PART I: The Return
The train glided through the gray morning, swallowing up the miles as if to help her escape faster. She had taken the train instead of a car so she could flee more quickly.
Catarina watched the landscape roll by without really seeing it. White fields, bare forests, villages still asleep, everything seemed frozen, suspended, like a world that refused to move forward.
She, however, felt as if she were nothing more than a movement.
Leaving was all she had left.
Her fingers played mechanically with the pendant around her neck.
The metal was cold, almost sharp.
She vaguely remembered putting it on before leaving the Ashbourne house, a thoughtless gesture, but now it seemed laden with a thousand meanings she preferred to ignore.
An announcement sounded over the loudspeaker, and the train slowed down.
She took a deep breath.
Her hands were barely shaking, but her throat was burning.
The taste of coffee, the fire in the fireplace, the look she should never have met, it all mingled in her head like a dream she couldn't quite shake.
When she got off the train, the cold hit her like a blow.
She stood on the platform for a moment, unable to move.
The people around her were bustling about, laughing, talking about gifts and family.
She had only one desire: to disappear.
Just for a few hours, a few days, long enough to breathe again.
The taxi dropped her off in front of her house.
Everything seemed strangely small to her.
The gate, the steps, the front door, as if she had returned from another world.
Her shoes squeaked softly, and the silence of the hallway made her shiver.
As she entered her home, she immediately felt the difference.
Here, everything smelled of clean laundry, polished wood, normality.
No smell of wood smoke, no trace of him.
But despite everything, his shadow seemed to have crept into the walls.
She put her suitcase down next to the sofa and collapsed beside it.
Her shoulders slowly relaxed, but her heart refused to follow suit.
She closed her eyes.
Everything replayed in her mind: the front door, his voice, that word he should never have uttered, Catarina.
It was over.
And yet, nothing was really over.
She took off her coat and sat there for a long time, not knowing what to do with her hands.
Her fingers slid over the fabric of the sofa, over the blanket, over the pages of her notebook that she had left there before leaving.
Each object seemed to belong to a previous life.
A life she had left without realizing it.
She opened the notebook.
The last lines were from a week ago.
Simple, mundane words:
"Tomorrow, I'm going to Althea's house. She says her father promised to stay for Christmas. Maybe it will do me good."
She remained frozen on the page.
Then she burst out with a dry, strangled laugh.
A joyless, breathless laugh.
No, it hadn't done her any good.
It had destroyed her in a way she didn't yet understand.
She closed the notebook and jumped up.
Her whole body was shaking.
She walked to the window.
Outside, the snow was still falling, the same as at the Ashbournes', the same as the day before.
The same world, but not the same her.
A familiar sound made her jump.
The coffee machine.
She had turned it on without realizing it.
She approached it, poured the black liquid into a cup, and brought it to her lips.
But the taste hurt her.
It was the taste of the mornings when he waited for her, the taste of their silences.
The taste of the first time it all began.
She put down the cup and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
No tears. Not yet.
Just this immense, overwhelming fatigue that left her feeling empty.
She crossed the hallway to her bedroom.
The unmade bed awaited her, the sheets cold.
She let herself fall onto it.
The ceiling spun gently above her.
And for the first time in a long time, she felt reality catching up with her.
It wasn't a nightmare.
It wasn't a dream.
It was the consequence.
Silence closed in around her.
A heavy silence, almost alive.
And in that silence, a single thought came back, over and over again:
He looked at me as if he knew me before he even knew me. And now he'll never look at me again.