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I find that I want to write them. “No.”

“You don’t have to explain anything yet.” She grips my sleeve harder. “We can leave now. We’ll call the police once we’re somewhere safe.”

“There’s no reason to call the police.”

“You disappeared.” Juney points at the house. “You’re standing in a stranger’s doorway, and one of them had a knife.”

“Simon was sharpening it before you arrived.”

Juney closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she looks more angry than frightened. “Where’s your phone?”

“I stopped using it.”

“You stopped using it.” She repeats the words slowly. “You also stopped using your car, your apartment, and your job.”

“Yes.”

“You left your car at the school like you planned to come back.”

“I left it because it belonged to the life I was leaving.”

“You loved that car.”

“I loved several things I no longer want.”

Juney’s fingers loosen on my sleeve. “You did this deliberately.”

“Yes.” The lie sits between us without moving. I know every place it could split open.

None of that belongs to Juney now. She bends and picks up one of the flyers that has blown down the steps. My face is creased through the middle.

“You let me think you were dead.” She holds the paper up between us. “I’ve been walking streets with your photograph. I called hospitals. I called morgues.”

“I knew you would keep looking if I contacted you.”

“Of course I would.” Her voice rises again. “You vanished between one sentence and the next. We had dinner plans that night.”

“I wanted a clean break.”

Juney crushes the flyer in her hand. “You keep receipts for books you returned ten years ago.”

“That habit was becoming expensive.”

She looks past me at Heather. “Who is she?”

“Heather.”

“That tells me nothing. Who is she to you? Who are they?”

I turn toward the house. “Heather is my partner,” I say. “Jamie and Simon are my family.”

Juney stares at me. “Your family.” She looks back at Jamie, then Simon. “How long have you known these people?”

“Long enough.”

“That means no time at all.” Juney moves in front of me when I start toward the porch. “You abandoned everything because of a woman you barely know?”

“I left because none of you would understand what we are.”