The Savior’s Trap

Chapter Six – The Call

The house hummed its small, faithful noises—the refrigerator shivering once every few minutes, the water heater exhaling in the walls, the distant tick of the hallway clock that had outlasted her marriage. Elena tucked her feet beneath a throw on the couch and let the blanket drag a soft line across her calves. She had turned off the television an hour ago but hadn’t bothered to get up; its dark screen still reflected the room in a faint gray sheen: a lamp, a plant that needed water, a woman who looked like she belonged to the furniture.

She scrolled to Kevin and pressed call.

Three rings. Then the click of connection and her son’s voice—lower than it had been last year, edged with sleep and youth all at once.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, and surprised herself with how warm she sounded. “How are you?”

“Alive,” he said, and laughed. “Midterms are a war crime. I’m reporting my econ professor to The Hague.”

She smiled into the phone. “You always say that, and then you ace the exam.”

“Yeah, well, this time he invented a new graph and named it after himself. I’m not convinced this is a real economy.”

They drifted through the small talk she cherished: the cafeteria’s tragic pasta (“still inedible”), the roommate’s new hobby of brewing dubious coffee (“it tastes like a campfire”), the campus fundraiser (“they bribed us with free hoodies—effective”). She let him bounce, tossed him little prompts, kept her laugh light. The blanket warmed her knees; the streetlight outside cast a pale square on the floorboards by the door.

Then, as if a string inside him had been tugged, Kevin’s voice softened. “Mom?”

“I’m here.”

“I’ve been thinking…” He paused, breath catching. “I used to blame you.”

Elena’s heart pressed upward, a slow, steadying ache. “I know.”

“I don’t anymore.” The words came out blunt and careful, like a glass set down too firmly. “I see Dad clearer now. I thought he was just… leaving to be happy, you know? Like people do in movies. But he left you with everything. The bills. The house. Me.” He swallowed. “I think he broke more than the marriage.”

Elena stared at the muted television and saw not her face but the echo of a kitchen argument from two years ago—voices pitched too high, a wine glass sweating on the counter, Kevin pretending to do homework at the table while his pencil didn’t move. She closed her eyes. “You don’t have to take care of me with your opinions of your father.”

“I’m not,” he said, gentle. “I just… I don’t feel good being this far away. I don’t feel comfortable with you being alone there.”

“I’m not alone,” she said automatically, and heard how thin it sounded. The house hummed again, obediently contradicting her. She tried again. “I have friends. I have work. I have a whole yoga mat. Very busy.”

He snorted. “The yoga mat counts as a dependent?”

“It counts as equipment,” she said, relieved to make him laugh. “And listen to me now, carefully: you are not responsible for me. Your job is to be twenty, make catastrophic choices about cheap tacos, and learn things I won’t understand.”

“My therapist says the same thing,” he muttered, amused. “Except for the tacos.”

“I’m cheaper,” she told him.

“That’s debatable,” he said. “But you answer after two rings, so you win.”

They let silence breathe for a few beats. Elena could hear dorm noise faintly at his end—shoes in the hall, the electric lion’s purr of a vending machine. She imagined his room, the posters he’d taped crookedly, the heap of laundry he’d promised to do “tomorrow” for three weeks. The memory of his baseball bat against their living room wall flickered through her mind, tape scuffed, the grip worn by a boy who’d once believed he was invincible.

“Do you remember,” Kevin said, as if reading her thoughts, “when I hit that stupid double in eighth grade and Dad pretended it was nothing because he was mad you were late from work?”

“You hit a triple,” she corrected softly. “And I wasn’t late. I was exactly on time; he’d told you the wrong start.”

Kevin exhaled a small laugh. “Right. I’d forgotten the details. I remember your face better than the game.”

“What about my face?” she asked, smiling.

“You looked like you were holding your breath and then someone let you exhale. Like you’d been underwater all day, and I dragged you out.” He cleared his throat. “I just… I want you to exhale again.”

Her eyes stung. She stared at the lamp’s brass pull, at the light balancing on the edge of its shade. “I will,” she said, because she needed him to believe it. “I am. Slowly.”

“Good,” he said, and then, briskly, as if he’d reached a checkpoint, his voice brightened. “Anna says hi.”

Elena sat up a little. “Anna?”

He coughed. “A person. A girl-person. She’s in my stats section. We’ve been… hanging out.”

“How long is ‘hanging out’?”

“Two weeks? Three? Don’t make it a federal case.”

“I’m making it a maternal curiosity case. What’s she like?”

