Chapter 62: The Application
The application sat on Lily's laptop for three days before she opened it.
Maya watched her circle it—the way she'd walk past the kitchen table, glance at the closed laptop, then keep walking. The way she'd sit down, open it, stare at the screen, then close it again. The way she'd make excuses—I need to do laundry first, I forgot to call Emma back, I'm too tired tonight. She'd pick at the edges of the table, avoid eye contact, fill the silence with small talk that didn't mean anything. She'd find any reason to postpone the moment she'd been both dreading and hoping for. She'd check her phone, stare out the window, start conversations that went nowhere. She'd find a hundred tiny tasks to distract herself from the one thing that really mattered. She was trying to
