I had just set the last grocery bag on the kitchen floor when I heard the front lock turn. Not the cautious twist I used to make when Mark was asleep and I didn’t want the deadbolt to click too loud. Not the hesitant rattle of a neighbor checking the wrong door on a windy night.
This was confident. Familiar. I wiped my palm on my jeans, receipt still curled in my other hand, and walked toward the entry.
Nathan stood there like the house was still a place where he could show up unannounced. Keys dangled from his fingers. He wore that easy grin he’d had since he was twelve and figured out charm could soften consequences.
Beside him, Alina hovered in a cropped wool coat and white sneakers so clean they looked like they’d never met Oregon rain. Her hair was swept back, glossy and deliberate, like she was on her way to somewhere nicer than my porch. Nathan lifted his hand and flicked the keys toward her.
“She’ll just stay here for a while,” he said, like he was talking about leaving a suitcase in the guest room. Alina caught the ring without even looking down. Her fingers closed around it as if the metal recognized her.
“Thanks, babe,” she said, flashing him a polished little smile. “I’ll take good care of it.”
Then they both laughed. Not unkindly.
Not loudly. Just… easily. Unbothered.
Like the joke was that I still thought my life belonged to me. I stood there holding a bag of carrots and brown rice and a tin of coffee, and the weight of twenty-two years pressed behind my ribs. “You gave her my keys?” I asked.
Nathan shrugged, already halfway to stepping inside. “You said you didn’t mind. She needs a quiet spot to focus while I’m at work.
And it’s not like you’re using all the space.”
Alina brushed past me and placed her purse on the hallway table like she’d practiced it. One of my grocery bags sat there too. My bag.
My table. My home. I watched her fingers tap the wood the way you test a surface you’re about to claim.
I breathed in, slow and steady, the way I used to do before delivering bad news in the ER. “I see,” I said. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Nathan’s grin lingered, waiting for me to soften.
I didn’t. “Because I haven’t lived here for two months.”
The air changed. Nathan’s smile slid off his face like it had forgotten how to hold itself.
The story doesn’t end here –
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