At Miriam’s apartment, Kayla stood in the bathroom under a plain white light.
The tattoo looked smaller than it felt.
A few fine lines. A name someone could glance at and forget.
She could not stop seeing it.
Miriam knocked softly.
“Do you want company?”
“Yes.”
She came in and leaned against the doorframe.
Kayla lifted her arm.
“I keep thinking there must have been a moment when I could have stopped it.”
“You told them what you wanted.”
“I looked at the stencil.”
“You weren’t expecting a trap.”
Kayla pressed her lips together.
Then she cried.
It was not only the permanence.
It was Owen’s expression when she noticed. The little smile. The certainty that whatever he meant by it should matter more than what she wanted.
Miriam stayed beside her.
Later, they followed the written aftercare instructions Casey had sent and left the tattoo alone. Kayla resisted the urge to scrub at it.
There was nothing on the surface she could wash away.
Her phone filled with messages.
Owen said she had misunderstood.
Then he said he had explained badly.
Then he said she was humiliating him by involving other people.
He never said he had asked her permission.
Kayla silenced the phone.
At midnight, she took off her wedding band.
She placed it on Miriam’s bedside table because she did not want to lose it.
Then she lay down on top of the covers, her left arm resting carefully beside her.
For the first time in years, she went to sleep without wondering whether Owen was annoyed with her.
Instead, she wondered why she had spent so long treating his annoyance as an emergency.
