“Wasn’t meant to be.”
I laugh weakly. “You are the worst emotional support person in Halo.”
“Maybe. But I’m still here.”
She squeezes my arm once and leaves me with flour sacks, old pain, and the folded shirt.
The day crawls forward.
By evening, the rain has stopped, leaving Halo slick and cold beneath a low ceiling of clouds that reflect the city lights back in dirty amber. I close early because Darlene threatens to hide my shoes if I do not. We feed the last flood survivors, send extra soup to Mira’s clinic, lock the doors, and count the drawer with the kind of grim focus usually reserved for battlefield medicine.
No Kauss.
No call.
No message.
I tell myself I am not waiting.
The lie has terrible posture and fools no one.
“You coming upstairs?” Darlene asks as she pulls on her coat.
“In a minute.”
“You keep the pistol close?”
I look at her sharply.
She looks back harder. “Don’t give me that. After two kidnappings, one bakery attack, a flood, and whatever crime opera we’re living in, you think I believe you don’t have some kind of weapon upstairs?”
“It was my grandmother’s.”
“Of course it was. That woman kept a plasma pistol in a cookie tin and called it practical hospitality.”
“I know how to use it.”
“Good.” She points toward the ceiling. “Use it if you have to.”
“I will.”
“And lock the damn door.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She pauses at the rear exit. “Evie.”
The softness makes me look up.
“If he comes back, make him talk before you forgive him.”
My eyes burn. “That assumes a lot.”
“It assumes he’s not stupid enough to stay gone.”
Then she leaves.
I lock the bakery, check the rear door twice, turn off the kitchen lights, and climb the stairs to my apartment with exhaustion heavy in every bone. The stairwell smells like old wood, rain-damp plaster, and the faint lingering sweetness of cooling bread. My apartment above is dark except for the window glow from Halo outside. I do not turn on the main lamp immediately. I stand in the dim room, listening.
