My pulse does the same thing it did on the street, and I shove it down the same way I shoved it down then. Hard. Fast. Done.
I fix a plate because it gives me something to do with my hands. The pot roast is as good as it always is. I eat standing near the kitchen, out of the main flow, the way I’ve been attending Nora’s events for years. Close enough to count as present. Far enough not to have to perform.
Chief has positioned himself in the center of the room, which is unusual. He normally stays at my side, pressed against my leg, his own version of standing at the edge. But tonight he’s lying on the rug between the dining room and the kitchen, and his eyes keep tracking Bianca.
She notices. I see her glance at him, then away. Then back.
Dr. Theo catches my eye from across the room and raises his whiskey glass in a gesture that could mean anything from “good to see you” to “I’m not involved in whatever Nora’s planning.” I nod back.
Twenty minutes. I’ll stay for twenty minutes.
I last forty-five before the walls close in.
It’s not the people. It’s the noise. The layered, overlapping sound of multiple conversations happening at once, the ambient chaos that most people filter without thinking. I can’t filter it. Haven’t been able to since the mission. My brain parses every voice, every sound, tracks origin points and threat levels and escape routes, and after forty-five minutes the processing burns through whatever reserves I walked in with.
I step out onto the porch.
The cold hits my face and I breathe it in. The mountains are black shapes against a sky full of stars, and the only sounds are the wind in the pines and the muffled rumble of conversation through the closed door. Better. My shoulders drop half an inch.
Chief pushes through the door behind me and settles at the top of the steps.
I lean against the porch railing and let the quiet settle. This is the part Nora understands. She doesn’t follow me out. She doesn’t send someone to check on me. She gives me the porch the way my grandfather used to give me the tree line behind the cabin. Room to breathe without having to explain why you need it.
The door opens again.
Not Nora. I know Nora’s footsteps. These are quieter. Hesitant.
Bianca steps onto the porch and stops when she sees me. For a second, I think she’s going to turn around. Go back inside. Fold herself smaller until she disappears.
She doesn’t.
She walks to the railing, three feet from where I’m standing, and wraps her hands around the wood and says nothing. Doesn’t look at me. Just stands there, breathing the cold air, looking at the mountains.
Chief gets up from the steps, walks over, and lies down at her feet.
Traitor.
A minute passes. Maybe two. The silence between us isn’t uncomfortable. Two people used to being quiet, standing next to each other without needing words to justify it.
“It’s loud in there,” she says. Soft. Almost apologetic.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not very good at loud anymore.”
I look at her. She’s looking at the mountains, and the porch lights catch the side of her face, the curl of her hair against her cheek, the set of her mouth. She’s not performing. Not making small talk because the silence scares her. She’s telling me something true and small, and she’s not asking for anything in return.
“Me neither,” I say.
She glances at me. A quick look, barely a second, and then back to the mountains. But in that second, I see something I recognize. The specific exhaustion of a person who has spent their whole life performing comfort for other people and has never quite figured out how to feel it themselves.
I know that exhaustion. I wear a different version of it.
“How long have you lived here?” she asks.
“Four years this round. I grew up here before that.”
“Do you ever get used to it?” She gestures at the mountains, the valley, the dark expanse of sky. “The quiet?”
