جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 37

EVANThe hospital room is too quiet after the stranger leaves. Not peaceful quiet. Not resting quiet. The kind of quiet that feels curated—like sound has been filtered, reduced to approved frequencies. The monitor hums. The IV ticks softly. Leah’s breathing is slow, shallow, mechanical in a way that makes my chest tighten every time her ribs rise. I sit beside her bed long after visiting hours technically end, because no one tells me to leave. That, too, feels intentional.Leah sleeps, sedated just enough to keep the fear from surfacing. Her face looks younger when she’s like this. Less guarded. Less fractured. As if the woman I married still exists somewhere beneath the layers of diagnosis and data. I watch her fingers twitch occasionally, small involuntary movements that the nurse earlier described as “benign motor variance.” Everything has a name now. Everything can be explained. Except the way the man in the hallway knew my middle name. Except the way Leah asked if someone had bee

EVANThe confrontation doesn’t happen the way I imagine it will. There’s no explosion. No raised voices. No dramatic confession torn loose by anger or desperation. It happens quietly. Which somehow makes it worse.Leah is sitting up in bed when I return from the hallway, her back propped against pillows, a paper cup of water resting untouched on the tray beside her. The room is dimmer now—afternoon light filtered through half-closed blinds, the hospital settling into its softer hours. The monitor beside her keeps its steady rhythm, the sound already carved into my nervous system.She looks smaller than she did this morning. Not weaker. Smaller. As if something inside her has folded inward, conserving itself. She looks at me when I enter, and her expression tightens—not fear, not relief, but recognition. Like she already knows this moment is coming. Like she’s been waiting for it.“You’re back,” she says.“Yes.”My voice sounds wrong to my own ears—too flat. Too controlled. I pull the

EVANI don’t pack right away. That feels important—delaying the physical act as if postponing motion might keep this from becoming real. Instead, I sit at the desk and stare at the map glowing on my laptop screen, the coordinates pinned like a wound someone insists on reopening. The coastline curves inward gently, almost deceptively calm. Pale blue water. Uneven land. A village name rendered in a font so small it feels apologetic for existing.Remote. That’s the first word that comes to mind. Remote means hard to reach. Remote means easy to disappear into. Remote means no one goes there by accident. I zoom in slowly. The roads appear reluctantly, thin lines that snake rather than connect. No highways. No rail lines cutting clean paths through terrain. Just narrow roads that seem to exist because someone once decided they had to.I click around, pulling up satellite imagery. Stone buildings. Low roofs. Weathered surfaces bleached by salt and sun. A harbor small enough to be missed if y