Isla closes her eyes.
This is familiar territory.Concern reframed as a command.Love wielded like leverage.Her mother has always been careful not to sound cruel.Cruelty is obvious.Control works better when it feels reasonable.
“I have rehearsals scheduled,” Alisa continues.“Interviews pending.You can’t disappear every time the past demands attention.”
The past.
As if it’s a hobby Isla indulges too often.
“I’m not disappearing,” Isla says.“I’m learning.”
“Learning what?”Alisa asks, and there’s the faintest edge beneath the question.“He’s gone, Isla.Digging through his things won’t change that.”
Isla’s throat tightens.“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough,” her mother says.“Enough to protect you.”
Protect.
Isla remembers being ten years old, crying quietly in her bedroom while her mother told her that disappointment was a weakness she could afford exactly once.She remembers being fourteen, offered an opportunity, and warned what it would cost.She remembers being seventeen and exhausted and told that exhaustion was the price of excellence.
She remembers being told that her father had chosen music over her.
Full stop.
“I’m not a child,” Isla says.
“No,” Alisa agrees.“You’re a woman with a career you worked very hard for.One that requires focus.”
“And obedience,” Isla mutters.
Her mother exhales, the sound controlled.“Isla.Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn this into something it isn’t.”
Isla opens her eyes and stares at the piano keys, black and white and uncompromising.“What is it, then?”
“It’s closure,” Alisa says firmly.“And closure doesn’t require excavation.”
Isla’s jaw tightens.“You always did prefer clean endings.”
“That’s because messy ones destroy people.”
Isla thinks of the photograph in the drawer.The worn edges.The proof of care that had been hidden, not erased.
“Send me your flight details,” Alisa says.“I’ll have your assistant adjust your schedule.”
“I’m not coming home yet.”
Silence.
Not the polite pause of conversation.The dangerous kind.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said I’m not coming home yet,” Isla repeats, her voice steady even as her pulse races.
