71

Marianna.

Here's what I don't do:

I don't tell Duane about Alina's call.

I know this is probably a mistake. I know it the way you know a splinter is still in there—not because it's actively killing you but because there's a specific, low-grade awareness that something foreign has lodged somewhere it shouldn't be and your body hasn't forgotten about it.

But the call came at 10:48 PM and Duane called at 10:52 and I had approximately five minutes to decide what kind of person I was going to be in this situation, and the person I decided to be was the kind who doesn't immediately hand her anxieties to someone else to carry.

This is growth, possibly.

Or it's avoidance dressed in growth's clothing.

My therapist—former therapist, I haven't been in eight months, which is its own data point—would have a lot to say about the distinction.

The thing about doubt is that it's a very efficient architect.

It doesn't need much to work with. A phone call, a few well-placed words, a pause in exactly the right place—and it gets to work immediately, quietly, rearranging the furniture of everything you thought you knew. You wake up the next morning and the room looks the same but something is different and you can't quite identify what until you realize that the doubt has moved all the exits.

I know this is happening.

Knowing doesn't stop it.

Tuesday I'm fine. The call is fresh enough that I can hold it at clinical distance, examine it like a specimen, note its techniques. Warm voice. Strategic pauses. The appearance of reluctant honesty. Alina Lindqvist is good at what she does. I can acknowledge that without being destroyed by it.

Wednesday the splinter starts.

It's small things. Duane's call comes at 11:30 instead of 10. Twenty minutes isn't a meaningful difference in any rational framework. I know this. I also lie awake for the twenty minutes before he calls, aware of every minute in a way that I wasn't before Monday night.

Waiting, Alina said. Like waiting.

Thursday, Luca comes in for his session.

He's in a good mood. The specific good mood of someone who has received information that pleases them and is doing a controlled performance of casualness.

"Silverstone soon," he says, settling onto the table with his usual practiced ease. "Big race for Duane. Home circuit for the team." A pause. "Lots of pressure."

"Lots of opportunity," I say.

"Of course." He smiles. "How is he? I haven't spoken to him this week."

"I wouldn't know," I say. "Client—"

"Confidentiality. Yes." He watches me set up the assessment. "You know, I've been thinking about what you said. About all circuits being equally interesting biomechanically."

"Good."

"I didn't believe it then either." He says it without heat. Just—noting. "You're not a very good liar, Ms. Reyes."

I press into his hip flexor with the standard amount of pressure.

His expression doesn't change. "He's lucky," he says. "To have consistent support. Some of us—" He pauses, and something moves across his face that might be genuine for half a second before the calibration returns. "Some of us manage alone."

"You have a full Veloce medical team."

"It's not the same." His green eyes find mine. Level. Unreadable. "You know it's not the same."

I say nothing.

"I'm not his enemy," Luca says quietly. "Whatever he's told you."

"He hasn't told me anything about you."

"Hasn't he." Not a question. A notation. Filed away somewhere I can't see. "Interesting."

I finish the session in professional silence.

Walking back to my office afterward, I think: Luca is lonely. Not as an excuse. Just as a fact. He has the specific loneliness of someone who is very talented and has decided that talent is sufficient currency for everything, and is starting to discover that it isn't.

It doesn't make him less dangerous.

It makes him more.

Friday, Jill calls at lunch.

"Talk to me," she says, without preamble. She has a radar for my silences that is frankly inconvenient.

"I'm fine."

"You texted me three separate articles about attachment theory at midnight. That's not fine behavior."

"They were interesting articles—"

"Marianna."

I put down my sandwich. Look at the break room wall. "Alina called me."

Silence.

"Alina Lindqvist," Jill says. Carefully. "His ex."

"Yes."

"Called you."

"Yes."

"How did she get your number?"

"I've been asking myself that."

Another silence. Jill is doing her processing thing—I can hear it, the particular quality of her quiet when she's assembling pieces.

"What did she say?" she asks.

