“A challenge,” she’d said. “Fill it with something that isn’t hospital notes. Thoughts. Doodles. I don’t care.”
Catherine reached out, brushing her fingers against the cover.
And then she pulled her hand back.
She didn’t open it.
Instead, she turned back to the file, picked up her pen, and resumed annotating in precise, sharp script.
“She’s not what I need,” Catherine told herself, eyes on the page but not reading. “I don’t need anyone. I’ve made it this far alone.”
But the room didn’t agree with her.
It was too quiet. Too still.
Her condo had always been like this—silent, clean, undisturbed. A reflection of her. And that had been fine.
Until now.
Until she had heard the hum of music playing softly from Sloane’s speakers while morning sunlight touched their skin.
Until she had laughed, actually laughed, while tangled in paint-streaked sheets.
Until she had let herself believe she might not have to spend her entire life behind walls no one ever reached.
And now, every inch of her home felt sharper, colder. As if her solitude had grown teeth.
No one would text to check in.
No one would knock at the door.
No one knew how to reach her, because she had never let them.
Her chest ached with a dull, unfamiliar pressure.
Not pain. Not yet.
But the shape of what might become pain, if she let herself feel too much.
The pen slipped from her hand. She didn’t bother picking it up.
She leaned back in the chair and looked around.
Everything was where it should be.
And yet she had never felt more out of place.
The silence wrapped around her like a vice, and for the first time in a very long time, Catherine Harrington didn’t feel powerful in her solitude.
She felt alone.
Utterly, unmistakably alone.
12
SLOANE
The morning light filtered through the tall windows of the studio, soft and golden, catching on dust motes and casting shadows across the chaos of canvases and scattered clothes. It should have been peaceful, but the silence felt brittle. Stale. Too still.
