I stood up, pulled on my boots, and went back to the apparatus bay. A younger firefighter asked whether I was all right, and I told him I was managing. That answer was not a disguise. I was managing, slowly and imperfectly, through routines that had existed before Jade and would continue after her. The equipment still needed checking, the station still needed cleaning, and someone in our district would eventually call because their own life had changed without warning.
I could not control what happened to Jade or Remy. I could control whether I was ready when that call came. Jade's first message after the gym arrived that evening. There was no greeting, and she did not ask how I had been. "Did you know she was going to do that?" she wrote.
I was making dinner when the notification appeared and had to put down the knife I was using to chop vegetables. The question was simple enough to answer, but it contained several questions she had not asked. Did I know Dana had information? Had I met her?
Had I encouraged her to confront Remy? Was I enjoying what happened? I could feel the old invitation to defend myself opening inside those few words.
I decided not to answer because the answer would not change the situation. Dana was an adult acting on her own behalf, with documents and legal advice, and I had not instructed her to do anything. Explaining those facts to Jade would simply begin another conversation about motives, loyalty, and whether I had been cruel enough to deserve what she chose next. I saved the message and returned to dinner. The vegetables had begun to brown unevenly in the pan. I added a little water, turned down the heat, and focused on something I could actually repair.
The next morning a second message came. Jade said the energy of the situation had become deeply unhealthy and that she needed distance from negativity while protecting her pregnancy. She hoped I understood that she had never wanted things to unfold in such a painful way. I could understand the desire to reduce stress during a pregnancy, and I was not going to mock her for that.
But her message still treated events as though they had unfolded independently of people's choices. She had written the breakup text, begun a relationship with Remy, moved out, and asked me to keep paying for her car. Dana had independently decided to raise concerns with the gym. Those events did not become vague forces merely because their consequences were uncomfortable.
Two days later came the third message. It contained five words: "I didn't think it would go like this. I read the sentence more than once. It was the closest she had come to acknowledging that her expectations and reality had diverged, but it still did not say what she regretted.
Did she regret how she had treated me, or the discovery that Remy had used familiar promises before? Did she regret losing a financial arrangement, or the effect of the gym complaint on her plans? Perhaps she regretted all of it. I could not answer for her, and I did not want to spend another evening trying.