Questions in the Air, Part 2

Erin found Emi where she always was when the world made less sense than usual: somewhere with leaves overhead and dirt underfoot, a place where every step was half muscle memory and half retreat. Today it was the Forest of Beginnings, which even Erin, who’d spent her life in and out of forests, had to admit was different. She had never been to the Forest before, and saw it stood somewhere between a planetarium and an aquarium, the sky overhead pulsed a permanent pre-dawn, and every tree trunk shimmered as if the ghost of some ancient lightning storm still rattled inside the wood.

The air felt cool even for her, so fresh and sharp she could taste the wet green of the undergrowth with every breath. Emi stood near the first curve of the path, a little frozen, arms folded against her chest. Her black hair picked up the light in streaks of midnight blue, and in the shifting glow she almost looked like a dream of herself—drawn, then erased, then redrawn with more detail. She didn’t turn when Erin approached, but the tilt of her head said she’d known Erin was coming for a while.

Erin stopped beside her, shoes crunching on the crushed spiral grass. Emi, for her part, didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink, just kept her gaze fixed upward at the impossible swirl of iridescence in the sky. Even for someone like Emi—quiet, lowkey, and hard to impress—the place seemed to press on her from every angle. “This place is beautiful.” Erin said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

Emi gave a tiny smile, a slow-motion marveling. “I feel like I’m inside a snow globe. Or maybe an egg. But the shell is made of glass.” Her voice came out whispery, as if talking too loud would crack the world and let it spill.

“Yeah,” Erin said, hands on her hips. “Not my taste, but… it’s got a vibe. You good?”

Emi nodded, but her posture said otherwise. She looked taller than usual, shivering even though the air wasn’t cold enough for it. Her arms, all six of them now, wrapped tight around her ribs in a self-hug, as if she was trying to contain herself. Erin had seen that stance before, in herself and in others: it was the brace you used when a bad feeling was coming and you knew it, but you weren’t sure which direction it was going to hit from.

They stood for a while, letting the silence stretch out until it lost its edge. A hundred yards down the path, a glass fox perched on a log, its eyes blank and reflective. Erin waited until Emi exhaled, then said, “Are you okay?”

Emi didn’t immediately answer, but her arms loosened their grip, and she exhaled, as if relieved not to be alone. “I will be. I had a strange dream tonight.”

Erin wanted to ask what had the dream been about, but something told her Emi wasn’t ready to share yet, so she decided to push ahead with the reason for her visit. “You know why I’m here, right?”

Emi didn’t answer directly. Instead, she reached for a branch and stroked it between her fingers, the motion repetitive and soothing. “Is it about breakfast?” she said, eyes still on the world above.

“It’s about Marissa,” Erin said, flat.

The way Emi’s body stilled told her she’d hit the mark.

“She’s your roommate,” Erin pressed. “She’s never missed a meal since day one. Not unless she was up all night with Andy. So what happened?”

Emi finally looked over, her eyes huge and dark. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not really. Last night, she was… off. She went to the jazz club, and I think she argued with Laura. She came back late, like really late, and when she got in she just stood by the bed for a while, not moving. I tried to say hi, but she didn’t answer. She just looked so—” Emi searched for the word, gave up. “She looked tired. More tired than I’ve ever seen her.”

“She say anything to you?” Erin pressed.

“She said, ‘I’ll talk in the morning,’” Emi recalled. “But this morning when I woke up, she was already gone.” Emi’s hands coaxed the branch, and Erin saw a new shoot appear where she had stroked it. “I think something really bad happened last night.”

Erin considered this, arms folded across her chest, which even she had to admit looked fucking ridiculous given what the transformations had done to her. She didn’t bother with self-consciousness anymore; she hadn’t had time for it since the Au Natural transformation. But she noticed the way Emi’s eyes flicked, briefly, to her bare chest, then away. If Emi was distracted by Erin’s appearance, she didn’t show it much.

“Here’s what I think,” Erin said, her tone going from comfort to diagnostic in a half-breath. “I think Marissa’s been holding everyone else together for so long, she forgot she was allowed to break. We’ve all been taking our turns at crazy, but we always expect her to be the one holding the clipboard and the sedatives.” She realized the metaphor was off, but didn’t care enough to fix it.

Emi’s gaze softened, and she nodded. “She’s good at being strong,” she said, and there was real admiration in the words.

“Yeah,” Erin said, “but it’s a trick. Sometimes the strongest one’s the one closest to getting snapped in half.” She hesitated. “It’s how some of us felt after the Garden.”

