The drip had stopped, and Harold realized he’d been listening for it.

  He lay on the bathroom floor longer than felt reasonable, staring at the underside of the sink. The tile was cold against his cheek. His jaw ached. There was a dull pressure behind his eyes—the kind that came from too little sleep and too much thinking.

  He pushed himself upright and sat with his back against the tub, breathing slowly until the room stopped tilting.

  It was just exhaustion, he told himself. Travel did this. Bad beds. Worse nights.

  The bathroom light hummed overhead. He reached for the sink and pulled himself to his feet, joints stiff, movements careful, like his body didn’t quite trust him yet. The mirror was fogged, though the room wasn’t warm. He wiped it with his sleeve, clearing just enough to see himself in fragments—one eye, the line of his mouth, the crease between his brows that never seemed to smooth out anymore.

  The last time he’d slept this badly was years ago, after an argument with Lena—when he’d locked himself in the bathroom to calm down.

  He hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

  Harold turned on the tap. Water rushed out, loud and immediate, filling the small space. He splashed his face, letting the cold bite, then looked up again.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The only difference was that Lena wasn’t knocking on the door this time.

  He shut the thought down as quickly as it surfaced and reached for a towel. There wasn’t one where he expected it to be. He checked the rack. The back of the door.

  Nothing.

  Fine.

  He dried his hands on his jeans and stepped back into the main room. Everything looked the way it should. The bed was made. His suitcase sat open on the chair, clothes folded the way he always folded them. The window reflected the room back at him, dark and orderly.

  Normal.

  That mattered. He needed it to matter.

  When he thought of Lena now, it was always in softened pieces. Raised voices. Long silences. The sense of navigating a space where the ground shifted without warning. He remembered himself as tired. Overwhelmed. Trying to keep things from getting worse.

  Afterward, there had been things to do. Calls to make. Questions to answer.

  The police had been polite. Efficient. They used words like incident and unfortunate. Someone had said accident early on.

  He hadn’t argued.

  Harold sat on the edge of the bed and pressed his palms together until his fingers tingled. The room was quiet. No drip. No hum. Just the distant sound of traffic somewhere below.

  In the silence, he became aware of his breathing—too loud, too present.

  His mind reached for the sound anyway. The imagined rhythm of water against porcelain. The way it used to anchor him, give him something external to focus on.

  He stood and went back into the bathroom.

  The sink was dry. The drain clean. No rust. No stain. No reason for the sound he was still half-expecting.

  Harold gripped the edge of the counter and closed his eyes.

  He had always believed silence meant things were under control. That if nothing was happening, nothing could go wrong.

  Now it felt like waiting.

  He opened his eyes and stared at his reflection—the man who knew which details to keep and which to let fade. The man who could tell the same story the same way every time, without deviation.

  He wondered how long he’d been rehearsing it.

  There was no voice in the room.

  Just the quiet—

  finally loud enough to hear.