I froze in the entryway, gift bag still looped over my wrist.
“She walked right into it,” he said, and then, quieter, almost to himself: “God, I’ve been building this since we were seventeen.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
Built what. Since seventeen. Walked into it.
He laughed — a short, satisfied sound I’d never once associated with anything sinister, and yet in that moment it landed in my chest like a stone. “The whole thing falls apart if she finds out early,” he said. “So nobody says a word. Not yet.”
I don’t remember deciding to leave. I remember the porch step creaking under my foot, the gift bag banging against the doorframe, and then I was in my car with the engine running and no memory of starting it, hands shaking too hard to pull out of the driveway.
I drove to the reservoir at the edge of town and sat there until the sky went orange, running the same four sentences through my head on a loop until they lost their shape entirely. She has no idea. She walked right into it. Since we were seventeen. If she finds out, it falls apart.
