Page 222 of Wild Card 13

THEN

Ty came at eight seventeen the next morning.

I knew because I had been awake all night watching numbers change.

At one twelve, I had stopped crying.

At two forty, I had almost answered one of his texts.

At three twenty-eight, I had deleted the almost-response because every version of it sounded too small for what had happened.

At four, the sky outside my window began to lighten in that pale, indifferent way summer mornings had, as if the world did not understand it had broken during the night.

By seven, I had showered.

By seven thirty, I had made coffee I could not drink.

By eight, I had changed out of the blue blouse and into jeans and an old sweatshirt because I could not stand the fabric touching my skin anymore.

At eight seventeen, Betsy pulled up to the curb.

The sound of that truck had lived inside me for years. I knew the uneven rumble before I saw it through the front window. Knew the brief grind as he shifted into park. Knew the door’s complaint when he opened it.

My body reacted like it still belonged to the girl who used to smile when he arrived.

Then I remembered the door closing.

The guest room.

His hand on her back.

I stepped away from the window before he could see me standing there like someone waiting.

The doorbell rang.

I did not move.

It rang again, followed by a knock. Not loud. Not careless. Three taps against the wood, spaced like he was trying not to scare me. “Lucy?” His voice came through the door, rough with no sleep. “Luce, please.”

That made me angry enough to open the door.

Ty stood on the porch in the same jeans he had worn last night and a wrinkled gray T-shirt, hair wrecked, eyes bloodshot, one hand braced against the doorframe like he had needed it to stay upright. He looked awful.

Good, I thought. Then hated myself for thinking it.

His face changed the second he saw me. Relief first. Then fear, because whatever he found in my expression must have told him relief was premature. “Hey,” he said quietly.

I folded my arms. “What are you doing here?”

“You wouldn’t answer.” He blinked. “I called you all night.”

“I noticed.”

His hand dropped from the frame. “What happened?”

The question was so sincere, so confused, that for one insane second I wondered if I had imagined it. If grief had made a monster out of shadows and a hallway and a closed door.

Then the image came back so sharply I could hardly breathe. I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door partly closed behind me. I did not want this inside the house. I did not want his voice in the entryway where Dad had taken prom pictures, where Ty had looked at me in my green dress like I was the only future he could see. “I saw you,” I said.