"Without the Third Point"

He texted her afterward. A single line: It was different without you there.

Maya read it on the train home from work, the city sliding past in its usual indifference. She wrote back: Different how? Then deleted it and wrote: Good different or hard different? Deleted that too. In the end she sent nothing, because the question he'd answered was the one she'd actually asked.

She thought about what the figure had said. Rebuilding is possible — not restoring, rebuilding. The distinction had seemed important in the amber room. It seemed even more important now, in an ordinary train car with someone's bag pressing against her knee, the city doing what cities do.

Daniel called two days later. She let it ring once before answering, which was something she only did with people she was genuinely glad to hear from.

He said Ellis had made food this time. Not elaborate — rice, something from a tin, a salad that was mostly cucumber. They'd eaten at the table and talked about their mother, who had died the previous spring. Daniel hadn't been able to call Ellis then either. He said this plainly, without apology, the way someone describes a fact they've stopped arguing with.

Maya said: Are you going to go back?

He said: I think that's up to him now. I said my part.

She understood this. The path didn't require symmetry. Only the first step had to be yours.

What she didn't say — not yet, not on the phone — was that she had been back to Vessel Lane. That the door had looked different. That someone had left a second card on the step, face down, with her name on it again.

She had not picked it up.

She was still deciding.

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