Chapter 22 #2
“Ms. Zee?” Ellsworth’s voice, careful. “May I come in?”
I scrubbed at my face and inhaled shakily. “Yes.”
He entered quietly, taking in the scene with a single glance—my posture, my red eyes, the way grief had folded me inward.
He didn’t comment on it.
He simply pulled a chair closer and sat, giving me space without distance.
“You’ve been very brave today,” he said after a moment.
I laughed weakly. “I don’t feel brave.”
“Few people do when they are,” he replied.
I stared at the floor. “I think I’ve been running from myself for a long time.”
Ellsworth nodded. “Most people do. The fortunate ones eventually stop.”
I swallowed. “Connor … he makes it hard to hide.”
“That is not a flaw,” Ellsworth said. “Though it can be inconvenient.”
That earned a real smile from me, small but genuine.
“May I ask you something?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Do you ever get tired of protecting men like him?”
Ellsworth considered this. “I do not protect Mr. Ward because he needs it,” he said. “I protect him because he has spent his life protecting others at great cost to himself.”
My throat tightened.
“And you?” he added gently. “You are not here because you are fragile. You are here because you are becoming.”
The words settled over me like a blanket.
I hesitated, then asked, “Could I … could I make a call? No cell service in here.”
“Certainly.”
“My mother is in Ohio,” I said. “I haven’t spoken to her in weeks.”
Ellsworth stood immediately. “I’ll arrange it.”
He left me alone again, but this time the quiet felt different. Less hollow. More intentional.
I stood and moved back to the desk, lifting my camera once more. I took a photograph of the room—not everything. Just the edge of the bed and the jacket on the chair. An image of presence without the person.
The almost.
It felt right.
When Ellsworth returned with the phone, I accepted it with trembling hands. I dialed the number I knew by heart, my pulse loud in my ears.
It rang twice.
“Mila?” my mother’s voice, soft and tentative.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice breaking on the word.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Hi, sweetheart.”
And just like that, the distance collapsed.
I sat on the bed and closed my eyes, letting myself be the daughter again. Letting myself speak without filtering, without minimizing.
“I’m still in Paris,” I said. “I’m doing something I love. And it’s hard. And wonderful. And scary.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then, “I’m glad,” she said. “I always hoped you’d live bigger than I did.”
Tears spilled freely now, but they felt cleaner somehow. Lighter.
“I miss you,” I whispered.
“I miss you, too.”
I hadn’t expected the conversation to last long. I never did.
Loving my mother had taught me a particular kind of restraint—one shaped by experience rather than intention.
I’d learned, early on, to approach her gently.
To take her in small doses. To listen for the subtle cues that told me whether today was a day she could be present, or whether she’d drift away mid-sentence, lost in some interior fog I couldn’t reach.
There were days when she was warm and lucid and almost bright, when her voice held curiosity and humor and she asked real questions about my life.
And then there were days when she sounded far away, distracted by an invisible weight, responding just enough to be polite but not enough to be known.
I learned not to push on those days. Not to ask for more than she could give.
Not to take the distance personally, even when it felt like a small, private grief.
So, I approached her the way I always did—with low expectations and a careful heart. Prepared to end the conversation early, if I needed to. Prepared to tell myself that loving someone didn’t always mean staying on the line.
But she stayed with me.
She asked about Paris—really asked. About the light. About the work. About whether I was eating enough, sleeping enough, letting myself enjoy it. She laughed softly when I told her about the residency, about the way the city made room for people to be unfinished without apology.
And for once, she didn’t fade.
Her attention held steady, like she was anchoring herself to the sound of my voice.
I realized then how carefully I’d been loving her all these years. How much of myself I’d learned to withhold in order to keep the connection intact. How being her daughter had trained me to be observant, adaptive, emotionally fluent—but also to accept absence as normal.
Paris had loosened that habit.
Connor had shattered it.
For the first time, I found myself wanting to stay on the line. Wanting to take up space in the conversation. Wanting more than fragments.
And when we finally said goodbye, it wasn’t because the moment had gone thin or fragile—but because it had reached a natural end.
That felt new.
And quietly miraculous.
But I didn’t want to be here alone.
I wanted Connor to come back to me.
Not just physically—though, God, that, too—but in the way that mattered more now.
I wanted to tell him what it had felt like to stand there watching the police take him.
How the street had seemed to hollow out around his absence.
How something in me had panicked not because I was afraid of danger, but because I hadn’t finished saying what I needed to say.
I wanted to tell him details about how I’d felt in my apartment.
About the way seeing my torn photographs had hurt in a place that wasn’t logical.
About how violating it felt to realize someone had touched the private evidence of my becoming.
I wanted to tell him about my mother, about the married professor in college, about the way distance and absence had shaped me long before Paris ever did.
About how loving carefully had once felt like survival.
Most of all, I wanted to tell him what last night had done to me.
How being with him had felt like stepping fully into myself instead of skirting the edges. How his attention hadn’t just awakened desire—it had demanded honesty. How I could feel something in me stretching toward him now, urgent and unafraid in a way I wasn’t used to.
The urge to open up pressed against my ribs, insistent and unfamiliar. I wasn’t used to wanting to be known this much. Wanting to hand someone the raw material instead of a polished version I could control.
I didn’t know if I was brave enough to say all of it yet.
But I knew this: when Connor came back, I didn’t want to retreat into silence or gratitude or careful distance. I wanted to meet him where I was—changed, shaken, wanting.
Wanting him.