II.

Pam sits straight up. She’s sure she heard something. That seems impossible now in the dead silence, but she’s sure…She gets out of bed and walks quickly into the front room, checking that the door is still securely locked. It is, and she sees nothing else that could have made a noise (the room is small and still sparsely furnished, so it is easy to tell). There’s no one there. She’s alone.

She should be exhausted- a whole day of moving and unpacking has left her sore through her shoulders and her back- but the strangeness of this new place has left her alert and watchful. This new place. It’s the very first place that is just hers. Hers alone.

In the moonlight, she surveys her handiwork. That chair was taken from her living room with Roy. He’d never sat in it. Those books have been on a shelf at her mother’s house ever since she moved out. It’s reassuring and familiar to see them here, reminding her that she had a life before Roy. It’s now after Roy and she’s alone.

She settles into the second-hand sofa she’d purchased the day before. It is against the wall, in front of the windows, and she thinks she'll be able to watch the sunrise. It's still so quiet, all alone.

This silence is her own fault, Pam knows this. She knows she could be at home (home is still with Roy, at least for now). She knows, had she made other choices, that she could be with…but it doesn’t matter. This is where she is. She lets the tears come. There’s no one to see her crying, she realizes, discovering the first benefit of being alone.