The answer did not come with heat. It came with clarity.
And that was harder to argue with.
Aunt Mabel reached across the table and rested her hand over mine. Her skin was warm and familiar.
“You don’t have to become her,” she said gently. “But you also don’t have to reject her to prove you’re different.”
The balance in that statement lodged itself somewhere deep.
I wasn’t here to rebel. I wasn’t here to perform some dramatic generational correction. I was here because I had asked for something. And because I had been answered.
“I should call her,” I said after a long moment.
“Yes,” Aunt Mabel said. “You should.”
14
Ididn’t call my mother right away.
I said I would. I meant it when I said it. But meaning something and doing it have never been the same thing when it comes to her. With my mother, every conversation feels like stepping back into a version of myself I worked years to outgrow—polished, measured, careful not to want too much.
Instead, I stood at Aunt Mabel’s kitchen window with a mug cooling between my hands and watched the snow fall in slow, patient drifts across the backyard.
The world here felt contained.
The fence line, straight and unwavering. The trees standing in orderly silence. The neat geometry of winter gardens sleeping beneath white. Even the sky seemed disciplined, muted and restrained.
This was the kind of life my mother chose.
Contained. Admired. Safe.
For most of my life, I believed that safety was strength. That discipline was power. That wanting something wild was weakness.
But the last few days had unsettled that belief in a way I couldn’t ignore.
I didn’t want contained. I wanted awake.
Behind me, the air shifted.
Cassian didn’t need sound to announce himself. His presence carried its own gravity. I felt it before I heard his boots against the old kitchen tile, before I sensed the quiet displacement of space as he stepped into the room.
“I thought you were calling her,” he said.
His tone was neutral. Controlled. Not impatient—just aware.
“I will,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the snow.
“When?”
I let the silence stretch. I wanted him to feel that pause. To register that my timing belonged to me.
“When I decide to,” I said.
Stillness settled behind me.
He didn’t argue. Didn’t press. But I felt the shift in him—the subtle recalculation that had become so familiar now. He observed first. Always. Adjusted second.
That awareness sparked something inside me.