Emi let the branch go, her eyes luminous with the same inner fire that glowed inside the tree. “Do you think we did that to her?” she asked.

Erin shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, she is a therapist, but the second she steps out of the office, she’s just another one of us. We forget that sometimes. It’s like… if you’re the only one who knows how to do CPR, nobody else ever bothers to learn. They just hope you never drown.”

That got a laugh out of Emi, a real one, thin and sharp but honest. “She’d hate that metaphor,” Emi said, smiling for a moment.

“Too bad,” Erin said. “She’s not here to correct me.” For a second, the two of them just looked at the odd pulse of the trees, the way the colors bled into each other and back. Erin couldn’t help but wonder if the world was coded to respond to the mood in the room, or if it was always this way—a place built to look both beautiful and on the verge of collapse. “I think we’ve all been using her as a shield.” She said, softly. “Like, if Marissa’s okay, we’re okay. She’s the only one here who can play therapist, so we dump all our garbage on her and pretend it doesn’t matter if she never puts hers down.”

Emi watched her, head tilted.

“I mean, what do we do for her?” Erin said, and realized the answer as soon as she said it. “Nothing. We don’t do a damn thing. I don’t think any of us has sat down with her and asked how she’s feeling. She’ll say something from time to time, like she’s missing her sister, and we’ll make all the appropriate noises, but then we never ask her, we never check in on her. She’s been carrying us since week one, and we just let her. She’s allowed to break, too.”

A breeze swept the path, making the bluebells tremble, and Emi seemed to fold in on herself. “Do you think she’s really broken?” she asked, in a hush.

Erin shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s tough. But even metal bends if you keep twisting it.”

They walked a little farther along the path, and the light shifted—warmer now, with an undercurrent of gold that made Erin’s skin look almost human again, if you ignored the faint green tinge even the golden light couldn’t change. Emi touched a glassy branch overhead, and it rippled, sending little points of light down on them both. “My therapist used to tell me, in college, that the only way to survive was to have a ‘third place’ in your life,” Emi said, out of nowhere.

Erin blinked. “Like, a coffee shop? A bar?”

Emi nodded, a wry smile flickering. “Or the library, or the roof of the student union, or just… somewhere you don’t have to be anyone for anyone.” Emi looked at the glass fox on its perch. “I think Marissa’s never had a third place. Only work and home, and now this.” She shivered a little. “Maybe she needs one.”

Erin thought about it, then about Marissa, her perfect hair and endless patience, and the way she’d started to fray at the edges, just barely, over the last week. “Maybe she needs us,” she said.

They stopped where the path widened into a sort of clearing, the “ground” dappled in shifting blue, the air so charged that Erin almost tasted it. Emi found a spot on a fallen trunk and perched, arms hugging her knees. Erin stayed standing, too restless to sit.

For a while, neither of them talked. Erin looked at the outline of Emi’s profile, her sharp jaw and the cut-glass edge of her cheekbone, and thought about how much she’d changed since the start of this. They all had, physically, mentally, all of it. But what struck Erin most was how Emi had grown from a shadow to someone almost impossible to look away from, even when she was quiet.

Eventually, Emi said, “Do you ever wish you could go back?” She said it so softly, it took a second to register.

“Go back to what?” Erin asked.

“To… before. To how things were before this.” Emi’s hands twisted in her lap, the others holding on for support.

Erin laughed, short and sharp. “No,” she said, and meant it. “I hated myself before. I hated everything. If I went back, I’d just fuck it up the same way.”

Emi nodded, not as if she agreed, but as if she understood.

“You?” Erin asked.

Emi considered, then shook her head. “I don’t think I ever had a before. I was just… waiting for something to start.”

It took Erin a second to realize that Emi was crying. Not big, ugly sobs, just tears sliding down in perfect silence. She looked so peaceful, it was almost as if the crying was a side effect, not the main event.

“I liked the old Marissa,” Emi said, voice steady. “But I like the new one, too. I just want her to be okay.”

Erin reached out, wrapped her arm around Emi’s shoulders, felt the other girl sigh in relief and lean against her a little. “We’ll make it okay,” she said, unsure if it was a promise or a threat.

Emi nodded, wiping her cheek with the heel of one hand, and Erin was struck by the thought that nobody ever comforted Emi, either.

She let herself say something she would have mocked two months ago. “You ever need to talk, you can find me,” Erin said, awkward but earnest.

Emi looked up, and her smile, small and real, made the clearing seem less cold.

“Thanks,” Emi said. “I might take you up on that.”

They walked out together, neither in a hurry to return to the main building. At the edge of the Forest, Erin stopped, then turned to Emi.

