CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BLOG
1180 Words
I used to write every single day.
That was the rule I made for myself two years ago, back when my life was smaller and quieter and fully mine. Every night, no matter how tired I was, I would sit on my old bed with my laptop on my knees and write something.
A story. A memory. A small moment that stuck to me like gum on a shoe. I did that for ninety nine days straight once, just to see if I could. People followed along like it was appointment television. It made me feel like I mattered in a small way that didn’t need anyone’s permission.
I haven’t written a single word since the wedding.
I sit at the desk in my room, the laptop open, the screen bright and empty. I stare at it a long time. Nothing comes.
It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. I have too much. I just don’t know how to put any of it into words that make sense. My life used to be mine, small and plain and mine. Now it belongs to a company, a will, a man who barely looks at me unless there’s a reason to.
I close the laptop.
I think about the woman I used to be, the one who wrote about gardens and quiet houses because they were pretty ideas, not because she was living inside one and hated every hallway of it. I think about how easy it used to be to imagine love. Easy to write it soft and slow and hopeful, because it wasn’t real yet, because it couldn’t disappoint me the way a real husband could.
I wish I had said no.
The thought comes fast and ugly and true. I wish I had let the company fall apart. I wish I had let the lawyers panic and the deal collapse and let someone else figure it out, because at least then I would still be myself, in my own small apartment, writing my small stories, waiting for my sister to come home instead of living in a stranger’s house wearing a ring that doesn’t mean anything.
My phone buzzes on the desk.
I almost ignore it. Then I see the name and my whole body goes still.
Amelia.
I grab it so fast I nearly knock over my coffee. My hands are shaking before I even open the message.
I’m safe. Please stop looking for me. I need you to just live your life. I’m sorry, Ava. It is what it is now.
I read it four times.
Then I read it a fifth, waiting for it to say something different, waiting for the words to rearrange themselves into an explanation, an address, anything that isn’t just my sister telling me to stop caring where she is.
I don’t feel relief.
I feel something much uglier than relief.
She is safe. She has always been safe, apparently, safe enough to type a full sentence, safe enough to tell me what to do with the rest of my life, while I have spent three weeks married to a stranger, crying myself to sleep in a house I don’t belong in, terrified she was dead in a ditch somewhere.
Live your life, she says. As if I have one left that belongs to me.
I want to scream. I want to throw the phone across the room. Instead I sit very still, staring at the screen, feeling something cold and furious settle into my chest where the fear used to live.
I hear him in the hallway. I don’t get up this time. I don’t open my door.
He knocks anyway. Once.
“What,” I say, not bothering to hide how tired I sound.
He opens the door without waiting for an invitation, the way he does everything, like permission is a formality he doesn’t need from me. “The Kensington dinner is Friday. You’ll need to be there.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t respond to the assistant’s email.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy,” he repeats, flat, unimpressed, glancing at the phone still clutched in my hand. “Doing what, exactly.”
“My sister texted me.”
Something in his face shifts, barely, there and gone before I can name it. “And.”
“And she’s fine. She wants me to stop looking for her. She wants me to just live my life, like this is my life now, like none of this is insane.”
“Isn’t it,” he says. “Fine, I mean. If she’s safe.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point.”
“The point is I have spent three weeks terrified, and she’s been somewhere safe this whole time, telling me to move on like I’m the one being unreasonable.” My voice cracks despite myself. “The point is I said yes to marrying you because I thought I was buying time to find her. And it turns out I didn’t need to buy anything. She was never actually missing. She just left.”
He’s quiet a moment, watching me with that unreadable stillness he wears like armor.
“So now you’re angry at her instead of grateful she’s alive.”
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t do that. Don’t make me sound ungrateful for feeling exactly what I feel.”
“I’m not making you sound like anything. I’m asking a question.” His voice stays level, cold, entirely unbothered by the fact that I am unraveling in front of him. “You wanted her found. She’s found. You wanted her safe. She’s safe. What exactly is left to be furious about.”
“Everything,” I snap. “I’m furious about everything. I’m furious that I’m stuck in this house for a year because of a wedding that didn’t even need saving in the first place. I’m furious that I gave up my life for nothing.”
“For nothing,” he repeats, quiet, something sharper moving under the calm now. “The merger was real. The company was real. Whatever your sister’s reasons were, they don’t erase what almost happened to both our families that day.”
“I don’t care about the company.”
“I’m aware.” His jaw tightens. “You’ve made that very clear since the day I met you.”
“Good. Then we finally understand each other.”
He looks at me a long moment, something unreadable and tired behind his eyes, and then he turns and walks out without another word, leaving the door open behind him like he can’t be bothered to close it either.
I sit there in the silence after he’s gone, phone still in my hand, my sister’s message still glowing on the screen.
Live your life, she says.
I don’t know whose life that’s supposed to be anymore. It certainly doesn’t feel like mine.
- Writer
