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“It’s that I know that life isn’t the life I’m supposed to live.”

“I would’ve followed you,” he says, his voice cracking.

“I know.” I smile through the tears, even though he can’t see it. “I know you would’ve.” A long silence stretches between us before I find the courage to continue. “But that’s the problem.”

He doesn’t interrupt.

“I don’t know where I’m going yet.” I swallow hard. “I only know I couldn’t keep going where I was.”

He lets out a slow, shaky breath. “And you have to do this alone?”

“I think I do.”

"I don't think I can talk to you again for a while,” he says, and for the first time all call, there’s no fight left in it at all.

"I understand,” I say softly.

"I don't hate you."

Tears spill down my cheeks. "I don't deserve that."

"No,” he says, gentler now. “You deserve the chance to become the woman you’re looking for.”

I press my lips together, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.

"I hope you find her, Astra."

His words undo me completely. "So do I."

He’s quiet for another moment. "Goodbye, Astra."

"Goodbye, Graham."

The line goes dead.

I keep the phone pressed to my ear until the silence becomes impossible to mistake for anything else, even though some small, stubborn part of me isn’t ready to admit the call is really over.

Now that the hardest conversation of my life is behind me, the next one waits only a single call away. I look down at the blank screen, then begin entering the ten digits I memorized before I learned how to spell my own last name.

Mom.

Astra

I fold the same sweater three times before I let myself admit I’m stalling. There aren’t many clothes to organize. A stack of shirts, two pairs of jeans, a few skirts from the thrift store hanging in the narrow closet, but I’ve been rearranging all of it for the last twenty minutes anyway, anything to put off the one call I still have to make today.

Graham’s voice is still sitting heavy in my chest—the ache of having hurt someone gently instead of cruelly, which somehow feels worse. I don’t know if I have room left for another version of that conversation tonight. But I know I have to make it anyway.

I sit on the edge of the bed, phone in my lap, and dial before I can talk myself into folding one more sweater.

It only rings once before the call connects. I’m sure Graham already told her I’d be calling.

“Astra?” My mother says my name like she’s testing whether saying it out loud will make it real.

“I’m here, Mom.”

“Oh, thank God.” A sound comes through the line that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh. It’s a tangled version of both. “Are you hurt? Are you safe? Where are you?”

“I’m safe. I promise.”