PART TWO

She didn't stop walking until she reached her desk.

Her hands shook as she set the tablet down. A colleague looked over. "Mia? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I'm tired." She made her mouth smile. The colleague nodded, unconvinced, and went back to her screen.

Mia sat in front of her monitor and watched the words blur. All afternoon she answered emails, returned calls, and confirmed meetings in a pleasant, steady voice that belonged to someone else. At six she gathered her bag and walked past Alexander's closed door without turning her head.

That night she sat at her kitchen table with a mug of tea she never drank and wrote the letter three times. The first draft was angry, the second was apologetic, and the third was only four lines long. She folded it into an envelope and set it by her keys.

In the morning she was at the office before anyone. She walked into Alexander's empty room and laid the envelope in the center of his blotter, squarely, where he couldn't miss it. There was no coffee. For the first time in three years there was no coffee, and the bare spot beside his keyboard looked strange, like a tooth missing.

She went back to her desk and began to pack. One notebook. One pen holder. A small picture frame. Three years, and everything she owned fit in a single cardboard box.

At seven forty-five she caught herself listening for his footsteps.

He came in at ten to eight. Through the glass she watched him stop in the middle of the room and look at the blotter, and at the envelope, and at the empty place where the cup should have been. He opened the letter. It took him a long moment to read four lines.

Then he was in the doorway of his office. "Mia."

She stood. "I resign."

"You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do."

"Because of yesterday."

"Because of yesterday." Her voice was steadier than she had hoped. "I'll finish everything I owe you before I go. You'll have the handover files by Friday."

"Mia." He came a step closer, and she saw his thumb go to his watch and stay there. "I didn't mean for you to,"

"You did."

He stopped. Something crossed his face, quick and unreadable, the first thing she had seen there in two days that looked real.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because staying would hurt too much."

He looked at her as if she had just spoken in another language. She realized, with a small, odd pang, that he had never imagined she would leave. She wondered for one second whether her absence would matter to him. She would not let herself hope.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"For what?"

"For making things clear."

She lifted the box and walked toward the elevator. She did not look at the door of his office as she passed it. When the elevator opened she stepped inside, and as the doors began to slide shut she looked back, because she couldn't help it.

Alexander was standing where she'd left him. Their eyes met across the empty floor. Neither of them spoke.

The doors closed.

Mia pressed her hand over her mouth so that no one in the lobby would hear, and let herself cry all the way down.