“You don’t get to decide how we handle this,” Alisa says quietly, dangerously.
Isla lifts her chin.“I decide howIhandle it.”
Alisa’s lips part, ready to argue, then close again.Her shoulders sag a fraction, a tiny concession that tells Isla she’d won this round.
“Fine,” Alisa says.“Stay.Smile.Accept your medal.But when this turns ugly, don’t look at me like I didn’t try to save you.”
Isla doesn’t answer.
Because the truth is, Isla doesn’t want saving.
She wants control.
The minutes before the announcement stretch.Isla stands in the wing, listening to the murmur of the audience returning to their seats, to the shuffling of programs, the clearing of throats.She watches a pianist from another country pace with clenched hands, watches a judge speak quietly to a staff member.
Alisa stays beside Isla like a taut wire, eyes darting toward the hall, toward any door that might open.
Isla keeps her face composed.
Inside, she feels… nothing about Keir.Not sadness.Not shock.Not even anger in the way people expect anger to be, hot and emotional and messy.
Her anger is clean.
It has been clean for years.
A choice made over and over: she didn’t matter to him, so he didn’t get to matter to her.
When Isla was a child, she had made excuses.She had believed the stories people told about famous men: busy, brilliant, trapped by the demands of their gifts.She had imagined Keir was coming, that he would walk through the door one day with arms wide and regret shining in his eyes.
By twelve, she knew better.
By fifteen, she had stopped asking.
By nineteen, she had learned that the absence itself could be a kind of presence, a shadow that followed you into every room, shaping you without ever touching you.
Isla had decided she would not be shaped by him.
She would be shaped by practice.By discipline.By precision.By Alisa’s relentless expectation.
That was the only inheritance that mattered.
The stage manager motions, and Isla walks out beneath the lights again.
The applause is polite now, the audience settling into the ceremony.The judges speak, praising artistry, technique, and interpretation.Isla listens with the same calm she wears for everything that matters.She waits for her name.
When the head judge smiles and announces that Isla MacLaren is the winner, the hall erupts again, this time with certainty, as if everyone had been holding the same conclusion in their mouths.
Isla accepts the medal.Shakes hands.Smiles in the correct places.
She does not think about Keir.
The rest of the night comes in fragments.
A photographer asks her to tilt her chin.A journalist tries to corner her for a quote.Isla declines interviews with a graciousness that leaves no opening for argument.She moves from one congratulation to the next like a dancer stepping through rehearsed marks.
Alisa hovers close, answering where Isla refuses, steering her away from clusters of people, tightening her grip every time someone says, “We heard about your father…”
Isla doesn’t respond.
