Chapter 189

He left anyway.

I lie on my back in the dark room at 3:47am, staring at the ceiling, and that is the thought that keeps completing itself no matter how many times I try to redirect.

Eli left anyway. I told him I wouldn’t say a word to my father, I handed him the one thing he came into this house terrified of losing, and he packed whatever he owns that fits in a bag and walked out four days ago without looking back.

I know because I heard the door.

I wasn’t going to look. I had decided, very firmly, that I was not going to stand at my window and watch him go like some tragic heroine in a film I would normally mock. And then I heard the door and I was at the window before the decision could catch up with the instinct. I watched the tail lights of his cab disappear down the service road, and then I went back to bed and I have barely left this room since.

The thing is… I’m not sad.

I keep waiting for sad and it doesn’t arrive. What I have instead i