12: The Day Claudia Disappeared

Layla's pov

I bought the cake anyway.

It was a small lemon one from the bakery on the corner, in a white box tied with string. The woman behind the counter asked if it was for a special occasion, and I said no, and she gave me a candle for free.

I held it in my hand all the way down the stairs.

It was the fourteenth of May, and it was a year to the day.

I hadn't told Madame Fontaine. But when I walked into the shop that morning with my eyes puffy from not sleeping, she looked at me for two seconds, put down the bottle she was holding, and said, "Go home."

"I'm fine. I can work."

"You are not fine. You are a bad liar, and you will break something expensive." She waved her cane at the door. "Go. Walk. Come back tomorrow."

"I don't..."

"Layla." Her voice was quieter than I'd ever heard it. "Go."

So I went.

I didn't have a plan. I just walked, and the streets carried me downhill, past the cafes and the bookshops, past the little squares where old men argued over chess, until the buildings opened up and I was standing at the edge of the river.

I had never really looked at the Seine before. I'd crossed it a few times on the bus with my head against the glass. It was wider than I'd imagined, slow and green-brown, with the light breaking up on the surface like scattered coins. Tourist boats drifted by. A woman on the bridge was taking selfies with a baguette.

I found a stone step near the water, away from the crowds, and sat down with the white box on my knees.

I didn't open it right away. I just sat there, listening to the water slap against the wall, and let myself think about it.

A year ago, at this hour, I had been in labor. I remembered the pain, and the lights, and the nurse telling me to push. I remembered the moment it was over. And I remembered the sound.

A small, sharp cry. Alive.

I pulled the cake out and set it on the stone. I stuck the candle in the middle. My hands shook so badly that I couldn't get the match to catch. After the fourth try I gave up and just looked at it, a little white stick in a lemon-yellow cake, unlit.

"Happy birthday," I said quietly.

The river kept moving.

I waited to feel stupid. Instead I felt a loneliness so wide that it seemed to have no edges. A couple walked by holding hands. A little girl on her father's shoulders pointed at a boat and shrieked with joy, and I turned my face away.

I took the notebook out of my bag. I hadn't opened it in months, not since I crossed out the line about imagining things. The pages were soft now at the corners. I turned to a clean one and wrote the date at the top, and then I sat with the pen over the paper for a very long time.

I wrote:

Dear you,

I don't know what to call you. I had a name picked out. I never got to say it to you out loud, and I won't write it here, because writing it makes it a headstone.

It's been a year. I think about you every day, and I don't know what that makes me, because I never knew you at all. I only heard you once.

I'm in a city you'll never see. I smell things all day now. I'm learning to tell what's real from what's only pretty. Sometimes I think you'd have liked it here.

I'm sorry I wasn't enough. I'm sorry I didn't fight harder. I'm sorry I let them tell me to stop asking.

I'm still asking.

Happy birthday, my love.

I stopped, and read it over. Then I tore the page out of the notebook, folded it in half, and held it for a while. I couldn't mail it anywhere. I couldn't leave it on a grave, because there was no grave. I put it back between the pages like a flower I wasn't ready to throw away.

My phone buzzed on the stone beside me.

I almost ignored it. Then I saw the name on the screen, and my breath stopped.

Claudia.

It had been four months. Not a call, not a text, not even a birthday emoji on mine. I had stopped checking, and then I'd stopped expecting, and then I'd stopped wanting to.

And she picked today.

My thumb hovered for a second before I opened it. For some stupid, tender, desperate reason, I thought, She remembered. She knows what day it is. She's going to say something kind.

I read it once.

Layla, I need you to stop contacting me. I'm starting a new life and I can't have the past following me around. Please don't call or write. It's better for both of us.

I read it again.

The words didn't change. They just sat there in their neat little gray box, polite and clean, like something typed by a stranger in an office.

Contacting her.

I hadn't contacted her in months. She had been the one who stopped calling.

A hot, awful feeling climbed up my throat. I stared at the screen, at the past, at following me around, and I thought of her at my bedside in that white room, holding my hand a little too tightly. I thought of her at the airport, wide smile, bright eyes, waving me off.

Don't look back, just keep moving forward.

And I thought, very clearly: She's been waiting for me to go away.

"What the hell, Claudia," I whispered.

I hit call.

It rang once. Then there was a click, a long flat tone, and a woman's recorded voice came on, first in French and then in English.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it.

I pressed call again.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

Again.

The number you have dialed...

I ended the call. The river slid past, slow and green. The candle stood unlit in the lemon cake, and the screen in my hand still showed her message, four minutes old.

Four minutes.

A phone doesn't send a message and then die four minutes later by accident. Somebody has to kill it. Somebody has to sit down and decide.

She hadn't just told me to disappear.

She had made sure I couldn't answer.