Chapter 39 Isolation
The weeks that followed Noah’s departure were the darkest Nora had experienced since escaping the compound. She stopped going to work, calling in sick day after day until her supervisor stopped asking questions and simply told her to take the time she needed. She stopped eating regular meals, surviving on whatever she could find in the apartment that required minimal effort. She stopped showering regularly, stopped caring about her appearance, stopped caring about anything at all.
The apartment became her prison. She would spend hours sitting on the couch, staring at the wall, replaying every conversation she’d had with Noah, every moment they’d shared, every mistake she’d made. The note he’d left sat on the coffee table, read and reread so many times the paper had become soft and worn from her fingers.
Her phone rang constantly at first. Ben called multiple times a day. Sussie called too, her messages growing increasingly concerned as the days passed without response. Coworkers reached out, asking if she was okay. But Nora answered none of them. She let every call go to voicemail, deleted every text without reading it, withdrew completely from the world.
She was heartbroken in a way she hadn’t known was possible. The pain was physical, a constant ache in her chest that never went away. She would wake up in the middle of the night reaching for Noah, only to find empty space beside her. She would hear a sound and turn, expecting to see him, only to remember he was gone.
But more than the heartbreak was the desperate, clawing need to reach him.
Nora tried everything she could think of to contact Noah. She borrowed phones from neighbors, making up excuses about her phone being broken. She created new email addresses. She even tried reaching out through professional networking sites, anywhere she thought he might not have thought to block her.
Each attempt followed the same devastating pattern. If she managed to get through on a call, the moment Noah heard her voice, there would be a sharp intake of breath, a moment of painful silence, and then the line would go dead. Within minutes, that number would be blocked too.
She sent emails that went unanswered. She left voicemails that were never returned. She poured her heart out in messages that disappeared into the void, wondering if he even read them or if they went straight to spam.
“Please, Noah,” she would whisper into strange phones, the words tumbling out before he could hang up. “Please just listen. I’m sorry. I love you. Please—”
Click.
And then dial tone.
Each rejection broke her a little more.
She tried going to places she thought he might be. But Noah was never there. It was as if he had vanished completely, erased himself from her life as thoroughly as if he had never existed.
One particularly bad night, three weeks after Noah left, Nora sat on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, a borrowed phone in her hand, calling his number for what must have been the hundredth time. This time, it didn’t even ring. It went straight to the automated message.
“The number you have dialed is not in service.”
He had changed his number entirely.
Nora let the phone clatter to the tile floor and pulled her knees to her chest. She had lost him. Completely, irrevocably lost him. There was no way to reach him now, no way to explain or apologize or beg for another chance. He had cut her out of his life with surgical precision, and there was nothing she could do about it.
As she sat there on the cold bathroom floor, a thought began to form in her mind.
Maybe this was a sign.
Maybe the universe was telling her that she and Noah were never meant to be. Maybe all the obstacles, all the pain, all the impossibility of reaching him was fate’s way of pointing her in a different direction.
Back to Ben. Back to her children. Back to the life she was supposed to have.
Noah had said it himself in his note. He couldn’t compete with Ben’s place in her heart. He didn’t want to fight for something that wasn’t his. Maybe he was right. Maybe Ben was where she was supposed to be all along.
Her children needed their mother. Ben had shown her proof of that in every video call, every photo, every update about their lives that she was missing. They were growing up without her, and for what? To chase after a man who clearly didn’t want to be found?
The more Nora thought about it, sitting there in the dark bathroom, the more sense it made. She had been fighting so hard to hold onto Noah because she was scared of admitting she had made a mistake. But maybe letting him go wasn’t giving up. Maybe it was finally accepting the truth about where she belonged.
With her family.
The thought should have brought her comfort, should have felt like a decision finally made. Instead, it just made her feel emptier. But empty was better than the constant pain of rejection.
Nora picked up the borrowed phone and, before she could change her mind, scrolled through her contacts until she found Ben’s number. She stared at it for a long moment, her thumb hovering over the call button.
This was it. This was her choosing.
She pressed the call button.
Ben answered on the second ring, his voice thick with sleep. “Hello?”
“Ben,” Nora said, her voice cracking. “It’s me.”
There was a pause, then she heard him sitting up, suddenly alert. “Nora? Are you okay? I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry I haven’t answered,” Nora said, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’ve been going through the roughest time.”
“What happened?” Ben’s voice was full of concern. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Nora took a shaky breath. “Everything is falling apart, Ben. Everything is just… I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep doing this.”
“Where are you? Are you at home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming over,” Ben said immediately. “Right now. You shouldn’t be alone like this.”
“Ben, it’s two in the morning.”
“I don’t care what time it is,” he said firmly. “You’re clearly in pain, and I’m not going to let you go through this alone. I’ll be there for you, Nora. Let me be there for you.”
Nora closed her eyes, more tears spilling down her face. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Ben said. “Just hold on, alright? I’m coming.”
The line went dead, and Nora sat in the dark bathroom, the borrowed phone still pressed to her ear, wondering what she had just done.