STILL BURNING

The sign at the edge of town read Welcome to Maplewood in faded green letters. Someone had stuck a smiley face sticker on the corner of it. Elena didn't know if that made it charming or sad. She slowed the car down and looked at it for a moment. Ten years. Ten years since she had driven past that sign going the other way, a car full of boxes and a heart full of ambition, telling herself she wasn't running away. She was running toward something. There was a difference. At least that was what she had told herself. She pressed the gas and drove into town. Maplewood hadn't changed much. That was the first thing she noticed. The same diner on the corner with the neon sign that had always had one letter flickering. The same barbershop with the spinning pole out front. The same wide quiet streets that felt like the whole town exhaled slowly all day long. Elena had grown up here. Scraped her knees on these sidewalks. Had her first kiss behind the library on Elm Street. Cried her eyes out in the parking lot of that diner the night she told her mother she was leaving for the city. She had built a whole other life since then. A career she was proud of. A reputation that opened doors. A husband who was good on paper. She pulled into the hotel parking lot and sat in the car for a minute with the engine off. Six weeks, she told herself. Eight at the most. Finish the project and go home. She grabbed her bags and went inside. Her phone buzzed before she even finished unpacking. Sofia: OH MY GOD YOU ARE ACTUALLY HERE. Do not unpack. Come meet me. Right now. I am not asking. Elena looked at the half empty suitcase on the bed. Then she looked at her phone. Then she grabbed her jacket. Some things hadn't changed either. Sofia Harte was already at the restaurant when Elena arrived, sitting at a corner table with two glasses of wine poured and a grin on her face wide enough to light up the room. She stood up the moment Elena walked in and pulled her into a hug so tight Elena actually laughed. "Okay, okay," Elena said into her shoulder. "I can't breathe." "Good. Stay still." Sofia squeezed harder for one more second then finally let go, holding Elena at arms length and looking at her the way only an old best friend can — searching, honest, seeing everything. "You look tired," Sofia said. "Thank you, Sofia. Lovely to see you too." "No I mean it in a good way. Like, a real tired. Like someone who needs to stop moving for five minutes." She sat back down and pushed Elena's wine glass toward her. "Sit. Talk to me. Tell me everything." Elena sat. She picked up the glass, took a slow sip, and felt something in her shoulders begin to unknot for the first time in weeks. "There's not that much to tell," she said. Sofia gave her a look. "Elena Maria Vasquez. I have known you since we were eight years old. Do not sit there and tell me there is not much to tell." Elena smiled despite herself. "Vasquez-Cole now." "I know what your name is." Sofia tilted her head. "How's Marcus?" The question landed light but Elena felt the weight of it. "He's good," she said. "He's visiting this weekend actually." "Mmm," Sofia said. Just that. Mmm. But the way she said it carried a whole conversation inside it that Elena was not ready to have yet. She steered them toward safer ground and Sofia, to her credit, let her. They talked for three hours. About Sofia's job at the local magazine, about a man she was seeing who she described as promising but emotionally confusing, about the town and the people and all the small dramas of a place where everyone knew everyone. It was easy. It was warm. Elena drove back to her hotel that night feeling lighter than she had in months. She didn't let herself think about why. Marcus arrived Friday evening. He pulled up in a rental car, stepped out in a pressed shirt and clean shoes, and smiled when he saw her waiting outside. He was a handsome man — tall, well built, always put together. He had the kind of presence that made people in meetings sit up straighter. He kissed her cheek and handed her a small bag from her favourite bakery back in the city. He had remembered. He always remembered things like that. "How was the drive?" she asked. "Long but fine. You look well." He put his arm around her shoulder as they walked inside. "The town is smaller than I imagined." "It always looks smaller when you come back." "You grew up here," he said, looking around the lobby like he was studying a place he was trying to understand. "I keep forgetting that." You keep forgetting a lot of things about me, she thought. She didn't say it. Dinner was at the best restaurant Maplewood had to offer, which was a warm Italian place on the main road that Elena had loved since childhood. Marcus studied the wine menu carefully and chose something good. He asked thoughtful questions about her project. He listened when she talked, nodded in the right places, refilled her water glass before it was empty. He was a good man. She had never doubted that. But halfway through the main course she realised she had been talking for twenty minutes about load bearing walls and original plasterwork and he had not once looked at her the way a man should look at his wife across a candlelit dinner table. He looked at her the way you look at a colleague you respect. She looked at him the way you look at a life you chose and are still not sure you fully understand. They went back to the hotel and watched television and went to sleep. He was kind and warm and he kissed her forehead before he turned the lamp off. She lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and listened to him breathe and tried to remember the last time she had felt genuinely happy to see