EverHeart

Chapter 17: The Empty Chair

LUCY

The sofa was empty.

That was the first thing I noticed.

Not the sunlight coming through the shutters or the ache in my shoulder. Not the steady drip of rainwater somewhere outside.

The sofa.

Empty.

The blanket I'd put over Marco lay folded across one arm. His pillow was there.

He wasn't.

I stopped in the doorway.

“Marco?”

Nothing.

The kitchen was empty too, except for one mug beside the sink.

Mine.

Coffee waited inside it, still warm.

I touched the ceramic, then looked toward the back door.

Open.

My pulse changed.

Not enough to call panic. Enough that my body had noticed before I'd decided there was anything to notice.

Outside, the storm had left pieces of the island everywhere. Leaves plastered the path, broken branches filled the garden, and the old acacia limb rested across the corner of the cottage like evidence from a particularly aggressive crime scene.

No Marco.

There were reasonable explanations.

He could be with a neighbor. Checking the damage. Attempting something unnecessarily helpful.

That last possibility was statistically significant.

I checked the side of the cottage anyway.

Nothing.

The gate stood open.

Back inside, I found his shoes missing.

The coffee was still warm. He couldn't have been gone long.

My body remained unconvinced.

I picked up my phone.

Then stopped.

Marco didn't have one.

“Ridiculous,” I muttered.

Someone knocked at the front door.

I crossed the room too quickly.

Marco stood outside with damp hair, mud on his jeans, a toolbox in one hand and a loaf of bread tucked under his arm.

He smiled.

“Morning.”

I stared at him.

His smile faltered. “What?”

“Where were you?”

“Nico needed help.”

I looked past him. Nico stood near the road beside a truck loaded with ladders, rope and roofing sheets.

He waved.

“Your boyfriend's useful!”

Marco closed his eyes.

“He isn't my boyfriend,” I called.

“Didn't ask!”

Nico climbed into the truck.

Coward.

Marco lifted the bread slightly. “I brought breakfast?”

I looked at him again.

The irritation I'd prepared disappeared before I could properly use it.

“You left without saying anything.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I made coffee.”

“That isn't a note.”

“I didn't think I needed one.”

“You don't.”

The answer came too quickly.

Marco went quiet.

I stepped aside. “Come in.”

He followed me into the kitchen and set down the toolbox.

“Lucy.”

“What?”

“Were you worried?”

“No.”

He waited.

I hated that he'd learned how effective silence was on me.

“A little.”

His face softened.

“I wasn't far.”

“I know.”

“If I was going into town, I would've told you.”

“I know.”

“So…”

“Next time, leave a note.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Okay.”

“An actual note.”

“I know what a note is.”

“Evidence suggests otherwise.”

He laughed.

The sound loosened something inside my chest that I hadn't realized was still tight.

I picked up my coffee before I could examine that too closely.

---

By nine, half the neighborhood seemed to have decided my roof was a community project.

Nico returned with two men and a ladder. Mrs. Alvarez arrived carrying enough food to survive another storm and criticized the damage as though the weather had performed poorly on purpose.

Cami appeared in rubber boots and an oversized yellow raincoat.

She looked at the roof.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“That's bad.”

“Thank you.”

“I provide emotional support.”

“You provide observations.”

“Also food.”

She lifted a bag.

“Then you're forgiven.”

Marco came around the cottage carrying broken tiles.

Cami's gaze moved from him to me.

A smile started.

“No.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was going to ask if you slept well.”

“No, you weren't.”

“Morning, hero,” she called instead.

Marco stopped.

So did I.

Cami's smile faded slightly. “What?”

“Why hero?”

“Nico said you shoved Lucy out of the way when the tree came down.”

Something changed in Marco's face.

The garden seemed to disappear from his attention for a second.

Cami saw it too.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

He looked at me.

“She's okay.”

The words came quietly.

Cami followed his gaze, and something thoughtful moved across her expression before she deliberately brightened.

“Good. Because Aunt Teresa sent enough rice to feed survivors, rescuers and apparently everyone within six kilometers.”

Marco recovered first. “Finally. A community that understands emergency response.”

The moment passed.

I let it.

---

The repairs took most of the morning.

Marco was everywhere—holding ladders, carrying wood, helping Nico replace tiles and losing an argument with Mrs. Alvarez over whether he'd eaten enough.

He belonged easily.

I'd noticed it almost from the beginning.

Marco entered places as though there might already be room for him there. Not arrogantly. Hopefully.

He learned names. Remembered preferences. Asked questions and listened to the answers. By lunch, Nico handed him tools without asking and Mrs. Alvarez had fed him twice.

He'd only been on Moira for weeks.

People already waved when he walked through Puerto Espera.

I was sorting broken branches when Marco appeared across the pile.

“Careful.”

I looked at him. “You're one to talk.”

“My injuries heal mysteriously.”

“That doesn't make ladders safer.”

He grinned. “Worried?”

“Roof, Marco.”

His grin widened.

“Right.”

I heard him laughing as he walked away.

---

The police called shortly after lunch.

I moved into my bedroom to hear them over the repairs.

The update was efficient.

They'd expanded the missing-person inquiry to neighboring islands, ferry records and reported maritime incidents.

No match.

