The dry air hit me the second I stepped off the plane.
I turned my phone on in the cab. Messages flooded in.
Graham had unblocked me.
Almost all of them were about the baby.
His mother must have called him the second I hung up.
[…Mara. Tell me what you want. Anything. Just talk to me.]
[I had someone check. You didn’t leave your apartment for seven days after you resigned. And today I found your flight booking to the northwest. Mara, if you’re going to lie to me, at least try harder.]
[I’m begging you. Call me when you land. Please.]
I’d barely gotten through half of them when the phone rang.
I picked up.
Graham sounded wrecked. Anxious and relieved at the same time, like he’d been holding his breath for hours.
“You landed?”
“Stay at the hotel. I’m already booked on the next flight out.”
I paused.
“I went to the clinic the afternoon I resigned. The procedure took an hour and a half. I rested for thirty minutes, then I went home.”
“I wasn’t giving you the silent treatment for a week. I was recovering. I didn’t feel like going anywhere.”
“And however you got your hands on my flight information, don’t do it again. You crossed a line.”
“Respect my privacy.”
The silence on his end stretched until it ached. When he spoke, his voice was barely there.
“Mara. Did you really have to take it this far?”
“Too far? You want to talk about going too far?”
“Is it too far to dangle a future in front of someone so she’ll carry your baby, then steal the child away for your family?”
“Or is it too far to hand someone else everything she spent five years earning, right to her face?”
His voice broke open.
“That was our child!”
“Don’t, Graham.”
“Maybe you’ll have a kid someday. Maybe I will too.”
“But there was never going to be an ours.”
Something in his voice collapsed.
“I don’t know what my mother said to you, but everything I told you, I meant. Every word.”
I knew that.
He didn’t make promises often. But when he did, he kept them.
And right now he was handing me everything I’d once begged for. I didn’t want any of it.
“I don’t need to marry you, Graham.”
“We were walking the same road for a while. I thought we were going to the same place. We weren’t.”
His voice caught.
“Mara, why are you burning it all down?”
I laughed.
The taxi crested a low hill, and the world cracked open in front of me.
Grasslands ran to the horizon. The sky was enormous, full of slow-moving clouds.
Wind came through the open window and caught my hair.
“Yeah, I know how this looks. No job, no apartment, no boyfriend. My body’s still recovering from something I shouldn’t have had to go through alone.”
“But I’ve been dealt worse. And every time, I figured it out.”
“So thanks for the concern. But my life’s going to be just fine. Maybe even better than yours.”
He didn’t answer.
I waited. Nothing.
So I hung up.
I didn’t block him this time. Didn’t delete his number.
Letting go didn’t mean erasing him. It meant accepting that he happened.
I stayed out west for weeks.
I met good people.
Open country, huge skies, the kind of quiet that actually heals.
Things started turning around.
A screenplay I’d invested in a year ago was picking up buzz. The returns were starting to look real.
Recruiters kept emailing. Top firms in my industry, all with offers that made my old salary look like a joke.
I responded to each one carefully.
Set up interviews.
On my flight home, the group chat with my old coworkers lit up.
Camille had botched a major project through her own carelessness, then threw Graham under the bus to take the fall.
It made the news. And once the press got hold of it, there was no burying it.
My name came up too, along with how I’d been pushed out and what I’d been put through.
The engagement was off. The two families were already embroiled in lawsuits.
I read through everything and felt something I didn’t expect: a flicker of pity.
Shame. I would’ve loved to watch those two families tear each other apart from the inside.
I walked out of the airport.
A company car was already waiting.
I slid into the back seat and realized the general manager was already inside.
I smiled and shook his hand.
He grinned.
“Director Bennett. Welcome aboard.”
“We’re glad to have you.”