Red.
The woman again.
She’s near the staircase now, mask still in place, posture composed, entirely too aware of herself to be accidental. She isn’t doing anything overt—no exaggerated gestures, no searching gaze—but somehow she commands space. Exists in it differently from everyone else here.
My mother follows my line of sight and frowns. “Do you know her?”
“No.”
The woman laughs softly at nothing at all, tilting her head back just enough to let the light catch her throat. She looks like she belongs nowhere and everywhere at once.
“Well,” my mother says stiffly, “if you won’t reconsider the foundation, at least try not to scandalize anyone tonight.”
I turn back to her. “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
She doesn’t ask what I mean. She never does when the answer might complicate her narrative.
I use the distraction to step away, finally freeing myself. The party swells again around me, noise and movement blurring into something tolerable.
I tell myself not to look for the woman in red, but I fail immediately. She’s still there, still untethered, still quietly disruptive. I don’t approach. I don’t stare. I observe, theway I do with patients before diagnosis—watching for tells, inconsistencies, intent.
She doesn’t belong to anyone here. That’s the most dangerous thing about her.
Just as my interest sharpens into something more deliberate, a familiar voice cuts in from behind me. “Damian.”
I close my eyes briefly before turning. Amber is the last person I wanted to see tonight.
She looks exactly the way she always does when she wants something. Perfectly composed. Perfectly irritated that I exist independently of her orbit these days. Her mask is gold and ostentatious, chosen to be noticed, and she wears it like armor. “Happy New Year.”
There’s a man at her side—Meron, my department head and her new boyfriend—though he’s drifted a polite distance away, giving us the illusion of privacy as he screws around on his phone.
“And to you,” I reply. Neutral. Civil. Years of practice.
She glances over my shoulder, already bored, already assessing her audience. “We need to talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
She sighs, dramatic and familiar. “About the cabin.”
Of course it’s the cabin.
A weather-beaten place in Maine that we bought on a whim during a brief optimistic stretch of our marriage. I haven’t thought about it in years. I assumed the lawyers had dealt with it, but apparently not. Or more likely, Amber simply wants anexcuse to pull me into her gravity again. Something else to hassle me about.
“I don’t care about the cabin,” I say plainly. “Sell it. Keep it. Burn it down. My signature can be arranged.”
Her lips press together. “There’s no reason to involve lawyers. We’re reasonable adults.”
I almost laugh at that. “We divorced because we weren’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s accurate.”
She steps closer, lowering her voice. “Meron thinks it would be good for you to start thinking about the future. About where you’re headed.”
I glance past her, immediately finding the woman in red again. She’s moved, closer to the center of the room now, unanchored, untouched. Watching everything without being part of it.
My pulse ticks up. “Excuse me?—”
