I laugh softly. “You’re very efficient.”
“It’s effective.”
“Is that what this is?” I gesture vaguely around the room, the house, the invisible architecture holding everything in place. “Effectiveness?”
“It’s control.”
“That’s a better word.”
He leans back slightly in his chair. Not relaxing, just recalibrating distance. “And you chose to remain inside it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I tilt my head. “You don’t know?”
He smirks a little. “I want to hear you say it.”
I take another step forward. Now I’m close enough to see the faint line of tension in his jaw, the stillness he maintains when something matters.
“Because leaving ends it,” I say. “Whatever happened to my father becomes a story told by men who benefit from telling it that way.”
“And staying?”
“Gives me proximity.”
“To what?”
I hold his gaze. My pulse jumps again, harder this time, like my body understands something before I do. “To you.”
Something shifts in the air.
“You think I’m the answer,” he says.
“I think you’re the system.”
“And you intend to dismantle it.”
“No.” I smile slightly. “I intend to understand it.”
“That’s not safer.”
“I’m not here to be safe.”
“No,” he says quietly. “You’re not.”
Electricity presses in, the space between us narrowing without either of us moving yet.
“You’re making adjustments,” I say. “The house changed after he left.”
“It always changes.”
“Not like this.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“Why?” I ask.
