Chapter 4: The Promise He Broke
I sat down across from him.
"Tell me anyway," I said.
Andrew looked at his hands.
"After Daniel's funeral, I stayed for a week.
I helped Claire with the paperwork, the arrangements, the things that pile up when someone d*es and you're not prepared for it.
Eli was barely a year old.
She was exhausted and grieving and completely alone."
"That sounds like you," I said.
"That sounds like exactly what you would do."
"It was." He paused.
"But then I came home.
And I told myself I'd call her the following week.
Then the week after that.
Then a month went by, and calling felt harder because I'd already waited too long.
And then another month.
And I kept thinking about Daniel — about the fact that I'd barely known him, that we'd only just started repairing things when he was taken — and every time I thought about Claire and Eli, I thought about him, and I just—"
He stopped.
"You shut down," I said.
"I disappeared on them." The words came out flat and ashamed.
"I stopped answering her messages.
I told myself she'd be fine, that she had support I didn't know about, that I was making it worse by being a reminder of Daniel.
I told myself every comfortable lie I could find." He finally looked up.
"She wasn't fine.
She had no support.
And I knew that.
I knew it when I made the promise."
I looked at the photograph again.
The woman's tired smile.
The baby's weight in her arms.
"How old is Eli now?" I asked.
"Nearly three."
Nearly three years old.
And Andrew had been gone from their lives for most of it.
"She came to your father," I said slowly.
"She didn't know how else to find you."
"She must have tracked down the business somehow.
I'd mentioned my father-in-law once — I don't even remember the context." He shook his head.
"She wasn't coming after me.
She just needed to find me."
"What does she need, Andrew?"
He reached into his back pocket and set his phone on the table.
He unlocked it and slid it toward me.
On the screen was a message thread — the last message from a contact saved only as *Claire* — dated eleven months ago.
*Andrew, I don't know if you'll read this.
Eli had a hospital stay last month.
We're okay now but I had to borrow money I don't have.
I'm not asking you for anything.
I just thought you should know.
Daniel would have wanted you to know.*
I read it twice.
"You didn't reply," I said.
"No."
I pushed the phone back across the table.
I didn't trust myself to say anything for a moment.
"She came to my father's office," I said.
"She had our address written on the back of that photograph.
She was going to come here, Andrew.
She may still come here."
"I know."
"And you were going to let me open that door without knowing any of this."
He didn't answer.
That was its own answer.
I stood up.
I needed to not be sitting across from him right then.
I moved to the window and looked out at the dark street, arms crossed, trying to find the shape of what I was feeling.
It wasn't rage.
It wasn't quite betrayal.
It was something colder and more disorienting — the sensation of looking at a man I thought I knew completely and finding a room in him I'd never been shown.
"I'm not angry that you had a brother," I said, without turning around.
"I'm not angry that he d*ed or that you were grieving.
I understand all of that."
"I know."
"I'm angry that you made a promise to a dying man and then let fear turn you into someone who breaks it.
And I'm angry that you kept all of it from me.
For three years." I turned.
"We were together when Daniel d*ed, weren't we?
We'd already been together for months."
Andrew's face confirmed it before he spoke.
"Yes."
"So you were flying out to see your dying brother, attending his funeral, meeting his wife and child, and you told me — what?
What did you tell me?"
A long pause.
"That I had a family emergency.
That it was complicated and I'd explain later."
"And later never came."
"Later never came," he said quietly.
The room held that for a moment.
Then my phone buzzed on the counter.
I glanced at it out of habit.
It was a notification from the building's front door intercom.
Someone was outside.
I looked at the camera feed on the screen.
A young woman stood at the entrance, a toddler on her hip, a small bag over her shoulder.
She was looking directly up at the camera with the expression of someone who has run out of other options.
I looked at Andrew.
He had seen it too.
May you like
The color had left his face entirely.
"That's her," he said.
