The place was small, but it sure didn’t look temporary.
A real table sat near the window, its surface scarred just enough to prove it had been used. Bookshelves lined one wall, half-full, as if Rose expected to come back and finish the rest later. The sofa was positioned to face the window, not the television.
This wasn’t a crash pad.
This was a life.
My sister’s life, or at least, the part of it no one in New York had known about.
I set my suitcase down and stood there, suddenly unsure what to touch first. In my head, I could still see us as girls—sharing a bedroom in a cramped Manhattan apartment, fighting over clothes, whispering in the dark long after we were supposed to be asleep. She’d always been louder, bolder, quicker to act. I’d been the one who thought things through, who planned, who stayed.
Somehow, she’d ended up here.
And I hadn’t.
I crossed to the window and pushed it open.
Paris unfolded below me in fragments—iron railings, shuttered windows, a café just down the block where chairs were being pulled closer together as the afternoon wore on. Laughter drifted up, easy and unselfconscious. Somewhere, a door slammed. Somewhere else, a voice called out sharply, followed by a reply just as quick.
I exhaled slowly.
I’d never been to Paris before, which felt ridiculous given how much of my childhood had been shaped by its ghost. My father was French. Born here. Raised here. Paris had lived in our apartment in New York in small, stubborn ways—phrases he refused to translate, recipes he cooked from memory, an accent that crept into his voice when he was tired or irritated.
My sister loved those pieces. She collected them, romanticized them. Talked about Paris like it was inevitable.
I’d treated it like a story.
Now, I was standing inside it, jet-lagged and hollowed out, because my sister had come here alone and never made it home.
I closed the window and turned back into the apartment, the sounds of the street dulling behind the glass.
I moved more slowly now, like the space might resist if I rushed it. I traced the edge of the table with my fingertips, the back of the sofa, the spines of the books on the shelf. Everything here felt lived in. This wasn’t a place Rose passed through between flights.
This was a place she’d chosen.
The bedroom door stood open.
I hesitated before stepping inside, that old, instinctive pause before crossing into something private. The room smelled faintly of soap and something warmer underneath it—comforting, familiar. The bed was made, but not perfectly. A book lay facedown on the nightstand, its spine cracked in a way that suggested it had been read more than once.
And then I noticed the jacket.
A man’s coat hung over the back of the chair, dark and heavy, the sleeves worn soft at the cuffs. Like it belonged there.
I stared at it longer than I meant to.
In the closet, Rose’s clothes hung neatly, divided by season and purpose the way she’d always done it. And beside them—unmistakable now—were men’s shoes. Two pairs. One polished, one scuffed. Both undeniably not hers.
I exhaled slowly and sat on the edge of the bed.
So, it was true.
Rose had shared this space with someone.
Instead of dread, I felt something unexpected unfurl in my chest.
Relief.
The dangerous kind—the kind that made me wonder what else I’d been wrong about.