“Let’s check the library before lunch,” Erin said. “If Marissa’s hiding, that’s where she’ll be.”

Emi nodded, and together they made their way back, a little less alone than when they started.

Andy walked the outer cliff path that ringed the island’s north promontory, hands jammed in his jacket pockets, eyes on the zigzag horizon where the cloudline mashed up against the brighter blue. The wind was brisk, knifing at his face, and somewhere far below, the surf made a hollow percussion that felt like the pulse of a much larger world. He kept walking. He had started by looking for Sam, but even Mildred didn’t know where she was. So he kept walking, hoping she’d be on one of her hikes. And because sometimes, when the hotel was too crowded with everything that went unsaid, the only way to think was to let his feet go faster than his head.

The conversation with Dawn lingered, both as memory and as sensation—her warmth, the curve of her laugh, the simple rightness of the morning. He tried to hold onto that, but it kept slipping, replaced by the weight of everything else: the odd mood that lingered around, the crackle of old wounds resurfacing, the sense that the house he was building was still just barely balanced, and one good argument might bring the whole thing down.

He came to a spot where the path widened and a crude railing kept you from pitching into the rocks below. Andy leaned into it, letting the sea spray dampen his arms and the sharpness of the moment clear his head. He wondered, not for the first time, how long it would be before he ran out of road, and what he would do when he did.

His mind drifted, as it often did, to Laura: the two-of-her sitting on the cliff bench, eating Swedish Fish with both mouths, the way her anger and sorrow folded perfectly over each other like a page in a book. He thought about Marissa, invisible but present in the morning’s hush; about Chloe, and how she always seemed to be quietly absorbing the moods of the house and transmuting them into something safer; about Liesa, whose chaos was the only reliable constant in a world that otherwise bent to the rules of desire.

He let his feet carry him to the farthest overlook, a finger of stone that jutted out over the drop, the ocean below writhing with light. He closed his eyes for a moment, let the sound and the wind strip away everything that wasn’t essential.

When he opened them, Arabella was standing at his side.

She didn’t announce herself, didn’t even clear her throat or snap the air with one of her usual Host tricks. She was just there, her hair loose and catching the wind, her dress dark and perfect, the lines of her face soft as though she had just woken from a long nap.

"You look tired," she said, her voice easy and almost affectionate.

Andy smiled, not because it was true but because it was a rare thing to be seen so directly. "Didn’t sleep much," he admitted.

"Too many decisions?"

He nodded, watching the waves. "You could say that."

She looked at him, her eyes almost colorless in this light. “How are you, Andy?”

He snorted. “I’m not sure. The last few days have been—” He looked for a word. “Accelerating?”

Arabella’s mouth twitched. “I imagine so. That’s what happens when a system approaches a critical point. Everything speeds up, right until it changes phase.” She let the silence settle, then added, “You look less troubled, though.”

Andy shrugged. “That’s a lie, but thank you.” He traced a nick in the railing with his thumb, thinking how to put the next part. He let the moment breathe. Then, "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

“It’s about the weird flare-ups,” he said. “The stuff that doesn’t fit. Not just the transformations, but the—” He gestured, vague. “The weird. Erin’s flowers. Emi bending trees. The egg. The way Dawn—last night, there was this light, and I smelled—” He stopped, embarrassed by how childish it sounded. “I smelled Dawn’s Abuela’s kitchen. Then a voice, like she was there. And I don’t even believe in ghosts.”

He turned to her, looking for the glimmer of trick or game in her eyes. There was none. "What’s happening to us?"

Arabella listened. Not a flicker of surprise. “You want to know what it means?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Or at least, I want to know if it’s safe.”

She turned to face the ocean, her profile sharp. “I could tell you,” she said. “But not yet.” She looked back at him. “You’re not the only one who’s noticed. Others have as well. But I don’t know what it is—not for certain. I have a guess, but I need to see a little more before I can be sure.”

Andy nodded, but didn’t hide his frustration. "It would be easier if you just told me."

She smiled, sad. "Would it, though?"

Andy frowned. “Can you at least tell me if it’s bad?”

Arabella’s smile was small, rueful. “If it was bad, you’d know by now. For now, just watch. Notice who does what, and when, and how it makes the others feel.” She raised a brow. “That’s your strength, isn’t it? Noticing what everyone else misses?”

Andy shook his head. “Sometimes I think it’s a curse.”

Arabella laughed, low and intimate. “All talents are, if you look at them from the wrong angle.” She brushed a hair from her cheek. “Is that all that’s troubling you?”

He hesitated, then shook his head again. “No. There’s… another thing. Less supernatural.”

