My sister was reduced to documents and procedures and official stamps.
The ashes, she explained gently, would be released once final authorization cleared. Another day or two.
“Was she … alone?” I asked before I could stop myself.
The woman’s expression softened. “No.”
Relief and grief tangled painfully.
“She had someone with her. A man.”
My breath caught.
“Do you know who he was?”
“I’m sorry. We do not keep personal records like that.”
Of course, they didn’t.
Still.
Not alone. They’d confirmed it.
I clung to that as I stepped back outside.
Rose hadn’t faced death alone.
Someone had seen her through to the very end.
Someone had known.
And that certainty reassured something inside me I hadn’t realized was still clenched tight.
I walked without direction for a while, letting the city carry me. Crossing streets. Passing cafés and boulangeries and flower shops. Life layered over grief in the strange, beautiful way Paris seemed to do everything.
And slowly, something else surfaced.
Loneliness.
Not the sharp grief kind.
The quieter realization that when I finished here—when the paperwork was done, when answers were gathered, when Rose’s affairs were settled?—
I would go home.
And Kane would stay a stranger in Paris.
The thought settled heavily in my chest.
Why does that bother you so much?
Because …
Because I hadn’t felt like that before.
That instant, undeniable pull.
The sense of recognition.
