Not really.
Not forever.
I look down at the ring in my hand. The gold gleams in the light. I will find her. I will bring her home. I will make her see that we belong together.
And if she will not come willingly—
No. I don’t finish that thought. I shove it down, bury it, lock it away.
She will come willingly.
Because she loves me.
And love does not just disappear.
It cannot.
I will not let it.
Chapter Eleven: Nora
Living with Maeve feels like entering a world that wasn’t built for someone like me.
The walls are the wrong colour—warm, soft, something between cream and honey, not the stark white of Julian’s house or the stained beige of my father’s. The furniture is mismatched, comfortable, chosen for how it feels rather than how it looks.
There are plants in the windows, books stacked on the floor, photographs on the refrigerator held by magnets shaped like fruit and animals and things that make no sense. Everything about this place is unfamiliar, and yet, somehow, no one here expects me to earn my keep.
That is the strangest part. Because my entire life, mornings belonged to someone else.
I was trained to wake up early. First by my father’s temper—the knowledge that if I slept too long, if I was not already moving when he entered the kitchen, his mood would curdle before the coffee finished brewing.
Later, by Julian’s schedule. His mornings were softer, gentler, but the shape was the same. Breakfast had to be ready. The house had to be flawless. My purpose was to maintain a calm, orderly world so no one had a reason to be upset.
When I married Julian, the first year was shadowed by a fear so deep it felt like ice in my veins. I waited for him to become myfather. I braced for the first slap, the first shove, the first time he would look at me with that particular darkness in his eyes.
But as the years passed, and he never did, the fear slowly, reluctantly, began to loosen its grip. The ice thawed, just enough. The worst I ever saw was a flicker of mild irritation once, when his breakfast was five minutes late. He sighed. He rubbed his forehead. He said,it’s fine, Nora, in a voice that suggested it was not fine. But he didn’t shout. He didn’t throw. He didn’t raise his hand.
That’s how I lived.
Work first.
Their needs second.
Myself, a distant third.
I didn’t question this order. I didn’t know there was another order to question. The natural order of things was that I woke first, worked hardest, and asked for nothing. That was what it meant to be a wife. That was what it meant to be a daughter. That was what it meant to be a woman in a world that had never asked her what she wanted.
But here—in Maeve’s apartment—nothing is familiar. The rules have vanished.
The first morning, I woke up early. A reflex, my body unaware the rules had changed.
I moved silently, as I had always moved. I pulled back the covers, swung my legs over the side of the bed, padded barefoot across the cold floor. My body knew what to do. My body had been doing this for decades.
I walked to the kitchen and made breakfast. Toast, eggs, tea. Simple. Unobtrusive. The kind of breakfast that does not ask for gratitude or comment. The kind of breakfast that saysI am here,I am useful,I am not a burden.
Then I saw the laundry basket by the bathroom, full. I began to sort it. Whites, colours, towels. My hands needed a task. Mymind needed the familiar rhythm of service. It was the only way I knew to occupy space without being a burden.
When Maeve emerged from her room and saw me on my knees, organizing her clothes into neat piles, she froze.