Arabella inclined her head, as if granting permission.

“I had a talk with Dawn this morning. And I realized, she wants to marry me. Like, actually marry.” He waited for a reaction, but Arabella just looked at him, steady. “And she’s not the only one. Erin, Claire, Laura—they’ve all said it, or something close to it. And I've said it too. And I know we all mean it. Because they want to be together. With me.” He bit his lip, feeling sixteen. “It feels amazing, but I’m not sure what to do with it.”

Arabella’s eyes softened. “You could say yes,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Or you could say no. But you can’t pretend the world will wait for you to make up your mind.”

Andy looked down. “That’s what I’m afraid of. That I’ll say yes, and then realize I’ve made a mess nobody can clean up.”

Arabella considered this. “Do you want my advice as Host, or as a friend?”

He thought about it. “As a friend,” he said, surprising himself. He looked down at his hands, then at the sea, as if searching for a rulebook written somewhere in the foam. "I don’t know what to do, Arabella. I want all of them."

Arabella was quiet a long time. She traced the line of the wall with one fingertip, the nail painted a color Andy didn’t have a name for. "Did you know," she said, "that in Sumerian law, it was perfectly normal for a man to take several wives? There were rules, of course. There’s always rules. But it wasn’t considered a failing of character—it was, in fact, a mark of abundance, of generosity. The women in those houses weren’t in constant war; sometimes, they even loved each other more than they loved the man." She glanced at him, gauging his reaction.

He said nothing, so she continued. "There are options, Andy. You could wait, let the dust settle, let each of them figure out what they want when the show is over. You could marry all of them at once, make a ceremony of it, a pantheon instead of a hierarchy. Or you could pick one, as an anchor, a first among equals, but still take the others into your house and into your bed."

She paused, her lips quirking. "Or you could do something entirely new. There’s no rule against it, not here. The game won’t last forever. When it ends, you’ll all have to live with the choices you made. Make them wisely."

Andy thought about this, turning the options over. "Wouldn’t it be… unfair? To the first one? Or to the others?"

Arabella’s smile was genuine, if a little sad. "As Dawn is fond of saying, love isn’t a pie, Andy. You don’t run out of it by giving a slice to someone new. Yes, someone will always be first, or closest, or most needed in a moment. That’s true in any family, any house. But you’re not taking scraps and dividing them among beggars. These women are here because they see something in you that calls to them. And you see something in each of them that calls back."

She touched his shoulder, the contact surprisingly warm. "Whatever you do, you must do it honestly. You must let them choose, knowing exactly what they’re choosing. No lies, no gentle fictions."

Andy felt the weight of it, the truth sinking into his bones. "What would you do? If it were you?"

Arabella stared at the horizon, her hair whipping around her face. "I would ask them," she said, voice almost a whisper. "I would lay it out plain, and I would let them decide if they wanted to build something new, together. I would not pretend that one love can erase the others, or that anyone needs to play a lesser part."

She looked at him, eyes bright with something fierce and a little envious. "You are loved, Andy. Not everyone gets that. Don’t waste it on guilt or fear of what it means. Build a house where all of it can live, if that’s what you want."

"What about the world, though? It's not like society recognizes harems."

"You would be surprised," Arabella murmured. "Genet is trying to legalize marriages to multiple people. I prefer to take a different tack. Whatever you choose, if it's done here, it's binding in your world too. None will find it unusual, much as no one will find Erin unusual once she purchases her Reality Adjustments."

For a moment, the world went silent except for the crash of waves below and the shrill cry of gulls overhead. Andy thought about the women—each so different, each drawing something unique out of him, each wanting, in her way, to be at the center of his life.

He thought about what it would mean to have all of them, and whether anyone could carry that much joy without breaking from it.

"I’ll think about it," he said, voice hoarse.

Arabella smiled. "That’s all anyone can do."

She left as quietly as she’d arrived, leaving Andy alone with the wind and the sea and the horizon, endless and unbroken.

Sam and Chloe took their usual spot on the big sun-warmed bench in the courtyard, the one framed by twin oleanders and just far enough from the lunch veranda to hear their own thoughts. Chloe sat with her knees pulled to her chest, the skirt of her dress covering her but just barely, thanks to the un-ignorable physics of her new body. Sam sat slouched, one leg stretched out, sunglasses on, letting the light play over her skin. The quiet was friendly, not ****.

“I haven’t seen Riley all day,” Sam said, peeling an orange she’d filched from the breakfast bar. “You notice that?”

