Day 56, Evening
The living room was silent after Robin and Ted retreated to their room. Barney didn't stay long, quickly heading back to the bar since he didn't know how to handle the tension of the moment. Only Alyx and Marshall remained. Marshall was still holding the credit card statement in his hand, staring at the data on his laptop screen, still absorbed in her expenses.
Alyx took a seat in the chair beside him in silence. She reached out a hand and gently closed the laptop.
"You shouldn't be looking at that," she said finally, her voice low but firm in the quiet.
Marshall didn't look up. "It's the only real thing I have left... The places and things she bought are clues to what she's doing with her life now."
"Clues for what, Marshall? To find out she's living her life, without us?" Alyx asked, and for the first time in almost two months, a note of frustration was audible in her tone, directed at Marshall. Not just the constant care and support. "She left, Marshall. For that art program. And that bill is data from over a month ago. It's already history."
"But the hotel charge is from today!" Marshall looked up, his eyes red and glassy, trying to maintain composure but still conveying his sadness and desperation over the breakup. "The hotel on Fifth Avenue. Why would she be staying in a hotel? Why isn't she staying with us? Why didn't she call me?"
These questions were like arrows aimed at Alyx's heart. And why didn't she call me either? she thought. It was the question Alyx repeated to herself every night during her insomnia, staring at the ceiling from the sofa. But she didn't feel entitled to that pain and those doubts that gnawed at her, as she didn't know what would happen if they were answered—if Lily didn't feel the same trust or love for her as before.
"Maybe," she began, straining to stay calm. "It's for another reason. A flight layover, visiting a relative, or something else."
"Or she could be with someone," Marshall whispered, his gaze fixed on the bill again. "The guy who answered the phone had a raspy voice."
Alyx crossed her arms defensively over her chest. "Marshall, what do you gain from this? Torturing yourself?"
"I gain the truth!" He slammed his palm on the table, causing Alyx's cold coffee mug to jump. "I gain knowing if the nine years the three of us spent together meant so little to her that she can come back to the city and not look for us, or even call to... to check on those damn plants, at least." He finished emphatically, pointing toward the window where some small potted plants sat.
Alyx glanced toward the corner where Lily's pothos was starting to get yellow leaves from lack of proper attention. She watered it, but it wasn't the same.
"Maybe," said Alyx, choosing her words with the care of someone walking on broken glass, "she needs this silence as much as you do. To figure out... whatever it is she has to figure out. Maybe calling you, or calling me, would confuse her all over again."
Marshall looked at her then, really looked at her, as if for the first time realizing that Alyx was also part of that relationship that had ended.
"And you?" he asked, his voice softer. "Don't you miss her? Aren't you angry about all this?"
Alyx felt her perfectly practiced mask of control and strength crack slightly. An uncontrollable tremor ran through her hands, and the only way to keep them still was by gripping her coffee mug tightly between them.
"All the time..." she admitted, her voice breaking. "I miss her when I see her favorite mug. I miss her when I see a TV show she didn't like... I'm angry when I think she could have talked to us, to find a different way to chase her dream without leaving us... And she didn't." She paused, swallowing. "But I also understand her search, or I try to. Even though her decision hurts."
A long silence stretched between them, filled with the shared but oppositely expressed pain—his expressive and chaotic, hers measured and controlled.
"I'm going out," Marshall announced, getting up from the chair.
"Where? If it's to the hotel, you shouldn't, Marshall. Ted is right," Alyx said, trying to convince him.
"Not to the hotel. Not at the moment," Marshall murmured. "I'm going to get some air. In your car. I just need to think without being inside these four walls," he finished with a sigh.
Alyx hesitated about lending him her car, but seeing his newfound, less frantic resolution, she agreed. "Okay, the keys are in the box on my desk. But I want you to promise me something before you go."
"What?" he asked doubtfully.
"That if at any point you feel the impulse to head to the hotel, you'll come back here first. Or you'll call Ted. Or... or you'll call me," she finished, looking Marshall firmly in the eyes.
Marshall held her gaze and nodded slowly. "I promise."
As the door closed behind him, Alyx reached out and took Marshall's laptop, opening it to the window that was still open. Her eyes scanned the charges, each one a tiny window into a parallel life where Lily was happy, experimenting, and living without them.
With a sharp movement, she closed the laptop again. She took the bill Marshall had left on the table, folded it, and put it in her pants pocket. Then she stood up and went to the pothos. Taking a pair of pruning shears, she expertly cut off the dead leaves with a practiced hand.
"It's okay, Lilypad," she murmured to the plant, using her affectionate nickname. "I'll take care of what you left behind. But you have to come back soon. For us."