Ask her

"Celine. Open the door. It's me."

Dante knocked again, harder. Mira's letter was folded inside his coat. Every time he breathed, the corner of the paper pressed against his chest.

The lock turned. Celine stood in the gap in a gray sweater, her hair loose, a mug of tea in her hand.

"Dante? It's almost eleven." She pulled the door wide. "You haven't answered a single message all week. I thought something had happened to you."

He walked in but didn't take off his coat. "The morning I left here. Do you remember it?"

"Of course." She set the mug on the counter. "You had eggs. You used my shower. You forgot your tie." She nodded at the coat hook by the door, where his navy tie still hung. "I kept it for you."

"I left my phone on your kitchen table while I showered."

"Okay..."

He held the phone up. His thumb was shaking on the screen, so he pressed it flat against the glass.

"Two years of messages with my wife are gone. Every picture. Every word. Nothing left." He swallowed. "Celine, did you touch my phone?"

The mug was halfway to her mouth. She put it down without drinking.

She looked at him. Then her chin started to tremble.

"Do you hear yourself?" she said quietly. "Checking phones. Following people. Deciding someone is guilty before they even open their mouth." She pressed her fingertips under her eyes. "That's what she did to you for six months, Dante. You told me it made you feel like you lived in a cage. And now you're doing it to me."

Dante opened his mouth. The words he had practiced in the car were gone.

"I'm not accusing you."

"Then what is this?"

He pulled the letter out and turned to the last page. He held it so she could read the smaller writing at the bottom.

Celine read it. Her thumbnail pressed into the corner of the paper until it went white. Then she gave a small, hurt laugh and handed it back.

"Ask me what? I don't even know what she's talking about."

"Neither do I. Whatever she sent is gone."

"Then think, Dante." She stepped closer. Her voice was gentle, the way it always was when he was angry. "She knew you'd come home and read this. She knew you'd look for her messages and find nothing. And now it's eleven at night and you're in my living room looking at me like I'm a thief." She touched the edge of the letter with one finger. "That isn't a goodbye letter. It's a bomb. She set it on your nightstand and walked out so she wouldn't have to watch it go off."

"Mira doesn't think like that."

"Last month you told me she followed your car across the river at one in the morning with her headlights off." Celine's eyes filled. "You said you didn't know who she was anymore. Your words. Not mine."

He had said that. He remembered saying it right here, on this sofa, with his head in his hands.

Dante sat down heavily. The letter lay open on his knee. The first line looked up at him. My dearest Dante.

Celine sat beside him. She didn't touch him. She folded her hands in her lap and waited.

"I'm not asking you to hate her," she said after a while. "I'm only asking you not to hate me."

"I don't hate you."

"Then look at me."

He looked. Long dark hair. The dimple. The small pointed chin. For one second his eyes said Mira, and his stomach turned over. Then she smiled, and the smile belonged to someone else.

He stood up.

"I should go."

"It's late. Stay." She said it lightly. "The guest room is still made up."

"No."

It came out harder than he meant. Celine blinked.

"Dante." She rose with him. "Phones break. Things get deleted. My old phone lost every picture of my mother the week before she died, and I never found out why." Her voice cracked. "Please don't turn a glitch into a war."

He rubbed his face. The clock on her oven said 10:58. He hadn't slept a full night in more than a week, and his eyes burned.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have come here like this."

"You can always come here." She walked him to the door and took his tie from the hook, pressing it into his hand. "And don't forget. Tomorrow. Nine o'clock. Sucre Doré."

"I haven't forgotten."

"Thank you for that. Really." She smiled up at him. "It's the only good thing that's happened to me since I came to this city."

He went down the stairs slowly.

In the car, he didn't start the engine. He read the part about the caramel tart again. He had burned his tongue on it and told her it was perfect.

When was the last time he had told her anything was perfect?

He called her. It rang six times and went to voicemail. He hung up without speaking and typed instead.

[Send me the screenshot again. Please.]

Delivered.

He waited. The small gray word under the message didn't change.

Celine stood with her back against the locked door until she heard his car pull away.

Then she walked into the kitchen and poured her tea down the sink. It had gone cold anyway.

Her hands were steady. She held them out in front of her and was pleased.

In her bedroom, she knelt and pulled a shoebox from under the bed. Beneath two pairs of winter gloves lay a cheap black phone. Six months of photographs lived on it. Dante at lunch. Dante walking her to her door. Dante at her kitchen table in yesterday's shirt.

She had meant to throw it into the river days ago.

The screen lit in her hand before she could decide. A message from the only number that ever wrote to this phone first. A number she had never saved.

[Did he believe you?]