Chloe nodded, her hair falling forward in a perfect honeyed curtain. “She didn’t come to breakfast. I thought maybe she was out running.” Chloe didn’t look up as she spoke, her voice quiet. The sunlight made her hair glow, and for a second Sam just watched her, all awkward limbs and softness.

“She’s not running,” Sam said, popping a wedge in her mouth. “I did two laps around the island before you even woke up, and I didn’t see her once.” She squinted at the far end of the courtyard. “You think she’s hiding? Or just avoiding people?”

Chloe hesitated. “I don’t think it’s about us. She gets like this, sometimes, even before the hotel. Some days she just… needs to be gone for a while.”

Sam considered that. “I get it,” she said. “But it’s weird, right? Every time things go off the rails, Riley just vanishes. Then she comes back like nothing happened.”

Chloe hugged her knees tighter, a faint flush on her cheeks. “I think she’s just scared. Or tired. Maybe both.” Her gaze went distant, and for a moment she looked older than her years.

A shadow fell across the bench. Myra, white cane in hand, found the edge of the stone and sat with a sigh. Her fox tail draped over the seat, the orange fur catching the sun. She didn’t face them directly, but the angle of her ears made it clear she was listening.

“She’s not scared,” Myra said, voice gentle. “She’s just… spent. Like she’s used up every drop and needs to go find a new source before she can be around us again.”

Sam grinned. “You got a Riley-meter now? That’s wild, doc.”

Myra’s lips curled, the barest hint of a smile. “You could say that.”

They all sat for a moment, the hum of bees and the slow, lazy wind the only sounds. Chloe tucked a hair behind her ear. “She always comes back, though,” she said. “Like, right when you need her.”

Sam nodded. “She’s like a cat that way. Disappears for days, then shows up with a dead mouse and pretends it never left.”

Chloe giggled. “I don’t think she’d like being called a cat.”

Myra let out a breath, thoughtful. “I think she’d be fine with it. She knows she’s not like anyone else.”

Sam leaned back, folding her arms behind her head. “I just wish she’d talk to us, you know? It’s like—if you’re part of the group, be part of the group. Don’t just dip out when it gets heavy.”

“Maybe that’s the only way she knows how to do it,” Chloe said, so soft it was almost lost in the breeze.

Myra nodded. “Some people need distance. Especially when they’re hurting.”

There was a long, slow silence.

Chloe said, “I heard her mumbling about ‘the Room.’ Does anyone know what that means?” She looked at Myra, as if expecting her to read the answer from the air.

Myra shook her head. “She never told me. Maybe she just needs a place to be alone.”

Sam shrugged, not hiding her frustration. “We all need that sometimes. But this place doesn’t let you be alone. There’s always someone watching.”

Chloe blushed deeper, glancing at Sam. “I don’t mind being watched,” she said, the words coming out softer than she intended.

Sam grinned. “You sure about that?”

Chloe smiled, caught. “Maybe not by everyone. But by you? I could get used to it.”

Myra laughed, a small, warm sound. “You two are ridiculous,” she said, and Sam agreed.

For a while they just sat, letting the sun work its slow magic. Riley was still gone, but somehow, sitting here with Chloe and Myra, it felt a little less worrying. They would wait, and she would come back, and until then, the three of them had enough sunlight and oranges to last the afternoon.

Eventually, Sam said, “If she doesn’t show by dinner, I say we go looking.”

Chloe nodded. “Deal.”

Myra’s ears twitched, and she turned her face up to the sky. “She’ll be back,” she said.

Marissa sat on the edge of her guest room bed, hands folded in her lap. The room felt both over-bright and stifling, like the glass walls of an interrogation booth. She’d waited until she was certain Emi was gone, then had closed the blackout drapes, but the light found its way through the seams anyway, striping the carpet with relentless gold.

She didn’t move, not for a long time. The argument with Laura replayed in her head on a loop—every word, every moment her voice had gone cold, every micro-expression she’d suppressed and then regretted. Laura’s anger was old pain, the kind Marissa had thought she could handle in others, but not when it ricocheted back and hit her full-****.

You can only ever be a therapist, Laura had said. Not a friend. Not even a real person. The words stung, because Marissa knew—knew—she’d spoken the same things to herself, late at night, when the world was quiet and the mask slipped.

She tried to counter it, the way she did with clients. Reframe the thought. Remind herself of context, of boundaries, of the rules she’d spent her life learning and enforcing. But the defenses crumbled. She had tried to be strong, and it had made her brittle.

She thought of her sister Sarah, and the way Sarah’s pain sometimes overwhelmed Marissa. Not the physical, but the fear—what would happen if Marissa ever faltered? If she stopped being the safe place? There was no answer, and she hated herself for not having one.

