The child was drawing, always the same thing.

Circle.

Circle.

Circle.

Something was tugging on her sleeve, she ought to ignore it; she didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. She didn’t want to do anything but drawing. The noise around her was paralyzing when she had spent so much time in silence. It helped to focus. Still, something was tugging on her sleeve, with more and more strength. She found it strange. She never thought the world would find her here.

Since when was she reachable ?

“Sissy.”

An authoritative voice, louder than the rest. She flinched. She recognized it was calling her without recognizing the name.

“Be a little kinder, you’re breaking his heart.”

Sissy slowly raised her head from her drawing. The nun that was speaking wasn’t looking at her, but at her side. Instinctively her eyes followed her gaze; then fell into his. As black and deep as unknown seas. A primordial cry got stuck in her throat as tears swelled up in her eyes. The boy looked back at her with silent stubbornness. She got away from him hurriedly like she had touched a big spider, sobbing. The nun was dumbfounded.

Sissy ran to her.

“What’s with you all of a sudden ?”

Sissy was crying too hard to answer. The boy was watching all of this without an ounce of hurt, but a slight annoyance at the fact she had gotten away. He stood up and followed after her. Now it was Sissy hugging the nun’s legs, and the boy hugging Sissy. It made for a rather strange picture. The nun didn’t know what to do.

“Sissy ? What’s happening ?”, she asked.

Under the boy’s hug, Sissy slowly stopped crying. The warmth on Sissy’s back was both familiar and terrifying. Comfort and fear, both safe and found, but she never thought the world would find her here.

Here ?

Where was she ?

The woman comforted the child as she could. Sissy was slowly calming down, or so it seemed; shock was painted all over her face. She couldn’t remember where she was, exactly, or where she used to be. The same familiar warmth was still stuck to her, and despite the limbs holding her being so frail, she didn’t feel like she could get out of this embrace without brute force. But she didn’t have that. The nun kneeled to wipe her tears away, asking her what was wrong again. Sissy didn’t really know. She was just in pain. She wanted to scream; but she didn’t want anything whispering back to her, trying to calm down her anger. She was scared of the noise of her own heartbeat, and those made by the friction of her clothes against her skin. It was all too obvious; to be found is to be dead, and she’d die any minute now.

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She stood still in front of this tragic fate.

But time moved past it, like it was but a child’s delusion.

She was picked up, put back in front of her drawing. It felt like they were mocking her. She touched the drawing, the manifestation of her longing, knowing the shell broke when she was asleep. Her hands were clumsy, and so was everything about her. The little control she had had over her life was gone. It felt like another thing to grieve, and she was getting tired. Still, the warmth of another child wouldn’t leave her side. He was looking at her like newborns look at people; without blinking, just straight up staring. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t know how to express it.

She hadn’t spoken in a long time.

So when the woman came and kneeled in front of them, she didn’t say a thing. Anne spoke alone, because she didn’t care for answers, she just wanted to interact with the children. There was something she loved about the way these two held to one another, something she was envious of, maybe. As a child, she had wished for this kind of fate, to find a soul so close to hers she couldn’t bear to be apart. But her mother had told her : you don’t want to burn your whole life down for a man, and passion sparks like a forest fire. You’ll breathe in ashes before you see the flame. Instead, she was breathing in dust. Her house was spotless, there was nothing to do. Her husband hated chaos, so he hated pets; he wanted control, so she relinquished it in the hours he’d come home. The rest of the time, he wouldn’t know where she was or with who. It didn’t matter as long as it didn’t come back to him as gossip. Sometimes she wanted to brew up a storm, be the eye of it. She’d imagine how to ruin the life Peter had so carefully crafted from her soft and boneless obedience, she always thought it wouldn’t take much. She was hiding her spine, like all great wives. She put it in the same drawer where she put her jewelry, rocks and pebbles he’d gift her at every anniversary - like clockwork. Never anything else, because he didn’t know her taste - didn’t care to find out - and he needed something with an obvious price tag on it. Success needs money more than money needs success, and he needed her more than she cared for him or the children.

Oops.

She said it.

Deep in the quietness of her mind, in the middle of the night, she said it. She tried to swallow the laughter that came after, and the confession with it; choked on both. He almost woke up, and that would have been funny. But instead he groaned and turned away, her back to her. That man never knew the shadow he’d cast on her face every time he’d do anything. Hate wasn’t quite it, no, it was something deeper like an old curse. He was a soul she wanted to wrap herself around, in hopes of suffocating it. There’s closeness in that, isn’t there ? Maybe that’s why she believed it was love at first. Because she did. She did believe there would be love and joy there, in the very beginning of their relationship.

This marriage had been crueler to her than it had been to him.

As such, it was only justice.

That’s what she thought as she left one day without a warning. She took back her spine from her bedside table, she left the jewelry there. Kissed the children one last time then left them with the nanny. She said she’d be back at noon after her nail appointment. She wasn’t. Nobody in this town ever saw her again, but the consequences of her disappearance whistled like wild winds through the trees. The storm toppled him over like he was just but a skittle. Years later, he’d only thank her for one thing, and one thing only : to have avoided him prison by telling her mother of her plan to leave the month before. Some people still didn’t believe he didn’t have a hand in her disappearance, and it’d drive him mad. He had no reason to harm his wife, he loved her. He kept screaming it.

“I loved her !”

Somehow, as he kept saying it, one day he realized it had become true.

She was more desirable gone than she had been naked in his bed. He thought : absence really makes the heart grow fonder, uh - like an idiot. He believed he was realizing the depth of their love now that she had left, while still blaming her for everything under his breath. The truth is he was only capable of loving people that hurt him, because pain committed them better to his memory than shows of affection ever did.