No hospital inquiry. No passenger report. No confirmed accident matching what we knew.

His photograph had produced nothing.

“We'll keep the report open,” Officer Reyes said.

“Thank you.”

“If he remembers a surname, workplace, city—anything more specific—call us.”

“I will.”

After the call ended, I stayed beside the window.

Marco stood below with Nico, sunlight catching his hair as he laughed at something I couldn't hear.

No one had reported him missing.

That didn't mean no one was looking.

I knew too well how easily people could disappear outside ordinary systems.

Especially when someone wanted them hidden.

White rooms.

Restraints.

Needles.

A ship.

There were people who knew who Marco was. I was increasingly certain of that.

Whether those people wanted him home was another question.

---

I didn't tell him immediately.

At first, I had reasonable excuses. Marco was halfway up a ladder. Then Mrs. Alvarez put food in his hands. Then Nico needed him for something else.

There was always another person nearby.

Another task.

Another reason to wait five minutes.

Eventually, I became suspicious of myself.

Marco had asked me for one thing.

Don't lie to me.

Silence wasn't technically a lie.

I had built entire negotiations around technically.

The thought made me uncomfortable enough to stop waiting.

By the time everyone left, the cottage felt strangely large.

Marco found me washing plates.

“Roof survives.”

“For now.”

“Nico says it'll hold.”

“Nico also left his shirt here for three weeks.”

“He had an emergency.”

“He went fishing.”

“Fishing emergency.”

I handed him a plate to dry.

He took it.

“The police called.”

His hands stopped.

His smile disappeared so quickly I wished, briefly and uselessly, that I'd found a gentler way to say it.

“What did they say?”

“No match.”

“Anywhere?”

“They checked neighboring islands, ferry records, maritime reports. Nothing.”

The dish towel moved slowly across the same part of the plate.

“So no one's looking for me.”

“We don't know that.”

“No one's reported me missing.”

“That's different.”

He looked at me. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“There are ways to search without involving local police.”

“The people from the ship?”

“Possibly.”

His mouth tightened. “You think they're looking for me.”

“I think we don't know enough yet.”

He exhaled.

“There it is.”

“What?”

“Your favorite sentence.”

Normally, he would have smiled after saying it.

He didn't.

Neither did I.

After a moment, his gaze dropped back to the plate.

“What if nobody is?”

His voice had changed.

Quiet now.

“What if there's no family looking? No friends. Nobody wondering where I went?”

“There were people in your life.”

“You don't know if they cared.”

No.

I didn't.

Marco gave a small, humorless laugh. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Making this depressing.”

“You're allowed.”

“Even before midnight?”

“Apparently during business hours too.”

That earned the faintest movement from his mouth.

Then it disappeared.

“I just thought someone would've found me by now.”

There was nothing I could say that would make that hurt less without lying to him.

So I didn't try.

Instead, I dried my hands.

“Marco.”

He looked at me.

“You were missing before anyone here knew you existed.”

His expression didn't change, but I continued.

“If you disappeared tomorrow, people would notice.”

Silence settled between us.

I thought of Mrs. Alvarez. Nico. Cami. Dr. Ortega. The baker who already knew what pastry he wanted.

“To be clear, Mrs. Alvarez would probably organize the search herself.”

A small laugh escaped him.

“She'd find me.”

“Immediately.”

“Terrifying woman.”

“Extremely.”

His smile lingered this time.

Then he asked, “Would you?”

I should have expected it.

I hadn't.

“Would I what?”

“Notice.”

He tried to make it sound casual.

Marco was terrible at casual when it mattered.

The empty sofa returned to me.

The open gate.

Coffee cooling beside the sink.

That sharp change in my pulse when I realized he wasn't there.

“Yes.”

Something softened in his face.

“How quickly?”

I picked up another plate.

“Don't push your luck.”

He laughed.

This time, I did too.

---

That evening, Marco sat in his usual chair across from me.

I hadn't known it was his usual chair until that morning.

It was simply the one he always chose. The one with the uneven leg that scraped against the floor whenever he pulled it out.

He talked about helping Nico tomorrow.

I told him he wasn't climbing anything.

“One ladder.”

“No.”

“A small ladder.”

“No.”

“A stool?”

I considered deporting him.

Later, he carried his plate to the sink.

His chair remained pushed away from the table.

Empty.

It didn't bother me.

I could hear him in the kitchen opening the wrong cupboard, closing it, then finding the right one. He hummed the same tune he still couldn't remember learning.

The chair was empty because Marco was three meters away.

That was different.

Weeks ago, there had been one towel in the bathroom. One toothbrush. Food for one person. One coffee mug beside the sink.

One chair that belonged to nobody.

I hadn't invited Marco into my life all at once.

That would have been easier to notice.

He'd arrived by inches instead.

A shirt left to dry.

A meal shared across the table.

A key in his hand.

Coffee made before I woke.

His fingers closing around mine while a storm battered the windows.

Until one morning I'd walked into an empty room and understood, before I could stop myself, that someone was missing.

Marco came back carrying two glasses of water and set one beside me.

“What?”

I realized I was staring.

“Nothing.”

He sat down.

The uneven chair scraped softly across the floor.

Then it wasn't empty anymore.

Something inside me settled with it.

I picked up my water and said nothing at all.