I tell her. All of it—the distraction, the available, the just a rest stop, the warmth in the voice that had blades underneath. The way she said every woman he's ever and left it hanging. The way she knew about Montreal.

When I finish, Jill is quiet for a long moment.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?"

"I'm processing." A pause. "How much of it do you believe?"

"That's the problem." I press my fingers against my eyes. "None of it and all of it. She's not wrong about the facts. He is on the road constantly. The season does accelerate. Long distance is genuinely—" I stop. "And I've been here before. With Josh. The version of events that felt true right up until it wasn't."

"Duane is not Josh."

"No. But my capacity for constructing a story that I want to be true—" I stop again. "That part is the same."

"Marianna." Jill's voice is gentle. The true-thing voice. "What does the evidence actually say? Not the fear. The evidence."

I think about it. The actual evidence. The things that happened.

"He lit a vanilla candle," I say.

"Okay."

"He told me about his father. The paper airplanes. He's never—" I pause. "Marco said once that Duane doesn't talk about his parents. To anyone. That it just doesn't happen."

"Okay."

"He called from the paddock thirty seconds after winning the Canadian Grand Prix."

"Okay."

"He said—" I stop. "When I told him I missed him, he said I know. And I know that sounds like deflection but it isn't. It's—I've learned how he talks. It means something different from him."

"Okay," Jill says again. Soft and certain.

"But Alina said—"

"Alina," Jill says carefully, "got his ex-girlfriend's number somehow, called her at 10 PM, and spent ten minutes performing reluctant honesty in a very precise way." A pause. "That's not a concerned woman trying to protect you. That's a woman trying to protect something else."

"Her position."

"Her position," Jill confirms. "Or her access. Or the version of the story where she's still relevant."

I sit with this.

"She could be right though," I say quietly. "About the pattern. About what happens when the season—"

"She could be," Jill says. "Genuinely. I'm not saying she's lying about everything. I'm saying she's using true things as weapons, which is different from telling you the truth." A pause. "The question isn't whether the risk is real. The question is whether you're going to let a woman who called you at 10 PM make your decisions for you."

Outside the break room, I can hear Derek arguing with the coffee machine again. Some battles are eternal.

"I haven't told him," I say.

"About the call?"

"Yes."

"Why not?"

"Because—" I stop. "Because if I tell him, either he gets angry and confronts her and it becomes a whole thing, or he doesn't react and that becomes its own information. Either way I learn something I might not be ready to know."

Jill is quiet.

"That's very self-aware," she says finally.

"I've been practicing."

"Also very avoidant."

"I know."

"Tell him," she says. "Not because you need him to fix it. Just because—" She pauses. "You don't have to manage everything alone, Mari. That's the old pattern. The Josh pattern. Absorb everything, show nothing, handle it yourself." A beat. "You said he makes you feel seen. Let him see this too."

I look at the break room wall.

"What if he confirms it?" I ask. The real question. The one underneath all the other questions. "What if I tell him and something in the way he responds tells me that Alina is right?"

"Then you'll know," Jill says simply. "And knowing is better than the splinter."

"The splinter analogy is very apt," I say. "Did you read the same attachment theory articles?"

"I read the subject lines when you forwarded them at midnight." A pause. "Tell him, Marianna."

"Yeah," I say.

"Tonight."

"Yeah."

"I mean it."

"I know you mean it."

"TONIGHT, Marianna—"

"OKAY, Jill—"

He calls at 10:08.

Early. I note this the way I've been noting everything lately—the exact time, the pattern, whether it matches or diverges from what Alina said. Calls that come less frequently. Tonight: early.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi." His voice has something in it tonight—not quite tired, but the quality of a long day worn close to the surface. "How was your day?"

I open my mouth. Close it.

Tell him, Jill said.

"Someone called me Monday night," I say. "After we talked. I've been trying to decide whether to tell you."

Silence.

"Alina," he says.

Not a question. The word comes out flat and immediate, and underneath it—something I can't name exactly. Cold. Focused. The yellow flag frequency.

"Yes."

The silence that follows has a specific quality.