She thought of Maeve, and how she seemed to keep her emotions perfectly in check, how her composure never really broke, even with friends. She remembered Maeve’s poise during the visit to Genet’s set, how she had barely let emotions show when she had spoken of Harrison. She had envied her mentor’s ability to compartmentalize, but now she was starting to realize it was just another way to escape. She so desperately wanted to speak with Maeve, to have the older woman make sense of how Marissa was feeling, but even if Arabella and Genet had allowed it, Marissa feared Maeve would be just as lost as she was.

The blackout curtains did a pathetic job of blocking the sunlight. Around the edges of the window, the light **** its way in—thin golden swords slicing the dimness, painting the carpet in jagged, insistent stripes that reminded Marissa of the hospital rooms she used to visit as a teenager. She remembered the smell of disinfectant and the hum of machines, the way time moved differently there, slow and syrupy, every second both vital and meaningless. She had learned how to sit perfectly still then, to compress herself into the smallest possible emotional footprint so she wouldn’t disturb her sister, or the nurses in their soft-soled shoes. It was a skill, a talent even, and she’d carried it with her into adulthood like a badge of honor—though lately, it felt more like a liability.

Now, marooned on the edge of her own guest room bed, she tried to remember how to use that skill for comfort rather than punishment. She placed her folded hands in her lap, palms touching lightly, and counted her breathing until the urge to do something, anything, faded. She looked at the made-up bed, the way the comforter’s surface still held the faint, ghostly outlines of her restless sleep, and the ridges from last night’s sleep still pressed into the duvet. She wondered, for a moment, if she would be missed at lunch. Then decided it was better to be missed than to show up with her composure cracked, unable to fix herself.

She tried to imagine what her old therapist would say, the one who sat stone-faced through every session but had once, in a moment of inexplicable kindness, pressed a candy into her palm after a particularly brutal group therapy. “It’s not about being unbreakable,” she had said, voice dry but gentle. “It’s about how you get up after you’ve broken.” Marissa had nodded, internalized it, weaponized it. She’d gotten very, very good at getting up. She suspected Laura would find that funny, if she could see inside Marissa’s head now.

The trouble was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to get up this time.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the argument with Laura—she did, more than she’d expected, more than she could justify to herself. But the real sting came afterward, in the silence, when she realized that every defense she’d built over the years was still standing between her and the world. She’d gone into the conversation thinking she could finally, finally, try being a person first and a therapist second. She’d been so sure, actually, that it was working. She’d even caught herself laughing—genuinely laughing—with the other women in the dining hall, or while sunning herself on the garden balcony, or in the pool, or having coffee together. It had felt almost dangerous, to let the mask slip. She’d assumed that meant she was making progress. She had not considered that, to the people around her, the mask was still all they saw.

She had seen that Laura was in pain. Not why, but yes, she had seen her hurt. And she had meant to soothe her. But all that had come out of her mouth were the old therapist platitudes, and she knew this wasn’t what Laura had needed at that moment. She hadn’t needed a therapist, she’d needed a friend, or at least someone to listen to her without judgment, and tell her it would all be okay. No emotional homework, no deep discoveries. Someone to tell her “that thing that bothered you? That doesn’t matter. You’re a good person and I can see it in your eyes.” Not someone that asked her how she felt, and then ran with it.

Her mind kept going back to the last few lines of their argument. Had Laura been patronizing, or simply poorly trying to comfort her, then? He’s not going to leave you. I wouldn’t let him. Those words kept circling back in her head, like vultures waiting for a carcass to feast on. She remembered the knife she had unsheathed. Don’t patronize me. Maybe I want someone to pick me, just once, because they couldn’t live without me.

Laura had left, then. She had said, I’m sorry, in that stereo voice of hers, and had walked out of The 88 Club, leaving Marissa alone with her doubts and regrets. Leaving Marissa to realize all the work she thought she had done, had only been an illusion. The thought was so bleak and so precise that it almost made her laugh. Almost.

She got up, eventually, but only to pull the blackout curtain tighter, to wage a small, futile war against the sunlight. She didn’t bother with the lunch bell when it sounded—she’d already decided it was better to be missed than to show up with a visible crack in her composure. They would talk about her, probably. They would speculate. Maybe Andy would try to come find her, or maybe he’d respect the distance. She couldn’t predict which version of him would show up this afternoon, and for once she didn’t want to be the one to manage it.

