Julianna

Isat alone at my dining table drinking a cup of tea, and listening to my mother's voice fill the room, wrapping myself in her voice.

Abigail: "You don't have to tell me your name. Let's call you…Joan. After Joan of Arc. She was a strong woman, just like you."

Joan: "I'm scared."

Abigail: "I know. I'd be scared too. Take a deep breath. And remember why you want to do this."

My chest filled with pride.That was my mother, so patient, so filled with compassion. She always knew what to say. I wished I had inherited that trait from her.

There was a pause on the tape and the sound of someone breathing hard.

Joan: "Are you a mother?"

Abigail: "I am. I have a beautiful little girl. She's eleven. And I would do anything for her. Anything. Be strong for your children, Joan. Be strong for them."

Joan: "Okay…"

It had beena phone conversation she'd taped a few weeks before her death. When I made detective six months ago, I had snuck into the records room and copied every piece of evidence from that file. My father would hate it if he knew I had this tape, that I played it over and over again on nights alone, listening to her voice and pretending she was in the same room as me. "I have a beautiful little girl. She's eleven. And I would do anything for her."

The recording ran to its end. I sat in the preceding silence. My apartment seemed cold and empty. Quiet. Too quiet.

I used to love the silence of my apartment, the way the things I left remained where they were exactly how I left them, no one else's invading touch. Everything right where it belonged. Every bit of space mine.

Tonight, I stared around the apartment as if it was my first time in here. The furniture I liked enough but it was all so generic and far from personalized. There were no pictures on my walls. No artwork. Nothing to reflect my tastes. I'd been waiting, it seemed, expecting that one day I would leave. That my real life would then begin.

That chance had come with Roman. That possibility had stretched out its hand to me. I did not have the guts to take it. Why didn't I have the guts to leave with him? Why didn't I say yes?

I felt his warmth and his body pouring into me, filling me up. Our cries echoing throughout the room.

I shook my head, closed the box containing my mother's case file, before dumping my cold tea down the sink drain. I was being silly. I barely knew the guy. I was reeling from the insane amount of orgasms he'd given me. That was all.

Tomorrow, I'd feel better. Tomorrow things would go back to normal.

I lay in bed, staring at my ceiling, the moonlight painting squares of pale light across it, chewing on my lip. My eyes kept drifting over to my phone, the only link I had left with him.

Nora had long since gone home but her words had stayed behind with me. "When you get to my age you realize that life is short. Sometimes you don't need to know the ‘point' of it before you jump in."

I snatched up my phone from the bedside table and opened a new message, the blank screen waiting for me to say all the things I wanted to say.

Is it strange that I miss you?

Is it crazy that I can't stop thinking about you?

I wish I had said yes to Paris.

I didn't write any of these things.

Me: I wish we hadn't left things the way we did. Let me know you've arrived in London safely.

I turned over,my back to the phone on the bedside table, and tried to find peace in the darkness. The image of his eyes haunted me, chasing me into a restless sleep.