THE 11:17 ARCHIVE · DAY 9 OF 20
“I’m fine” had been Mara’s most reliable lie because she believed it was kinder than the truth.
She said it when her mother forgot a name, when a doctor used the word progression, when a friend cancelled, when Elias asked whether she wanted him to come home early. It kept conversations moving. It kept other people from looking worried. It made her the person who needed nothing and could therefore be trusted with everything.
“Why didn’t you ask again?” she said to Elias.
They were standing by the dark studio window. Outside, the city had become a blur of wet lights.
“Sometimes I did.”
“And sometimes you accepted the first answer because it let you get on with what you wanted to do.”
He didn’t contradict her.
“I wanted you to trust me enough to tell me,” he said.
“I wanted you to care enough to notice I was trying not to.”
She could hear how unfair it sounded. She was not proud of the test she had made out of her own hurt. But being unfair did not make the feeling false.
“I don’t want you to guess everything,” she said. “I want to be allowed to change my answer. I want to say I’m fine and have someone say, ‘Are you sure?’ without making me feel ridiculous for needing to be asked.”
Elias leaned one shoulder against the wall. “I can understand that.”
“Don’t say you understand if you’re about to use it to end the conversation.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. After a moment he said, “Then I’ll ask again. What do you want from me right now?”
Mara had no graceful answer. She wanted him to be ashamed. She wanted him to be kind. She wanted to lean into him and never have to wonder again whether he was staying because he wanted to or because she had made leaving difficult.
“I want you to stop turning every answer into evidence that you’re a good man,” she said.
He took that in without defending himself.
The computer chimed. The transfer log had opened a hidden folder attached to her old user ID. One file had been marked PERSONAL MESSAGE — UNSENT.
Mara’s own voice came through the speakers, younger and thin with exhaustion.
“I don’t know how to ask somebody to stay without feeling like I’m taking something from them.”
Then a chair scraped. The microphone should have been off. A second voice, very low, spoke into the room.
“Oh, darling. Who taught you that?”
Whose voice do you think answered Mara? And what does a child carry into love without knowing?
Send this to someone whose “I’m fine” deserves a patient question.
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