The train departed before Sanja removed the second ticket from the app. Igor remained on the platform. Five minutes earlier, he had said he could not go to their anniversary celebration and pretend once more that everything would be fine. They had not argued. The hardest part was precisely his calm voice as he held the bag of pastries he had bought for the journey.
She placed his jacket, forgotten in her bag, on the neighboring seat. The conductor checked both tickets. She said her partner was in the café car. She had not planned to lie, but the sentence came out ready and neat, like the things she had packed the night before. Her phone vibrated. Her mother asked whether Igor had brought his guitar.
She replied that she would let her know later. Small stations and unfamiliar yards passed outside the window. Beside her was a box containing the cake ordered for their fifth anniversary. For two years, they had not known how to talk without turning to bills, work, or somebody else. Still, she had agreed to the celebration. She thought other people's certainty about their love might return them to the place they had left.
The woman opposite asked to sit by the window because she felt less sick there. Sanja immediately said the seat was taken. Then she looked at the jacket and began crying suddenly, without time to turn her face away. The woman offered a tissue. She did not ask whether someone was ill, whose fault it was, or how long they had been together. She only moved her bag so Sanja could put down the cake.
After a while, Sanja said the whole sentence: "He's no longer with me." It sounded different when she did not replace it with a story about the café car. She called her mother and canceled the celebration. Her mother first mentioned the dinner they had ordered, then stopped and asked whether she should come for her. Sanja said she would arrive by train. She messaged Igor about the jacket and suggested discussing their remaining belongings the following week.
The whole family was not waiting at the station. Only her mother came, wearing a house sweater beneath her coat. They took the cake home and removed the decoration bearing their names. That evening, they ate a little at a time beside a television neither watched. Sanja put Igor's jacket in the hall closet. It was no longer proof he would return, only someone else's possession she would give back when she had the strength.