Unsaid

Beth hadn’t realised how cold her hands were until the mug stopped hurting.

The café was too loud for a weekday morning. Cups struck saucers. Steam hissed. Someone laughed too sharply behind her. Beth wrapped both hands around the worn coffee cup and waited for the warmth to settle, for the ache to ease into something manageable.

Outside, winter pressed against the glass. People passed in coats pulled tight, their breath briefly visible before vanishing. Beth didn’t look long enough to register their faces. She didn’t need to. The cold was obvious. It always was.

Her phone buzzed.

She ignored it.

A crack in the cup ran from the rim downward, thin and pale. A near-break. The barista had offered to replace it. Beth had shaken her head before he finished the sentence.

"It’s fine," she’d said.

The phone buzzed again.

She turned it face down and focused on the heat against her palms. It was temporary. She knew that. Some warmth only existed if you held onto it without asking too much.

When she left the café, she walked too fast and clipped someone’s shoulder on the way out. The woman muttered something Beth didn’t hear. Or chose not to. Beth kept moving until the noise thinned and the park opened in front of her. Bare trees, damp benches, the honest stillness of winter.

She sat and breathed until her chest stopped tightening.

Her phone buzzed again.

This time, she looked.

Missed Call — Mum

For a moment, Beth imagined answering. Imagined her mother’s voice, steady and careful, asking if she was eating properly, if she was sleeping. Imagined the relief of letting the silence break.

Instead, she deleted the call.

The relief came anyway. It always did. It just never lasted.

The crash came back to her in fragments.

The sound first. Metal collapsing into itself, glass bursting like breath held too long. The world tilting. Someone screaming. It took Beth a long time to accept that the screaming had been hers.

At the hospital, everything smelled clean and false. Nurses spoke softly, as if volume could make the truth worse. Her father sat beside her bed, holding her hand too tightly, his thumb rubbing the same small circle into her skin.

“You’re lucky,” someone said.

Beth nodded, because that seemed expected.

She didn’t see her mother until later.

The courtroom felt unreal, like a place meant for other people.

Beth remembered the scrape of chairs, the way her mother’s coat was folded too neatly over the back of the bench. She remembered the judge’s mouth moving, words flattening into sound without meaning. When it was over, people looked at Beth with a softness that made her stomach turn.

She let them.

Her mother didn’t look at her when the verdict was read. Beth was grateful for that.

In therapy, Beth talked about guilt the way people talked about weather, something that arrived without warning, something you learned to dress around.

“I feel responsible,” she said, eyes fixed on the bookshelf instead of the man across from her. “Not for what happened. Just… the before.”

The therapist nodded. He always did.

“Arguments linger,” he said gently. “Especially when something interrupts them.”

Beth liked that word. Interrupts. It suggested the argument might still exist somewhere, paused but unfinished.

She told him about helping her mother after the injury. About driving her to appointments. About the medication.

“What kind?” he asked.

She named it.

He hesitated, just briefly. “That medication can impair reaction time. Concentration. People don’t always realise.”

Something in Beth’s chest tightened.

“I think,” she said quickly, smiling the way she’d learned to, “I just need to stop blaming myself.”

The therapist smiled back, relieved. As if something had been resolved.

Then he tilted his head, thoughtful.

“You know,” he said, “you were never actually asked who was driving.”

The room went very quiet.

Beth felt it then. The shift. The careful balance slipping. Her breath caught, sharp and shallow.

“That wasn’t—” she started, then stopped.

The therapist didn’t interrupt. He didn’t need to.

Beth looked down at her hands. She imagined them gripping the steering wheel. Imagined not imagining it. Imagined the version that was safe.

“I don’t remember it clearly,” she said finally.

The therapist nodded, making a note.

That night, Beth stood at the sink and washed her cup carefully, tracing the crack with her thumb. It hadn’t grown. It hadn’t healed either.

She turned it upside down on the counter and left it there, untouched.

Later, lying in bed, she replayed the moment just before impact, the way her hands had tightened, the way the road had opened.

She stopped herself.

She had learned which versions were survivable.

Some warmth, she understood now, was only possible if you didn’t ask who had paid for it.