My phone rang.
Seth.
I stared at his name on the screen.
Part of me wanted to answer. Wanted him to finally understand what he’d destroyed. Wanted him to say something that proved he got it.
But I remembered his last text.
If you could just help Heather for a week or two…
Even his apologies came with conditions.
I let it go to voicemail.
Then I closed the ring box.
The next week, Seth came by to pick up the few things he’d left at my apartment. A jacket. A drill. A coffee maker he insisted was his.
Paige was there. She sat on my couch the whole time, arms folded, not saying a word.
Seth didn’t stay long.
At the door, he turned around.
“You know I really did love you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I just don’t think you ever really asked me anything.”
He opened his mouth. Then he closed it.
He left.
Two weeks later, his mother called me. She’d heard about the loan. And the texts.
“I raised him better than that,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “I’m so sorry, Natalie.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“He’s paying Heather back,” she said. “Two hundred a month. His father and I made sure of it.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I just said thank you.
We split the wedding costs fifty-fifty in the end. It took two months and a lot of tense emails. But we did it.
The MR. and MRS. mugs went to Goodwill.
I kept the purple flower drawing on my refrigerator.
Heather found a home daycare for the kids in early November. A retired kindergarten teacher a few blocks from her apartment. Cheaper than the old place. Maddie loves her.
At Thanksgiving, Heather texted me a photo. Maddie at a table with her new daycare friends, holding up a paper turkey made out of her own handprint.
Maddie says this one’s for Aunt Natalie, Heather wrote. Can I bring it by?
I said yes.
She brought all three kids. We made chocolate chip pancakes. Ben ate four. Owen fell asleep on my shoulder on the couch.
When they left, Heather hugged me at the door.
“Thank you for saying no,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I’d have ever figured out how to stand on my own if you hadn’t.”
Maddie’s handprint turkey is on my refrigerator now. Right next to the purple flowers.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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