The week after my conversation with Jade, I waited for something to change.
For the temperature to drop at family events, for Jade to become careful around me in the particular way she became careful when she was managing feelings she hadn't fully processed. For Marcus to suddenly seem more distant, which would mean Jade had said something to him, which would mean the whole careful architecture of the last few weeks would need to be revisited from the ground up.
None of that happened.
What happened instead was ordinary — Jade texted me Monday about a television show she'd started, Tuesday about a work thing, Wednesday to ask if I was coming to her parents' Halloween dinner the following weekend. Normal Jade, full frequency, no detectable change in signal.
Either she had processed it fa