She considered, for a fleeting moment, the trick she used to use on Sarah when they were both much younger. Back then, Sarah’s pain came in huge, destructive waves—panic attacks, meltdowns, nights spent curled up in the bathtub because the rest of the world was too loud. Marissa had learned to ride out the storm with her, to sit on the tile floor and narrate, in a low monotone, the story of the day: how the morning had gone, what the cat had done, the funny thing the neighbor kid had said. It almost always helped. It was a way of re-making reality, gentle and controlled, until Sarah could step back into it again. Marissa had always wondered if, on some level, she’d developed her entire therapeutic style just to replicate that effect—for herself, for her clients, for anyone who needed it. But now she sat, alone and silent, and found that the trick didn’t work in reverse. There was no one here to say, “It’s going to be okay, and here’s why,” and she wasn’t sure she would have believed it if there was.

She let herself try to cry, just for a second, but the tears didn’t come. Her body seemed to reject the whole concept. Instead, she found herself reciting, internally, the kind of affirmation she would have assigned a client in crisis: All feelings are temporary. You are not your worst moment. Self-compassion is a practice, not a personality trait. The words were hollow, little wooden birds flying in circles, never quite landing. She felt absolutely nothing, which was somehow worse than feeling bad.

After a while, she started counting the things she could hear through the thick hotel walls: the distant clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the low hum of a vacuum in the hallway, someone’s laughter echoing up the stairwell, the brief, sharp bark of Dawn’s voice as she called out to Emi. She tried to remember the last time she’d spoken to anyone without the professional filter in place. The last time she’d confessed something real and unscripted. Was it in college? Or before? Maybe never. Certainly not in the last several years, when even her best friendships were maintained through carefully curated texts and the occasional phone call, voices kept at a safe digital remove. She had always preferred it that way, and now she wondered if that was just another excuse.

Taking off the mask here had felt like a relief, but now she wondered if she had taken it off at all.

She stared at the clock for a while, tracking the slow drift of the minute hand. She sat through the gradual brightening and then dimming of the sunlight as the day rotated past its apex, the shadows bleeding across the carpet in slow, inexorable waves. She tried to imagine what would happen if she just stayed in this room forever. Would they send someone to fetch her? Would Arabella step in, with her trademark blend of empathy and veiled threat, and try to jump-start Marissa’s sense of duty? Or would they just let her stay, another monument to stubbornness, until she faded into the background the way people sometimes did in the old psychiatric hospitals—just another shadow in a long corridor.

She thought about Andy, and for a moment let herself feel the full burn of it—not the clinical, detached version she was so good at, but the messy, real one. She had liked him, and then loved him, and then built an elaborate, ethical scaffolding around that love in order to make it manageable. But the more she tried to civilize it, the less it felt like love at all. She remembered how, in the heat of their first real connection, she’d wanted to be claimed—not as a project or a puzzle, but as a flawed, complicated person. She’d wanted him to see her, really see her, and choose her anyway. Instead, she had found herself acting the part of the safe place, the emotional nurse, and now it was impossible to tell if the longing in her was even real, or just another byproduct of being needed. She knew she loved him, she did. But in the moment, she didn’t know if it was enough.

She sat with that for a long time. At some point, she realized her hands had started to shake, just a little. It was almost funny, the way the body declared a crisis even when the mind refused to cooperate. She tried to channel the energy into something useful: made the bed, then un-made it, then made it again, the movements crisp and mindless. She considered going for a walk, but the thought of running into anyone felt intolerable.

Eventually, she lay down on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. The light had shifted again, the gold stripes now high on the far wall. She wondered if the other women were trading stories about her in the sun-drenched courtyard, if they were guessing how long she would last before coming up for air. Maybe they even cared. Maybe they didn’t. It was impossible to know, and she didn’t trust herself to guess.

She had tried, she had really tried. With Andy, and with the other women to a lesser extent, she had tried to just be the woman, not the therapist. She thought she had made progress. But maybe Laura was right. Maybe Marissa had let herself become only what was needed, and there was nothing left when the need was gone.

It was a strange kind of freedom, to be helpless and admit it.

She let it sit, heavy but honest, and waited to see if anything else would surface.

Laura picked at the edge of a library armchair, not reading, not really even seeing the book on her lap. The library was empty but for the slow movement of dust through the high shafts of light, and the clock that ticked, loud and out of place, somewhere over her shoulder. She had both bodies tucked close—one perched on the seat, the other half-curled on the floor below, forehead resting on crossed arms. She stared into the distance, trying to think nothing, and found herself circling back to the same wound again and again.

