I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You warned me,” I whispered.
Of course, she didn’t answer.
But I remembered the week before she died, when she had taken my hand in the hospital and said, “Love should make your world larger, Ellie. Not smaller. If you find yourself shrinking to keep someone, run.”
Had I shrunk for Elias?
I thought about the clothes I stopped wearing because Cynthia said they looked “too polished” for their family gatherings. The promotions I downplayed because Elias became quiet whenever I mentioned work. The way I laughed off jokes about my apartment being “too nice” for a woman who supposedly answered phones for a living.
I had called it humility.
Maybe it had been hiding.
My phone buzzed.
This time it was an unknown number.
Rebecca had told me not to answer unknown numbers, but a text appeared before I could put the phone down.