him walk into a room. The ceiling gave her no answers. Sunday came quickly. Marcus packed his bag with the same neat efficiency he applied to everything in his life. He checked his watch. He had a flight to catch. "Call me when you're settled into the week," he said, straightening his collar in the mirror. "I will." He kissed her forehead. "Take care of yourself." "You too." She walked him to the car. She watched him pull out of the parking lot. She stood on the kerb in the morning sun and watched until the car disappeared around the corner. Then she sat on the kerb — not a bench, the actual kerb — and pressed her palms against her knees and breathed. She wasn't sad. That was the terrible part. She wasn't sad at all. She was just empty. She threw herself into work that week. The renovation site was a beautiful old building — a former bank with high ceilings and original stone floors and enormous windows that flooded the space with light. Elena loved it immediately. She loved the bones of it. She loved the idea of something old being given a new reason to exist. Pete, her site manager, was young and eager and slightly terrified of her, which she appreciated. "The eastern wall has a problem," he told her on Wednesday morning, showing her a section of plasterwork that had crumbled badly. "It's not a problem," she said, studying it carefully. "It's original lime plaster. We preserve it, we don't replace it. Get me a conservation specialist." "That'll push the budget." "Then we push the budget." She looked at him. "This building survived a hundred years. It deserves better than a paint roller and a tight deadline." Pete nodded quickly and went to make calls. Elena turned back to the wall and ran her fingers lightly over the old surface. Something about it moved her in a way she couldn't fully explain. Some things were worth saving. Even when it cost more. Even when it was harder. She thought about that for the rest of the day. Sofia's gathering was on Thursday evening, held at a friend's house outside town. Casual and warm — maybe fifteen people, soft music, the smell of food and the comfortable noise of people who had known each other for years. Elena arrived a little late, poured herself a glass of wine, and slipped into the easy rhythm of the evening. She had forgotten how different this felt to the dinner parties she attended in the city — all carefully curated conversation and professional networking dressed up as friendship. This was real. Loud and imperfect and real. She was laughing at a story Sofia was telling when she felt it. She didn't hear anything. Didn't see anything. Just felt it — a shift in the room, like the air changed temperature by one quiet degree. The way you sometimes feel a storm coming before a single cloud appears in the sky. She turned around. Daniel Harte was standing across the room. He was talking to someone, not looking at her yet. She had a full second to take him in before he noticed her — taller than she remembered, broader, the easy confidence of a man who had grown into himself. There were faint lines near his eyes that hadn't been there before. His hair was shorter. He held his drink loosely, relaxed, laughing at something the person next to him said. Then he looked up. The laugh faded slowly, not all at once, like a light being dimmed rather than switched off. His eyes found hers across the room and stayed there. Elena felt her heart do something it had not done in a very long time. Neither of them moved. Neither of them looked away. Sofia appeared from absolutely nowhere with the energy of someone who had without any question planned this moment entirely. "Oh wonderful, you haven't seen each other in forever!" she said brightly, already backing away. "I'll just grab more wine, don't mind me—" And she was gone. Elena would deal with her later. She crossed the room because standing frozen felt worse than moving. He met her halfway, which she noticed, and was grateful for. "Elena," he said. His voice was lower than she remembered. Steadier. "Daniel." She smiled and it felt strange — too wide, too honest, too much. "It's good to see you." "You too." His eyes moved briefly, just for half a second, to her left hand. To the ring on her finger. Then back up to her face. She saw him notice it. She saw him carefully put that information somewhere behind his eyes without letting it change his expression. That small, quiet moment told her more about who he had become than anything else could have. They talked. Carefully at first — the safe surface things, her project, his work, the town. But underneath every sentence ran a current of something older and deeper and unfinished. Like a conversation that had been paused mid sentence ten years ago and was now slowly, cautiously starting up again. The evening moved around them. People laughed and refilled their glasses and drifted between conversations. At some point Elena noticed the room had thinned out and she and Daniel had somehow ended up outside on the back porch. She genuinely could not have said when it happened or who had suggested it. The night was cool and clear. The garden was quiet and dark. A single light above the door cast a warm glow over the wooden boards beneath their feet. Daniel leaned against the railing and looked out at the yard. Elena stood beside him. Not too close. But close enough. She could feel the warmth of him beside her. Neither of them spoke for a while. And in that silence, in that cool dark quiet, something that had been buried for ten years turned over slowly in Elena's chest like an ember that had never quite gone out. She stared at the dark garden and said nothing. Neither did he. And somehow that said everything.