A rustle, as if he’d turned over on his bed. “Funny. The kind of funny that sneaks up on you and takes your fries. She has these ridiculous rain boots with ducks on them. She reads the back of cereal boxes out loud. She makes me forget midterms for forty minutes, which is, like, a miracle.”

Elena let herself smile. “She sounds like an outlaw.”

“She is. A charming outlaw,” he conceded. “We walked across campus when it snowed last week, and she tried to catch flakes on her tongue but kept missing and then blamed the wind. I think I’m… I don’t know. I like myself better when I’m with her.”

“That matters,” Elena said. “That matters a lot.”

He was quiet a moment. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you like yourself better with anyone?” His tone was teasing, but underneath it a caution lived—the child who had watched his parents fail at kindness.

“I’m working on liking myself with myself,” she said honestly. “It’s a group project where I’m the only member.”

He laughed. “Classic Mom answer.”

They lingered a while longer at the edges of easy things: his professor who wore mismatched socks “on purpose,” the campus cat that wasn’t allowed in the dorm but lived there anyway, how the vending machines switched to healthy snacks after midnight as though guilt could be programmed. He yawned, tried to hide it, yawned again.

“Go to bed,” she told him.

“In a minute,” he said, stubborn. “I love you.”

“I love you more,” she replied, and felt the words fill the room like breath.

“Call me if you need anything,” he added, soft but fiercely older. “For real. Even if it’s nothing.”

“I will. Goodnight, Kev.”

“Night, Mom.”

The line clicked. The house reclaimed the silence in a single, gentle wave.

Elena didn’t move. The couch held her like a shoreline. For a long minute she let the afterglow of his voice warm the spaces inside her that the day had left cold. He doesn’t blame me, she thought, and the realization came with both relief and an ache, as if the permission to stop apologizing to her own son had arrived late and in the wrong envelope.

A sound ticked across the quiet.

She straightened. Not the refrigerator this time, not the settling of wood. A knock: three polite taps at the front door, spaced evenly, as if performed by someone who practiced being considerate.

Her first thought was Liza, who sometimes dropped off magazines with circled articles: Ten Ways to Breathe. Her second was a neighbor—misdelivered mail, a package, a warning about raccoons. She set the phone on the coffee table, slid the blanket aside, and crossed the room barefoot. The floor was cool through the thin skin of her soles.

She opened the door.

No one stood on the porch. The street, under its single lamppost, looked like a photograph—a car at the curb, a tree shadow stitched down the middle of the lawn, the faint blink of a plane stitched much higher across the sky. Somewhere a dog barked once and decided against it.

On the welcome mat, centered with improbable care, sat a small white box.

Elena felt her breath flatten. The box was wrapped simply in matte paper, a pale pink ribbon tied into a tidy bow that rested like a sigh across the lid. A card, the size of a thumb, was taped to one side.

She looked left, right. Empty. No footsteps retreated on the sidewalk, no engine turned over, no human shape made itself guilty.

She bent and picked up the box. It weighed less than she expected, no heavier than a paperback. Back inside, she closed the door, slid the chain across on instinct, and stood with her spine against the wood for a heartbeat before she carried the box to the coffee table and set it down on the magazine that promised Clean Rooms, Clear Minds.

Her hands hovered. She peeled the tiny card free.

Two words in neat, unremarkable handwriting: Have fun.

No name. No sender’s logo. Not even a flourish of punctuation. A directive more than a wish.

Elena’s skin prickled along her forearms. She thought again of Liza—no, Liza would sign her name and add a hundred emojis. Allison? Mary? They would never. Her ex-husband would send a lawyer, not a present. A patient? She stared at the door as if the wood would answer her.

She slipped the ribbon free. It slid like satin through her fingers and fell to the table with a whisper. The paper surrendered to her thumb—one careful tear, then another. Underneath, a plain white lid. She lifted it.

A velvet pouch the color of a blush sat in the center on a bed of tissue. Her mouth went dry. She glanced at the closed blinds, the quiet windows. She could feel the shape already through the fabric, the way a hand learns a tool before it sees it.

She drew the pouch open.

Pink. Sleek. Modern. The kind of thing a boutique would display behind minimalist glass, as if it were a sculpture and not an invitation. It lay against her palm, light and somehow heavy at once, obscene only because the room was so clean.

For a full breath, Elena did not move. The object seemed to warm against her skin, as if it drew heat from her and made a narrative of it. She closed her fingers around it and felt her pulse in her wrist.

Isn’t it possible to just love it?