“Come in,” he said. Paige began crying before she crossed the threshold. She immediately covered her face and apologized, which somehow made Andre more certain he had made the right choice for that night even if he had no idea what tomorrow would require. He closed the door behind her and took the suitcase.
The house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the soft sound of the furnace. Family photographs filled the wall beside the staircase, most of them showing Andre with his daughter, Amara, at school concerts, soccer games, birthdays, and one disastrous camping trip that had ended with both of them sleeping inside his truck because he had forgotten the tent poles. Paige stopped at one photograph of Amara holding a science-fair ribbon. “She got so big,” she whispered.
Andre looked toward the stairs. “She’ll be ten in February.” Paige nodded, and another kind of sadness passed through her face. She had once been the aunt who brought Amara ridiculous birthday gifts and taught her how to make friendship bracelets, but after the divorce, every relationship connected to the marriage had become awkward. Children often lost people they had never agreed to stop loving because adults did not know how to manage their own pain.
Andre made tea. Paige sat at the kitchen table gripping the warm mug between both hands while he remained across from her. Neither mentioned his ex-wife. Andre decided the history could wait until the immediate problem had a name.
“Trevor ended the engagement tonight,” Paige finally said. Trevor Mills was a successful commercial broker Andre had met once at a family event and forgotten almost immediately. Paige explained that they had been living together for nearly eighteen months and were supposed to marry in October. That evening, she discovered the wedding had apparently existed far more securely in her mind than in Trevor’s.
He had been seeing another woman for months. Paige found messages on an old tablet he left connected to their shared account, and when she confronted him, Trevor did not deny anything. Instead, he told her their relationship had become exhausting, accused her of becoming suspicious and difficult, and said he had already decided the engagement was over. Then he asked her to leave the apartment that night.
Andre’s jaw tightened. “You paid rent there?” Paige gave a bitter laugh. She had paid half the rent, purchased most of the living-room furniture, and contributed toward the security deposit, yet Trevor had changed the digital entry code while she was downstairs waiting for her rideshare. Everything she managed to take fit inside the suitcase now sitting beside Andre’s kitchen wall.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Andre asked carefully. He had once called Paige’s parents Mom and Dad too, but divorce had changed even vocabulary. Paige stared into her tea.
Her mother told her she should give Trevor time to calm down. Her father did not answer the phone, though Paige suspected her mother had already told him what happened. She called several friends, but one was traveling, another had small children asleep, and Paige admitted pride kept her from explaining the situation to the people who did answer. Then she called Vanessa.