But the noise was trying to find its way back to my door.
A week later, a voicemail appeared on my new private number. I had no idea how she got it. Her mother's voice, saccharine and strained, filled my car as I drove home from my woodworking class.
"Mark, dear, it's Linda, Sarah's mom. I know this is highly unusual. We've all been through such a trial, haven't we? That horrible man.
He's really done a number on our girl. She's not well. She's lost so much weight. She just sits and cries. She realizes now what she had, what she threw away in a moment of foolishness."
She kept going. "We all make mistakes, Mark. You loved her once. As a mother, I'm begging you.
Just talk to her. Just a coffee. She needs closure.
You're a good man. Don't you think you owe her that? After all your history?"
The manipulation was so thick it was almost impressive. Our girl. A trial. Don't you owe her? I felt a cold spike of anger, not for me, but for the sheer audacity, the entitlement that believed my peace was something I owed to the person who had shattered it.
I didn't delete the voicemail immediately. I saved it. I played it again when I got home, sitting in my quiet, clean living room, surrounded by the smell of fresh-cut pine from my class project. I listened to every wheedling, guilt-laden word.
Then I drafted a text. I didn't send it to her mother. That would have been engagement. I sent it to Ryan.
Me: "Her mother just left me a voicemail playing the sick-daughter card, saying I owe Sarah closure."
Ryan: "LOL. The audacity. What's your move, Ghost General?"
I looked around my apartment, at the books on my shelf chosen by me, at the hiking boots by the door, at the half-finished cherrywood box on my workbench. This was my life. It was small and it was real and it was untouchable.
Me: "No move. She's a phantom. You don't negotiate with phantoms."
I deleted the voicemail. The chapter was over. The main character had moved on.
But as I turned off the light, a cold certainty settled in my gut. Phantoms don't always know they're dead. And this one, desperate and unraveling, was going to try to haunt a place that was no longer her home.
The first text arrived on a Tuesday evening. I was sanding the edges of the cherrywood box. The rhythmic swish, swish was almost meditation. My phone buzzed on the workbench.
Unknown number: "Mark. It's Sarah. I know you changed your number.
I had to beg my cousin who works at the cell provider. Please don't be angry. I just... I need to talk to you."
The sawdust in the air seemed to hang still for a second. I felt nothing but a mild, distant annoyance at the breach of my peace. I placed the phone face down and continued sanding. The notification light blinked insistently for a while, then went dark.
Two days later, another unknown number. "I know you're seeing these. Please. I made the biggest mistake of my life.
What Jake and I had, it wasn't real. It was a fantasy. What we had was real. I'm so sorry for how I said everything. For everything."
Her words were a broken record, scratchy and out of tune. The grand romance had been reduced to a fantasy. The electric connection was now a mistake. I deleted the message.
The following week, the phone rang. The same unknown number. I let it go to voicemail. An hour later, the notification popped up.
I played it while stirring pasta on my stove. Her voice was thick, wobbly.
"Hey, it's me. Look, I'm... I'm at my parents' place. Jake's gone.
He took money. He took everything. And all I can think about is how I threw away the one good, real thing I ever had with you. I'm so lost, Mark.
I don't expect you to forgive me. I just... I need to hear your voice. I need to know if there's even a one-in-a-million chance you could ever look at me again. Please call me back."
There it was. Not an apology for me, but a confession of her loss, her consequences. The voicemail ended with a soft, practiced sob. I deleted it and plated my pasta. It tasted fine. The silence in my apartment tasted better.
The flying monkeys, as Ryan called them, were deployed next. First, Megan again, this time to my email.
"Mark, she's really not well. I know she hurt you, but she's being punished enough, don't you think? That guy destroyed her. She's a shell.
She cries every day. All she talks about is you and the life she threw away. Would it kill you to send her a text? Just 'I hope you heal,' something. You used to be so kind."
You used to be so kind. The ultimate guilt trip. My kindness was a trait she'd valued when it served her, and now it was a weapon to be used against me for not dispensing it on demand. I didn't reply.
Then came a Facebook message from her brother David, whom I'd once helped move apartments.
"Hey man. Long time. Listen, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Sarah screwed up.
Royal. We all see it. But she's family and she's drowning. She won't get help.
She just obsesses over you. Thinks if she can just talk to you, she can fix it. Maybe you could just meet her, tell her to her face it's over so she can move on. For old time's sake, it would be a mercy."
A mercy. They were all framing it as a charitable act for her closure. My closure, the one I'd built meticulously in this new apartment, was irrelevant. My peace was an obstacle to hers.
I closed the browser tab. The attempts became a morbid calendar. A happy birthday text on my birthday. She remembered. A Merry Christmas email, generic, but from her.
Each one I met with the same void. Silence was my reply. It was the only reply she couldn't twist, couldn't argue with, couldn't use as fuel.
Then, on a rainy Thursday evening, the silence broke. My doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone. Ryan had a key for emergencies.
I peered through the peephole. She was there.