His Name Never Left Me
1647 Words
Roberta's POV
The light came in softly through the curtains.
I lay still for a moment, the way you do in an unfamiliar room — taking inventory. Ceiling. Window. The particular quiet of a house that isn't yours.
Then the sounds from downstairs reached me.
Movement. A cabinet closing. The low sound of something on a stovetop.
And, my body did what it had done every morning for seven years before my mind could stop it.
Ziva.
The pull of it was immediate— the need to get up and cross the hall and push open her door. Some mornings, she was still asleep, curled on her side with her hand under her cheek, and I would stand in the doorway for just a moment and watch her breathe. Other mornings she was already awake and the second the door moved she would look up with that smile — not a sleepy smile, a fully committed smile, the smile of someone who had been waiting and was very pleased you had finally arrived.
Good mornin' Mommy.
Morning, baby. Did you sleep well?
I dreamed about the park. Can we go?
Maybe on Saturday.
You always say Saturday.
Saturday always comes.
What are we having today, Mommy?
What do you want?
Pancakes. With a smiley face. The one you make with the berries.
Get up, baby. It's time for school.
She would make a sound that was half laugh, half complaint and then she would reach up both arms and I would sit on the edge of her bed and we would stay like that for a few minutes before the morning properly started. Every day. Our own small ritual, unremarkable and irreplaceable.
I'll never make her pancakes again. I'll never hear her say "good morning, Mommy" again. It's all just memories now.
It was all memory now.
That's what hit me — not the grief exactly, which I had been living inside for so long it had become its own kind of weather, but the specific understanding that the ritual was over. That there was no door to push open. No arms reaching up. That Saturday always comes was the kind of thing you only understood the value of once Saturday stopped meaning anything.
I pressed my hand flat against my chest.
*Get up,* I told myself. *Get up.*
I got up.
The smell of coffee pulled me downstairs
Brett was in the kitchen.
His back was to me when I came down the stairs, standing at the gas cooker in a white shirt with his sleeves pushed up. The table was already set — two plates, coffee, a small jar of jam that seemed optimistic given what was on the toast.
He heard me on the last step and turned.
"Morning." He said it easily, like we had done this before. Like this was ordinary. "How did you sleep?"
"Better than I expected," I said. Which was true.
He pulled a chair out from the table. Not making a performance of it. Just pulled it out and waited.
I sat.
"I should warn you." He went back to the gas cooker, brought the pan over. Eggs. Simple. "My wife—Victoria did all the cooking in this house. I'm not a good cook." He set the plate in front of me. "But It won't taste horrible. That's the best I can promise."
Something moved in my chest at the way he said her name. Quietly. Like he was still getting used to saying it in the past tense.
"It looks fine," I said.
He sat across from me with his own plate, and we ate.
"Wait until you taste it before you lie to me."
I picked up my fork. Took a bite. The eggs were a little dry. The toast was slightly burned.
"It's not horrible," I said.
He laughed. Short and low.
"If you say so."
We ate in silence for a moment. Then I reached for the water pitcher.
He reached at the same time.
Our hands touched.
Neither of us moved.
His fingers were warm. Mine were cold. The pitcher sat between us. The morning light came through the window behind him.
I looked up.
He was looking at me.
His eyes were soft. There was something in them I couldn't name. Something that made my chest feel tight.
The kitchen was quiet. The clock ticked. My heart beat too loud.
He's not looking away.
I'm not looking away.
I pulled my hand back first.
He blinked. Then he immediately started to pour the water into my glass. Handed it to me.
"Thanks," I said.
"You're welcome."
We ate the rest of our breakfast in silence. The awkward kind. The kind where both people are pretending not to feel what they're feeling.
Not uncomfortable exactly. But aware. The air between us doing something neither of us was going to name over eggs and toast at eight in the morning.
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. "Sorry — I have to take this."
"Of course." I said it perhaps slightly faster than necessary.
He pushed back from the table and turned toward the window, his voice dropping into something professional and efficient as he answered.
I exhaled slowly.
A big thank you to whoever the caller was.
I picked up my fork and looked at my plate, and gave myself a moment to just breathe without his eyes near mine.
Then I looked at his coffee cup.
It was on his side of the table. Half finished, still warm, probably. His thumb print on the handle where he'd been holding it before the call came in. His saliva must be on it, too.
The DNA test.
The thought had been sitting at the back of my mind since last night. I couldn't tell him. Not yet. Not without knowing first whether there was even something to tell.
But if I could just—
If I took the cup. Quietly. Brought it to a private lab. Just to know. Just to answer the question before, I decided what to do with the answer.
He was still on the phone. His back to me. Nodding at something the other person was saying.
I looked at the cup.
I looked at him.
I reached across the table.
My fingers were three inches from the handle—
"Sorry about that."
I pulled my hand back so fast I nearly knocked my own glass over. I grabbed it. Steadied it. I pressed my hand flat on the table like it had simply been resting there the whole time.
Brett sat back down.
He looked at me. Then at the table. Then back at me.
I picked up my fork.
"Everything okay?" he said.
"Fine." My voice came out even. Barely. "Just almost knocked the glass."
He nodded. Picked up his coffee. Drank.
I did not watch the cup.
I watched my plate and ate and told myself to breathe normally, which is advice that never works, but you keep giving yourself anyway.
We finished eating.
I stood and reached for his plate.
"Leave it," he said.
"Brett, It's fine, I don't mind—"
"Roberta." His voice was easy, but there was something underneath it that didn't move. "I didn't bring you here to clean up after me. Leave it."
"I'm just trying to help—"
"I know." He was already picking up both plates. "Go get ready. We need to leave in about an hour."
He carried the dishes to the sink with the straightforward ease of a man who had always done his own dishes. No ,look at me being helpful.* Just doing it because it needed doing.
I stood in the kitchen and watched him and thought about the number of times I had stood in my own kitchen doing everything — the cooking, the clearing, the cleaning — while Jace sat in the next room and waited for his life to be managed around him.
Eight years of that.
It had started to feel normal.
Standing here watching Brett rinse a plate, I realised how profoundly, completely abnormal it had been.
I turned toward the stairs.
"Hey."
His voice stopped me at the doorway.
I turned back.
He was leaning against the counter, arms loosely folded, looking at me with an expression I couldn't fully read.
"Come to think of it—" He paused. Tilted his head slightly. "I haven't actually told you my name."
The floor didn't move, but something shifted under me.
"We got caught up in everything yesterday," he said. "At the hospital, I didn't tell you my name—" He watched me. "I never said it."
I said nothing.
"But you've just called me Brett. Just now." His voice was still easy. Still calm. Just curious. "Like you've always known it."
The kitchen was very quiet.
He wasn't accusing me. He wasn't even suspicious exactly. He was just — noticing. The way observant people notice things, without drama, just holding it up to the light to look at it.
I looked back at him.
My mind was doing several things at once — running through every conversation since I woke up at the hospital, every time I had used his name in my head, calculating whether I could explain it away, understanding that I probably couldn't, understanding that the explanation would open a door I was not ready to walk through yet.
He was waiting. His eyes on my face.
"Roberta." His voice was quiet now. No longer casual. He had seen something in my face and he was waiting for it. "How do you know my name?"
My blood went cold.
He didn't tell me his name. I knew it from eight years ago. From the card that fell out of his jacket. From the one night stand.
How do I explain that?
- Writer
