“Good morning.”
She doesn’t flinch when I enter. Two weeks ago, she would have launched herself at me. Now she just watches, wary, calculating. Like she’s measuring distances and angles.
She’s learning.
Setting the tray on the small table, I take my usual chair. Closer than yesterday. Close enough that when she sits on the bed’s edge, our knees nearly touch.
It doesn’t go unnoticed. Violet tenses at the proximity, but doesn’t pull away.
“Coffee?”
She reaches for the cup herself, another small assertion of control which I let her have. Her fingers wrap around the porcelain, and I watch the way her knuckles flex, the calluses on her palms, the scar on her left hand I’ve memorized but never asked about.
“The bread is still warm.” I push the plate toward her, my arm brushing hers in the process.
She goes rigid at the contact, her breath catching, but she doesn’t move away.
Good girl.
Slowly I move away, leaning back in her chair as she picks up the bread and puts it in her mouth. Watching her eat is my new favorite pastime, especially after what she put herself through in the first week here. Every bite logged, every swallow noted.She’s still too thin for my liking, but the color is returning to her cheeks, her hands are steadier, and the trembling has stopped.
“What’s your favorite time of day in the cathedral?”
The question catches her off guard, making her eyes narrow in suspicion.
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
She chews slowly, considering whether this is a trap. “Dawn,” she finally says. “When the light first hits the windows. The colors are... different. Softer.”
“Before the tourists arrive.”
“Before anyone arrives. Just me and hundreds of years of history.”
I store the information for later. I want to know these things, want to understand what she sees when she looks at broken things, what drives her to spend her life piecing together what others have abandoned.
“Did you always want to restore art?”
Another suspicious look. “Why the twenty questions?”
“Because you’re interesting.” It’s the unfiltered truth.
“I wanted to be an architect, but architects build new things, and I kept being drawn to the old ones. The broken ones.” A pause. “Someone has to fix what others let fall apart.”
Someone has to fix what others let fall apart.
The statement makes my throat close up. Thrown off balance, I stand. Before the moment can become something else. “Wear the blue dress today. For lunch.”
It’s not a question.
Her jaw sets, but her head dips in a nod before she catches herself. Color floods her cheeks. Fury at her own compliance.
“Brava, tesoro.”
Her mouth opens, to tell me to go to hell, probably. To assert some small scrap of autonomy.
I’m already at the door. “The blue one, Violet. Not the gray. I want to see you in blue.”
