I frowned. “What strange texts?”
Clara reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.
My heart sank before I even saw the screen.
She showed me messages from my number.
Clara, I need space.
Please stop calling.
You make things harder.
I’m happy. I wish you would respect that.
I stared at the words.
“I didn’t write these.”
“I know that now,” she whispered.
A hollow space opened inside me. Jason had not only isolated me. He had used my own voice to do it.
Clara sat beside me on the couch, her anger folding into grief.
“I thought maybe you hated me,” she said.
I took her hand.
“I thought you had given up on me.”
We sat there with that terrible misunderstanding between us, grieving years stolen not by one dramatic act, but by small careful lies sent through a phone.
“I never gave up,” she said.
