“Isla,” her mother says, and now the warmth is gone.“This is not a negotiation.”
It never has been.
“I’m staying,” Isla says.“I need to finish this.”
“Finish what?”Alisa demands.“He didn’t come back.He’s dead.End of story.”
Isla’s breath catches.
“Are you afraid I’ll discover some hidden secret?”she asks softly.
The line goes quiet.
For one terrifying second, Isla thinks her mother has hung up.
Then Alisa speaks, and her voice is very calm.
“You’re tired,” she says.“You’re grieving.And grief makes people reckless.”
“No,” Isla replies.“Loss of control does.”
Another pause.This one longer.
“You’re coming home,” Alisa says finally.“We’ll talk about this when you’re thinking clearly.”
“I am thinking clearly,” Isla says.“For the first time in a long time.”
“You’re being influenced,” her mother snaps.“That man?—”
“Don’t,” Isla cuts in sharply.“Don’t bring Callum into this.”
“I will bring anyone into it if they are distracting you from your obligations.”
There it is.The word that has governed Isla’s life more than love ever has.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Alisa says, already retreating into control.“After you’ve calmed down.”
The line goes dead.
The silence after the call is too loud.
Isla lowers the phone slowly, as if the sound might still be attached to it, as if her mother’s voice might leap back out and finish the argument.
Her hand is shaking.She notices that before anything else, how her fingers tremble, how the calm she worked so hard to maintain has cracked like thin ice.
She presses the phone face down on the piano bench.
Her chest feels tight.Not panic.Not grief.
Control.
That old, familiar grip closing around her ribs.
Isla sinks down on the bench, elbows braced on her knees, staring at the floor.She breathes the way she was taught to breathe before walking onstage, slow, counted, deliberate, but it doesn’t help.This isn’t performance nerves.This is something older.Deeper.
She hadn’t raised her voice.She hadn’t cried.She hadn’t agreed.
And yet she feels like she’s ten years old again, standing in the doorway while her mother explains what’s best for her, what’s reasonable, what’s necessary.
