Chapter Two: The Name He Didn't Say

I didn't stay to watch him cross the room. I couldn't.

The second he said my name, every wall I'd built over the past eleven months shifted. For eleven months, I'd imagined what hearing his voice again would do to me. I never imagined one word would be enough. I set down what was left of the tray and walked. Not fast enough to look like I was running, but fast enough to actually survive it.

The kitchen was loud, hot, and alive, completely ignoring what I was going through. I made for the corner by the pantry, leaned against the wall, and counted the ceiling tiles to calm my racing heart. Fourteen tiles. I went through it three times before my pulse finally started to ease.

"There you are." Della pushed through the swinging door, out of breath, looking like she'd been waiting to find me. “Myra. He walked straight at you. In front of everyone. In front of his mother."

"I noticed."

"Mrs. Okafor's already sweeping up the glass and pretending nothing happened, which means everyone upstairs is going to be pretending nothing happened, which means---"

"Della."

"Right. Sorry." She softened, finally reading the room. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You keep saying that like it's going to start being true."

He said my name like it cost him something. I couldn't stop thinking about that part, not even with Della standing right in front of me.

Mom found me twenty minutes later, which meant someone had already turned my whole life into gossip before I'd even processed it myself. She didn't say a word at first. Just handed me water and stood close enough for our shoulders to touch.

"I'm fine," I told her too.

"I know."

"He said my name," I told her, like a confession.

"How did it sound?"

I didn't answer that. She already knew.

What I never told anyone was this: I spotted him before he noticed me. It was just a split second, enough for me to see him scanning the room. And in that brief moment, I understood he wasn’t searching for any of the guests.

Mom reached out and squeezed my shoulder once.

---

I worked the rest of that gala on autopilot. Cleared plates, smiled at the right people, vanished from the wrong ones. Around eleven, one of the senior maids, Priscilla, caught my sleeve in the hallway.

"Heard you dropped a whole tray of crystal." She didn't say it unkindly; more like she was clocking it for later. "Victoria's not going to let that go quietly, you know. Things like that, she remembers."

"It was an accident."

"With him? Nothing's an accident." She patted my arm and kept moving, like she'd just delivered the weather report.

At eleven forty-five, I turned a corner in a rush and bumped right into him. His hand shot out and grabbed my arm before we could react. For that brief moment, it felt like time stood still as I caught a glimpse of the weariness behind his eyes, something the rest of the world never seems to notice.

"Myra." Not quiet this time. It had actual weight to it.

“Mr. Blancham.” It came out cold and deliberate, masking how much it really cost me to say it.

I saw a change in his expression, not anger, but understanding. It was like he realized what I was doing and accepted that he probably had it coming.

He hesitated before releasing my arm, as if he didn't really want to let go. "I didn’t expect to see you here tonight. I knew you still lived on the estate, but…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair, the same nervous habit I recognized from when we were seventeen. “I’ve been rehearsing what I wanted to say to you for weeks.”

"And?"

"Every version I came up with was wrong."

I stared at him, searching for the boy I used to know. He hadn’t changed; there he was, the same, and that made everything worse. If he’d looked harsher, colder, maybe I could’ve just walked away. But no. He looked like the person I’d spent eleven months trying to erase.

As the door at the end of the hallway swung open, voices flowed out, his mother's voice among them, calm and steady, growing louder with each step. Suddenly, his expression shifted, a flicker of realization crossing his face, as if he remembered, in that moment, that someone was always watching him.

"I should go," I said.

"Myra, wait…"

"Goodnight, Mr. Blancham."

I didn't look back once. I made it up the servants' staircase, into the small room with my three sealed boxes, and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands pressed flat against my knees before I let myself actually breathe again.

I just sat there, listening as the party noise drained out. Then footsteps, slow and sneaky, crept up the servants’ stairs; whoever it was knew exactly which step squeaked and dodged it.

The footsteps stopped right outside my door.

Silence stretched.... No knock, just a shadow on the other side of the door, and me on this side, both of us frozen, like we were waiting for the other to give in first.

I didn’t move. I barely breathed.

Finally, the footsteps faded, slipping away just as quietly as they’d shown up.

I stared at the door, heart thumping, still trying to figure out if it was him and what it meant that he’d actually left.