I would call her on the way home.
I would tell her about the hearing, and about the storage unit, and about the notebook, and about the photograph taken outside my old office on a day I couldn’t remember.
I would tell her all of it, because she deserved to know, and because keeping it to myself would mean carrying it alone, and I had learned, in the past two weeks, that Eleanor had carried too much alone for too long.
I was not going to make that mistake.
I walked to my car.
I set Eleanor’s things carefully on the passenger seat.
I sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel.
Then I drove home.
The ring caught the light once as I turned onto the main road — a small, quiet flash, there and gone.
I didn’t look away from the road.
But I felt it.
—
