Page 15 of Hard Wired

“Out of town for a few days on a shoot in San Diego. You want to go dancing? We could meet up with that friend I was telling you about, the one from the coffee shop with the soulful eyes who’s recently divorced…”

“Why are people so concerned about my love life all of a sudden?”

“It might be that cranky look you’ve had on your face since your birthday? The big three-o?”

Tanner had implied that she seemed spacey, and Ethan was calling her cranky. Maybe she did need some new friends. “I’m fine with being thirty.”

“Yet you still haven’t opened that birthday card. It’s been sitting there a month now.” Ethan pointed at the console table by the door, where the envelope waited.

“Not because of birthday anxiety. I saw the postmark.”

It had come from Texas. Every once in a while, Sylvie received a postcard or birthday wishes from one of her siblings. But neither of them had ever asked after Ethan. So, she’d chosen not to write back.

She wasn’t angry anymore at her family back home. Just sad for them that they were so closed-minded and afraid.

“But did you turn it over? Did you see the name on the return address?”

“No. Why?”

Ethan shrugged. “Not like it’s my card. But if I were you, I’d be curious.”

She pushed back from the table and went to get the envelope. The back flap had a name she hadn’t seen in a very long time.

Faith Townsend. Sylvie’s closest girlfriend from high school. Back then, she and Faith had schemed together about how they’d escape. How they’d both go to college at UT and assert their freedom. Faith, Sylvie, and Ethan had been inseparable.

But when the Trousseau family shunned Ethan, and Sylvie decided to leave, Faith had ghosted them. All their years of friendship, all their shared dreams, and Faith had chosen to give it up. The last Sylvie heard, Faith had married an ex-football player from high school, a guy they’d both decried as a bully.

Sylvie ran her fingers over the envelope. It had little hand-drawn balloons on the outside. She should’ve known it wasn’t one of her siblings. Faith had always enjoyed sketching, just like Sylvie.

“Going to open it now?”

“Nope. I don’t see the point. People are who they are.”

And they don’t really change. Faith had shown her true nature by her choices all those years ago.

“But don’t they deserve a chance to make up for their mistakes?” Ethan regarded her sadly, as if she were the closed-minded person who’d earned his pity and not Faith. “You’re thirty now. Older is supposed to mean wiser.”

“Apparently not. It just means crankier.”

Sylvie opened the lid on the trashcan and tossed the envelope inside.

But later that night, after Ethan had retreated to his own space upstairs, she went back to the trashcan, opened it, and stared down at the blue envelope. It had a stain of grease at the corner.

Faith. Who’d once drawn a line of hearts down Sylvie’s arm on Valentine’s Day, because neither of them had a boyfriend.

She plucked the card out and wiped it with a paper towel. It went into a drawer, still unopened.

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