Chapter 3 — The Things We Don't Say

It was the fourth Tuesday — maybe the fifth; Maya had lost count because counting implied she was measuring something — when Daniel said something that stopped her mid-sentence.She had been talking about her father. It wasn't a subject she opened often; it lived behind a door she kept mostly shut. But something about the low light of the coffee shop and the third cup of chamomile tea had loosened things she'd meant to keep fastened."He left when I was nine," she said. "On a Tuesday, weirdly enough. Left for work in the morning, called my mum that afternoon to say he wasn't coming back. No dramatic scene, no big goodbye. Just — one day he was there and then he wasn't.""And you never saw him again?""Twice. Both times when he needed something." She kept her voice matter-of-fact; she'd had eighteen years to practise that. "I think what bothered me most wasn't the leaving. It was the absence of a reason. He never explained. He just — exited."Daniel was quiet for a long moment. Outside the window, the Tuesday evening moved along without them."Sometimes people leave because they think it's the kindest thing they can do," he said. The words were careful in a way she noticed."That's not kindness," Maya said. "That's just cowardice dressed up as consideration. If you love someone, you owe them the truth."He looked at her then — really looked, in that particular way he had that always made her feel slightly over-examined. "Even if the truth is hard?""Especially then."He nodded slowly. Something shifted in his expression — not quite pain, not quite distance, but something in the family of both. He looked at the window."What about you?" she asked, then: "You don't have to. I was just — reciprocating."He smiled, but it was a smaller smile than his usual ones. "My parents are good people. Married thirty-five years. My sister Caroline is the best person I know. I had a good childhood." A pause. "No dramatic origin story.""You left everything though. Six cities in four years.""I like movement," he said."Or you like not staying."The words were out before she'd thought them through. She saw them land. He didn't flinch, exactly, but something tightened in his jaw."Maybe," he admitted. "For a long time, yeah. Maybe."She noticed the past tense. She turned her tea cup in a slow circle on the table."You said 'for a long time.'"He looked at her with something that took her a moment to identify. It was the expression of someone standing at the edge of a truth they aren't sure they're allowed to tell yet."Yeah," he said quietly. And then: "This city feels different."She didn't push. She was learning not to, with him — that the silences weren't absences of things but the weight of them.They sat in companionable quiet for a few minutes. The coffee shop played something instrumental. Someone at a nearby table laughed at something on their phone."Can I ask you something?" Daniel said."You can ask me anything." And she meant it."What is one thing you want? Not what you think you should want. What do you actually want."She considered it seriously, the way the question deserved. "I want to stop being afraid that people will leave." She said it plainly, because what was the point of having a conversation worth having if you were going to answer a real question with a careful one.He was quiet for a very long time after that."Me too," he said at last. His voice was rough at the edges, like something had scraped against it. "In my own way."She didn't ask what he meant. Some things you let sit. Some truths you wait for.