I returned our home while he toured with her novel Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The last two messages were from Kyler.

[The fridge magnets on the coffee table. I saw them.]

[Wren, call me back.]

His messages had been blowing up my phone all day. This was just the latest one.

Mia called first. “You really left? Kyler’s losing his mind looking for you.”

“Yeah.”

“He went to your office. Your boss said you took an extended leave.”

“I resigned.”

“Resigned-you quit your job too?”

“Fresh start in a new city.”

“He blew up my phone, asking if I knew where you went. Called me like a dozen times.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I don’t know.” Mia paused. “He sounded completely wrecked. Said he doesn’t get

why you just left. Kept saying you two were solid.”

Fine. He thought we were fine. A fiancée who renovated the home alone, canceled it

alone, packed up and left alone, in his eyes, that was “fine.”

“Mia, give him a message for me.”

“What?”

“Tell him the note says everything.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I hung up and started unpacking my new rental apartment. One bedroom, south-facing,

great light. Half the size of that house, but every inch was mine. No Seraphina’s sneakers, no

Chapter 5

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strawberry yogurt, no cherry blossom necklace with a K.

At nine p.m., an unknown number called. “Is this Wren? This is Drew. Drew Carter, Kyler’s

friend.”

“Drew? What’s up?”

“Kyler sat at my place for three hours this afternoon. He’s not okay.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept reading that note you left. Then he asked me something weird.”

“What?”

“He asked, ‘Are five fridge magnets really that little?”

My grip tightened on the phone.

“I asked him what he meant. He said you wrote in the note that those five magnets were

everything he ever brought you back from Japan. Five years, and that’s it.”

“After he said that, he just went quiet. Sat there staring at nothing. Then he started

scrolling through his phone. Didn’t stop for a long time.”

“Going through what?”

“His photos. He told me he counted. Eleven photos of you. That’s it. Then he started

counting Seraphina’s and just gave up after three hundred.”

A pause. “Wren, I don’t know what happened between you two. But I’ve known him

twenty years, and I’ve never seen him like this.”

“He kept scrolling through your chat history. Then he said one thing to me.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘She told me “next time” seventeen times, and I never delivered once.”

I hung up and stood by the window. The night view of the new city was foreign, a million

lights, none of them lit for me. So what? For the past five years, the lights in that house

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