She felt the movement before she heard it: Emi’s soft tread, the hush of her sleeve catching on a shelf. Emi sat on the floor beside Laura, close enough for her sleeve to brush the other Laura’s knee. She said nothing, not at first. Just sat there, as if content to pass the afternoon in the quiet, together.

It was Emi’s patience that broke Laura first. The bodies slumped, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Are you here to scold me?” Laura asked, both voices perfectly in sync, marked by exhaustion.

Emi shook her head, hair brushing her jaw. “No.” Her voice was so gentle it barely reached, but it did. “I’m just… here.”

Laura bit back the next question. It was the one she’d asked herself a hundred times—am I always going to be the person who ruins things?—but Emi would only deny it, or worse, explain why she deserved to feel that way. Instead she let the silence fill in, as thick and gentle as the dust motes.

After a while, Emi said, “Do you remember when we used to fight in sixth grade? The worst arguments in the world.”

Laura managed a smile. “I always threw the first punch.”

Emi laughed, arms folded around her knees. “I always cried first.” She let the memory float between them, then added: “But it never lasted. Not even a day. We’d both come back, sorry but not sorry, and start over.”

Laura swallowed. The memory hurt, but in a way that made breathing easier, like loosening a belt that’s been too tight for too long. “I wish I could just… let it go,” she said.

Emi nodded. “Me too. But it’s harder now.” She looked up, her gaze steady. “Maybe because we care more. Or maybe because we know time can run out.”

Laura felt a sting, but it was clean. She looked away, toward the rows of untouched books. “I hated myself for what I said to you. I still do.”

Emi reached out, touched Laura’s hand. “I forgave you the day you died. I just wish you hadn’t had to.” There was no accusation, only sadness. “I cried so much, that first year. I kept thinking, if I had just said I was sorry sooner, maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe you would have stayed over that night, instead of going to the river. Maybe you'd have come to me for advice, and I would have told you, let's go talk with Andy and find out what really happened.”

Laura pressed her lips together. The words stuck, but she **** them out anyway. “It wasn’t your fault, Emi. It was mine.”

Emi smiled, not with her mouth but with her eyes. “We always think it’s ours, don’t we? But if I’d known how much time we had, I’d have spent every second with you. Not arguing. Just… being together.”

Laura blinked, her vision blurring. The confession—so simple and so true—cracked something inside her, but it didn’t break. Instead it let in something warmer.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Laura said. “Even if it’s just for a little while.”

Emi squeezed her hand. “It’s a blessing that you are,” she said, and meant it.

Andy was standing in the lobby, staring at the flat-screen leaderboard with a kind of dazed fascination. The screen refreshed every twenty seconds, sliding the top five Victory Point holders into bold, animated color, then scrolling the rest in a slow, almost taunting crawl. There was no way to know how the points were really calculated, but it didn’t stop people from speculating.

Norah’s heels hit the tile in crisp, rapid clicks, a sound that echoed off the glass and stone and sent Mildred (the ever-present attendant) glancing up from her polishing with a tiny, involuntary twitch. Norah wore a deep violet sheath dress that did wonders for her skin, and shoes that had to be at least six inches, maybe more. She moved with a confidence that belied her small frame, her hair pulled back in a severe twist, every line of her body carved for maximum effect.

She stopped beside Andy, arms folded, gaze flicking to the leaderboard, then to him.

"You look like you’re waiting for the world to end," she said.

Andy blinked, then smiled, embarrassed at being caught daydreaming. "Not quite," he said. "Just trying to figure out how they’re scoring things. It’s not exactly transparent."

Norah looked at him sidelong, eyes sharp but not unkind. "Are you ready?" she said, dropping her voice an octave. It was the question she always asked before a big presentation, before a risk, before a jump. There was an edge of challenge to it—a dare, not a comfort.

Andy nodded, though his hands were tight in his pockets, his posture a little hunched. He knew he wasn’t fooling her. Norah had always seen through him, even when he wished she wouldn’t.

She tapped the leaderboard, her nail making a tiny, hard sound. "You know what happens if you let your guard down?"

Andy didn’t have to ask. He just nodded, the memory of Arabella’s voice still echoing in his head: "Whatever you do, you must do it honestly. You must let them choose, knowing exactly what they’re choosing."

He looked at Norah, really looked, and saw the curiosity in her eyes, the hunger to win, but also the trace of something softer, something like hope.

"You want to walk?" he asked, offering his arm.

Norah hesitated only a second, then took it, her grip light but firm.

"Let’s see if you can keep up," she said.

They left the lobby together, the clicks of Norah’s heels marking the tempo of their progress, the leaderboard flickering behind them in silent judgment.

The evening waited for them, and they were both ready to see what it held.