The Pyramid of Unsaid Things

Maria stands in her bedroom, her hair still wet from the shower, staring at the iPhone lying on her nightstand. Three missed calls from David. She hasn't spoken to him since the funeral, since he stood there in his cheap suit and said all the wrong things.

"She was like a mother to me," he'd said, and Maria had wanted to scream. Sarah wasn't like a mother to him. Sarah was her friend — her best friend, the one person who knew where the bodies were buried, literally and metaphorically.

Now Sarah is gone, and Maria is left with the pyramid of unsaid things between them. Not a physical pyramid, but the accumulation of years of conversations they never had, the confession Sarah never made, the question Maria never asked. And this pyramid sits in the center of every room, blocking everything else.

The iPhone lights up again. David. He's probably calling to check on her, to offer more platitudes, to be the good guy he thinks he is. The man who slept with her best friend and never told anyone until Sarah was too dead to deny it.

Maria's hair drips onto her shoulders. She picks up the phone, swipes to answer.

"I found something," David says without preamble. "In Sarah's apartment. Her sister is clearing it out and there's a box for you."

"What kind of box?"

"I don't know. She left specific instructions. You're supposed to open it alone."

Maria feels something crack open in her chest. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," he says, and she hears something break in his voice, "because she knew. About us. She wrote letters. To both of us."

The pyramid trembles.

"She knew,? Maria whispers. "She knew?"

"She knew everything. That's the thing about Sarah. She always knew." He pauses. "I loved her, Maria. I loved you both."

Maria laughs, but it comes out as something else entirely. "You have a funny way of showing it."

"I'm not calling to fight," he says. "I'm calling because she left me this box too. And I think whatever she wanted to say, she wanted us to hear it together."

Maria looks at herself in the mirror. Her hair is a dark mess around her face. She looks like someone who has been sleeping inside a pyramid of silence, someone who has forgotten what the sun feels like.

"Tomorrow," she says. "Come over tomorrow."

When she hangs up, she touches the phone screen, wondering what Sarah left behind. Wondering if some pyramids are meant to be opened, or if some things should stay buried forever, even if the weight of them is slowly crushing you alive.