We never planned it. It just happened. One afternoon he showed up. Then another. And before I realized it, his visits became normal.

He always had a reason.

Sometimes he brought peach cobbler from Mae’s. Sometimes a book he thought I would enjoy. One afternoon he showed up with a small pot of fresh thyme from a farmer’s market in another town. He said he remembered I liked cooking with fresh herbs.

He remembered a lot of things.

We would sit at the kitchen table or out on the porch. Conversations were easy. He told stories about work, about town gossip, about small things that didn’t matter but somehow felt comforting. He was naturally funny. He made me laugh.

My mother clearly liked him. Whenever he came over, she brought out the good biscuits. That meant something. My father was quieter about it, but he spoke to Jake with ease. That also meant something.

I let myself enjoy Jake’s company. I was careful not to let it become more than that.

Because I had started noticing something.

Jake wasn’t just being friendly.

He wasn’t pushy. He never crossed a line. But there was something in the way he looked at me sometimes. He brought fresh thyme because he remembered I liked it.

He always sat where he could see my face clearly.

And he never once said Ethan’s name.

I noticed all of it.

I didn’t say anything about it. I accepted the cobbler. The books. The laughter. Maybe I truly wasn’t ready for that kind of conversation. Or maybe I was just grateful for the warmth and didn’t want to question it.

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It happened on a Tuesday.

It was an ordinary day.

I drove to a town called Harlow, about forty minutes away, because I needed a special kind of pastry flour. Maplewood didn’t sell the fine grind I liked.

I found the flour.

I was walking back to my car when I passed a pharmacy.

I didn’t stop at first.

I walked past it. Maybe ten steps. Then I paused on the sidewalk. I stood there for a moment, staring at nothing.

Then I turned around and went inside.

I walked through the store calmly. I picked up vitamins. The antacids my mother preferred. A new tube of hand cream for myself.

Normal things.

Then I walked to the back of the store and stood in front of a certain shelf.

I stared at it for a moment.

Then I picked up two boxes.

I didn’t think too hard about why I chose two.

I placed them in my basket with everything else and walked to the counter. The cashier was a teenage girl who barely looked up from her phone. She rang me up without interest.

I paid.

I drove home.

My parents were at the diner. Tuesday afternoons were inventory day. They had followed that same routine for thirty years. My mother counted supplies. My father fixed whatever needed fixing.

The house was empty when I walked in.

Quiet. Very quiet.

Filled with golden late-afternoon light.

I set the grocery bag on the counter.

I put away the flour. The antacids. The hand cream.

The two boxes were still inside the bag.

I stood there for a long moment.

Then I picked up the bag and went upstairs.

The bathroom looked exactly the same as it always had. Pale yellow tiles my mother chose decades ago. She never changed them because she liked them. Towels folded on a small shelf. A window that looked out over the backyard.

The oak tree outside had been losing weak branches every winter for years, but somehow it never fully fell.

Afterward, I sat on the edge of the bathtub.

I looked out the window.

The oak tree stood there like always. I held what I had in my hands.

I breathed slowly.

Then I went downstairs.

I placed it on the kitchen table.

I sat down in my mother’s chair, the one that faced the window. She liked watching the street while drinking her coffee.

The house was very quiet.

A car drove past outside.

The oak tree moved slightly in the wind.

The kitchen clock ticked steadily above the stove. It had been ticking since before I was born.

I looked at what was on the table.

Two pregnancy tests.

I didn’t move.

I just sat there, staring at them, feeling the weight of everything at once.

The silence felt louder than anything.

The sunlight slowly shifted across the table.

And I stayed there, frozen in that moment, knowing that whatever happened next would change everything.