Chapter one hundred and twelve

Chapter one hundred and twelve
Vivienne & Emeline

The house has grown too quiet.

Even the wind outside seems muted, as though the walls have thickened overnight. Vivienne sits in the chair by the window, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles blanch. Emeline lingers in the doorway, hesitant, watching her stepmother’s stillness.

“Why won’t you look at me?” Emeline’s voice is soft, stripped of its usual defiance.

Vivienne doesn’t answer at once. Her eyes track something far off, something Emeline cannot see. A memory. A shadow. Perhaps both. Finally, she exhales. “Because I’m afraid of what I’ll see.”

The words land heavy between them.

Emeline crosses the room and sits on the floor at Vivienne’s feet, folding herself small, like she used to as a child. “Do you think I’m—” she falters, biting down on the word—“broken?”

Vivienne’s hands tremble. She wants to reach down, touch the girl’s hair, reassure her, but her body resists the gesture, as though affection itself has become dangerous. Instead, she whispers, “You are not broken. You’re carrying pieces of too many lives, too many secrets. No one could bear it without splintering.”

Emeline tilts her face upward. In the fading light, her features are both hers and someone else’s, flickering like two images struggling to occupy the same frame.

“Sometimes,” Emeline says, “I don’t know which face is mine. I wake up and feel like I’ve stepped into someone else’s skin.” She swallows, her voice tightening. “Do you ever feel that?”

Vivienne closes her eyes. The answer is yes. Every morning since Edward’s death, she has woken with the weight of another woman pressing into her. A woman she once was, or a woman she never managed to be.

“Yes,” she admits.

For a moment, they are bound in silence, neither daring to breathe too loud, as if their fragile agreement could shatter.

Then Emeline leans her head against Vivienne’s knee, the way she hasn’t in years. The gesture is small, almost childlike, but it carries the weight of a plea. Vivienne’s hand hovers in the air, uncertain, before settling gently on her stepdaughter’s hair.

Her fingers tremble, but they stay.

The two of them remain like that as the dark folds around the house, each unwilling to move, as if to shift would wake something lurking just beyond the walls.