“Paranoid,” he once told you, kissing your forehead as if it were a loving joke.
Now that “paranoia” feels like a lifeline.
You find the landline phone number.
Your heart leaps.
There’s a landline phone on the kitchen wall, dusty, almost forgotten.
You swallow, squeeze Lily’s hand, and whisper:
—Let’s go to the kitchen. Soft steps.
You move as if your body were made of glass.
Every step is a negotiation with the floor.
When you arrive, the silence seems rehearsed, like a room waiting for the punchline of a cruel joke.
The phone is where it always is, under a framed photo you never liked.
You pick up the receiver.
Dead tone.
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