The next morning, the Ashbourne house seemed suspended between two heartbeats.
Catarina wasn't sure she had slept. Maybe an hour. Maybe not at all. Beyond the tall windows, the sky had turned a milky white.
Outside, the snow was falling again, slow, soundless, as if the night refused to die completely.
She lay there for a long time, eyes open, listening to the house breathe. The creak of wood. The sigh of wind. The silence of a place carrying too many secrets.
She remembered. His gaze, by the fire. The murmur of her name in his voice. And those piano notes, played like a forbidden prayer.
Catarina sat up abruptly. She didn't want to think about it, but her body remembered before she did. Her throat tightened. Her hands trembled.
She pulled on a sweater, tied her hair back, and forced a smile at the mirror. The reflection staring back seemed foreign, the same features, but eyes heavier, older.
Downstairs, the house was already alive. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Light voices, almost ordinary, drifted from the kitchen.
"Catarina? You're awake?"Althea's voice. Soft, familiar.
Catarina inhaled, pushing the emptiness away.
"Yes… I'm coming."
She walked down the stairs slowly, as if each step might anchor her a little deeper in this reality she hadn't chosen.
Althea was waiting at the table, hair tousled, cheeks flushed from the cold. In front of her, a steaming mug. The scent of hot chocolate filled the room.
Across from her, Sylus sat reading the newspaper. Nothing extraordinary, except that the world had shifted the night before.
"Good morning, Catarina," he said, without looking up. That voice, still the same, calm, controlled, almost gentle.
"Good morning, Mr. Ashbourne," she replied.
The word cut deeper than it had the night before. She felt him, too, flinch ever so slightly.
Althea smiled, blissfully unaware. She spoke of everything, and nothing, the Christmas dinner they'd prepare together, the weather, the snow, the music.
Each word sounded like a fragile shield, a thin veil laid over what couldn't be said.
Catarina nodded, answering automatically.
Sylus's silence, however, filled the air, heavy, dense, perceptible only to her.
At one point, he looked up. Just briefly. A fleeting glance, a thread stretched tight between them.
And in that suspended second, Catarina understood.
The past doesn't disappear. It grows quiet. It waits. And sometimes, it chooses to return, at the cruelest possible moment
.