She tests how you react to her absence

She'll go quiet for a day. She'll skip a text she might normally send. She'll leave a small gap in communication to see what comes back. This isn't manipulation, or at least it isn't primarily manipulation — it's the nervous system running a low-cost diagnostic. Does he notice? Does he reach out? Does the silence seem to bother him? The information she gets from your response is cleaner than anything she could get by asking directly. If you matter to her, she needs to know if she matters back, and asking outright is too exposed. The silence is an experiment with built-in deniability — if nothing happens, she hasn't revealed anything. If you notice and reach out, she has useful data without having taken a real risk. It's not the most mature strategy, but it is an honest one. The fact that she's running the experiment at all tells you something: she cares enough about the result to want to know it.