Chapter 277: A Few More Days

The days narrowed without drama.

Morning counts on the terrace while the sea was still pale and the stones held a little cool underneath.

Sophie worked the band with the new arrows and the old stubbornness, breath short on the deep holds, eyes daring him to soften the count.

He did not. Shop lists followed in Sarah’s handwritingbread, milk, fruit that was not soft, once a soap she underlined and then crossed out as if the pen had embarrassed itself.

Liam walked the lane, paid at the counter, came back. Sarah’s shifts cut the day into blocks: early departures, late returns, the practical voice at the table that could have belonged to any week of their lives.

Plates passed without finger-brushes. Eyes that did not linger. When Sophie left a remark half-open on purposeabout free evenings, about adults who looked rested, about metronomes that kept private timeLiam let it die in open air and asked about the leg instead.

The town cooperated by being ordinary. Scooters at the corner. Shutters opening in uneven ranks. The woman at the shop saying "the usual" without making it a question.

Heat on the stones by noon. Wind off the water by evening, carrying salt and someone’s cooking. Liam counted holds and lost at cards and carried bags and answered the yard when Sandra sent rates that did not need his body on the tarmac.

He left Rowena’s checkmarks checked. Jack sent nothing, which meant the bag was enough and the villa perimeter had not learned a new fear while he was gone.

On the second afternoon Sarah found him watering the terrace plants while Sophie slept in the short hall.

The door was half open. Sophie’s breath was even, the bad leg propped on the folded cushion, one arm flung over her eyes as if blocking out the sheet and its arrows.

The watering can in Liam’s hand was almost empty. Sarah took it from him without comment, refilled it at the kitchen tap, and brought it back.

She tipped water into the dry soil, adjusted a stem that did not need adjusting, and spoke low enough that the half-open door would take only tone if it took anything.

"I have a shift tomorrow evening," she said. "Day after that you’re gone. That’s still the plan?"

"That’s the plan. Outbound in the morning. House line when I land on the other side. No gap for anyone to invent a story into."

"One more night, then." Not a plea. A scheduling note, the same voice she used for clinic times and shop runs. "Tomorrow after she sleepsif the house allows it.

If she’s restless, if the door stays wide, if anything feels loud in the lane, we don’t force it. I’m not stealing ten minutes under a lie again. I’m not performing soap for a town this small."

"If the house allows it, I’m at Madame Rossi’s. Door open for you. If it doesn’t, I see you at the gate in daylight when I leave, and nothing else. No pressure."

Sarah nodded once. Water darkened the soil in a widening circle. "I’m not asking for promises beyond the house line and the date you already gave in my kitchen.

I’m asking you not to leave like the first time you vanished from our livesno letter, no shadow on the stones, just absence that we had to name ourselves. Daylight. Both of us at the gate. You’ve done it before. Do it again."

"I will. Phone down until I’m clear of the town if that’s what clean looks like. No soft message from the station. No rewrite."

"Good." She took the empty can, weight shifting toward the kitchen already. "Don’t look at me like that when she wakes up. Flat ground until the night says otherwise. Hungry is how she opens folders."

She went inside before the conversation could grow a second head. Liam stayed on the terrace until the stones cooled a fraction under the shifting light, until a scooter passed and faded, until he trusted his face again.

When Sophie emerged irritable from sleep and demanded the count of hours until food, he took the chair at the correct distance and gave her the count without editorial.

Evening was cards and a thinner kind of quiet.

The kitchen smelled of oil and tomato. Sophie ate like someone fueling an argument she had not chosen yet. Sarah ate standing for half the meal, then sat.

Cards came out because Sophie refused wholesome silence. She won two games with frank pleasure and accused Liam of distraction when he lost the third too easily.

"You’re better than this," she said, shuffling, the soft riffle loud in the small room. "Or you’re thinking about leaving and playing like a guest.

Don’t. Guests get pity hands. You’re still on metronome duty until the gate. The leg doesn’t care about your transport."

"You’re better," Liam said.

She accepted that as tribute and stacked the cards with care, edges aligned. Sarah washed glasses. Liam dried. Their hands did not meet on the same cup; the cloth passed between them without contact.

When the evening ended on time, Sarah walked him only as far as the latch. Her eyes met his for half a secondinventory, not invitationand the gate closed proper against the wind.

Sophie called from inside about the latch; Sarah answered; the house took them back into light and ordinary noise.

In the narrow room at Madame Rossi’s, Liam packed in small pieces so the morning of departure would not look like flight.

Ticket in the side pocket. Shirt for travel folded under the rest. Charger. The key he would return without ceremony. He left the rest of the clothes as if he still had ordinary days to fill themcounts, lists, a chair that would be empty again soon.

On the table he opened the phone once. Sandra had sent a corridor note about a rate the rival was floating again; he replied *hold the line, you have it*. Rowena had sent a green check on the perimeter; he left it acknowledged.

Jack had sent nothing. The calendar still showed the coast return block and, in pencil he had not shown anyone, a next window after the villa swallowed him againnot a second promise to Sarah’s kitchen yet, only a shape so the absence would not be a hole on his side alone.

He lay awake listening to the lane.

A few more days had been a phrase at the sink after Sophie went to bed.

Now it was inventory he could count on his fingers: two mornings of holds, one shop run he had already done, Sarah’s shift tomorrow evening, the wait for Sophie’s sleep, the knock that might not come if the house did not allow it.

Then the bag. The latch. Both of them at the gate. The transport. Daylight. No soft story.

Sophie would watch for flinch. Sarah would watch for vanishing. The yard would watch for his name on a route that wanted weight.

All of it would have to fit through the same man without tearing at the table where a sharp, loyal girl still kept a folder open in her head and a mother still watered plants like the soil was the only thing she was allowed to touch in front of company.

Tomorrow: counts, shop if needed, Sarah’s shift, the long evening, the possible door.

Day after: the bag at his foot, the key returned, the gate, the lane, the rest of his life rushing back in like water through a opened sluice.

Liam turned off the lamp and let the town thin outone scooter, one voice, then mostly wind. The bed was narrow. The room still knew too much. He did not reach for any of it.

Flat ground until the night said otherwiseand then, only if the house allowed, one more door before daylight took him clean, with both women’s eyes on him and nowhere to hide a disappearance.