She reached for it once. Then again.
Did Roz have a point?
What would her mother even say, what had she said?
She remembered Evelyn’s cold composure, the way she always knew exactly how to wound without ever drawing blood. Would she have done it? Warned Sloane off with the same icy superiority she used to mold her daughters into steel?
Of course she would. And Sloane… Sloane had too much heart to push back in that moment.
The thought filled her with a strange ache. If that’s what had happened, then maybe, maybe Sloane hadn’t left. Maybe she’d been made to feel unwelcome.
Catherine’s fingers hovered above her phone. She opened their message thread. Nothing new. Nothing since before the accident. It was still there, quiet, waiting.
She scrolled past the old messages, the flirting, the stubborn standoffs, the softness. The last voice note Sloane sent was her laughing, breathless, after Catherine had told her she couldn’t cook.
“I burned the damn rice,” Sloane had said. “Guess we’re even now.”
Catherine pressed play. The sound of her voice filled the room, and it hurt.
She hesitated. Her thumb hovered over the call button. Her heart raced.
What if she didn’t answer?
But what if she did?
“If she’s gone,” Catherine whispered aloud, “I need to hear it from her.”
She took a breath, then another, before she pressed the button.
The phone rang.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
20
SLOANE
The light was starting to drain from the sky when Sloane realized she hadn’t moved in nearly an hour. She sat cross-legged in front of the unfinished canvas, fingers smudged with drying paint and eyes staring at the blur of color that refused to become anything at all.
It was the piece she'd started the night Catherine nearly died.
Brushstrokes layered in clashing reds and charcoal blacks with streaks of frantic gold that looked like chaos instead of light. She’d stopped working on it days ago. Now it just loomed in the studio like a memory she couldn’t reshape.
Dani had stopped coming by. Sloane had asked her for space—or rather, grunted her way into solitude. Her phone had stayed quiet. No texts. No missed calls. She hadn’t reached out again, not since Evelyn's venomous words.
“If she wants you, she’ll tell you.”
But Catherine hadn’t. Not a word, not even after waking up.
The ache sat too deep in Sloane’s chest for anger now. It had hollowed out into something quieter, heavier. Regret, maybe. Or grief.
She was just beginning to wipe her hands when her phone buzzed, screen lighting up beside a half-empty mug of tea.
Her breath caught.
