I wondered whether she remembered that period the same way. Maybe she now missed it because her current life was frightening. Maybe she genuinely understood what she'd thrown away. Either way, there was no way to restore the past by buying a plane ticket.
My therapist encouraged me to write a reply that I wouldn't send. I filled several pages in a notebook, beginning with anger I'd been too composed to express at the time. I wrote about the airport, the messages, the way she said roommates as though our shared home was a joke. I wrote about how frightened I'd been that her verdict meant something permanent about me, that I was too ordinary to keep someone's love. I even wrote that I still sometimes missed the way she laughed when she was genuinely happy.
Near the end of the unsent letter, the anger softened into something more precise. "I can't be the person you come back to whenever the world disappoints you," I wrote. "I need a relationship where I'm chosen while things are going well, not just when the other options disappear." I read that sentence aloud in the empty apartment. Then I put the notebook away because the writing had already done its work without needing to reach Zoe.
A few days later, her mother contacted me. I hadn't spoken to Mrs. Harper since before the breakup, when she'd sent me a birthday card and asked whether I could help fix her home printer.
We had always been cordial. She liked that I had steady employment and remembered birthdays. She had called me family more than once. Seeing her number light up on the phone made my stomach tighten.
I answered because I assumed she might have information about Zoe's safety or a direct question about belongings. Her first words were not a greeting. "Alex, what on earth are you doing?" she demanded. I stepped away from my desk and asked what she meant. She said Zoe was frightened, alone, and asking for help, and that she couldn't believe I'd turned my back on her after four years.
"We're not together anymore," I said. "Zoe ended our relationship months ago."
"That doesn't erase everything. She made a mistake."
"It doesn't erase everything. That's why it hurt. But I'm not the person responsible for fixing this."
She made a frustrated sound. "You were always such a sensible boy. Don't tell me you're going to hold one mistake over her head for the rest of her life."
I looked out through the office window at people crossing a parking lot with paper lunch bags. "I don't intend to hold anything over her head. I'm moving on. She's free to do the same."
"How can she move on when she can't even get home?"
"Have you spoken to her about buying a ticket?"
"She asked me, but she knows you have the money. You always helped her."