You didn’t trust me with your terror.”

He didn’t defend himself.

His fingers found the edge of the folded note in the lunchbox, the one I had written that morning.

I watched him read it twice.

“I kept thinking if I told you, I’d hear it out loud,” he admitted.

“And if I heard it out loud, I couldn’t pretend I was just tired.”

I had imagined a hundred explanations for his absence.

A lost affection.