Chapter 25 The Night We Met #2
Catherine was quiet for a moment. There were several versions of this answer: the deflecting one, the practical one, and the one dressed up as sentiment. She chose the true one.
"They were the best thing about my day for a long time," she said.
Theodora's throat moved. "They were?"
"Mhm. And then it became our text conversations. Then our calls. And then the dinners. And then it became —" She stopped. "Well. You know what it became."
Theodora set the book down carefully on the desk, the way you set something down when you want to be sure it's safe. Her fingers rested against the cover for a moment.
"I still listen to your recordings most nights,” she said, not looking at Catherine. “There's one from Vienna, maybe five years ago. The audio isn't great, but you can hear the audience during the quiet parts holding their breath."
Catherine remembered that performance. The Musikverein's golden hall, the silence before she'd touched the first key. She'd been at the height of something then, though she hadn't known it well enough to be grateful.
"Did you ever watch the Royal Albert Hall performance?" The question was out before she'd meant to ask it.
Theodora's expression shifted. She looked toward the music room, then back. "I did. After the hospital. But not out of spite or anything like that. I just thought if I watched it, I could come back and honestly tell you that it hadn't changed anything."
"But it did," Catherine said. "And that's why you didn't come back."
"No," Theodora said as she took a step closer.
"It didn't change anything. That's the truth.
" She paused. "I didn't come back because I realized that telling you wouldn't mean anything.
You weren't ready to hear it. You weren't ready to move past what happened in London… I think I understood that, even then."
Catherine was quiet for a moment, her eyes dropping to the book on the desk. Then she said, "I should tell you something. I named the studio. I had a name when you asked me in the coffee shop, I just didn’t tell you.”
"I know you did."
Catherine's head came up. "You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I figured you'd tell me when you were ready." Theodora’s mouth curved. "So, go on. What is it?"
"B-Side.”
Theodora was quiet for a moment. Then a smile moved across her face, "Where the best stuff always is." She shook her head. "I can't believe you remember that."
"I remember everything about that night," Catherine said. "I wasn't sure I was ready to tell you what it meant when you asked. And then I wasn't sure you'd want to know." She paused. "Tonight felt like the right time. I didn't want you to leave without knowing."
Theodora looked at her for a long moment. "It's a perfect name," she said.
The room was still around them. Catherine looked at the book on the desk. At the pale blue cover, worn at the corners.
"There's one note I don't have," Catherine said. "The one you left on my door the morning you moved out."
Theodora covered Catherine’s hand with her own, resting it lightly on the book.
"I came home from a check-up, and you'd gone, just like that." She stopped and took a breath. "I stood in the hallway for a long time before I could go inside."
"Catherine—"
"But I did keep it," she said. "I promise.
I had it inside my medicine cabinet for months.
I looked at it every morning." She could feel the pressure building behind her eyes and didn't try to stop it.
"And then one night it fell into my sink and got wet and it—it dissolved.
Just came apart in my hands." Her voice was steady until it wasn't. "And I had a panic attack on the bathroom floor. Over a piece of paper."
The tears came then, not the crashing waves they used to be but something gentler, something she'd learned to let through rather than manage.
"Hey." Theodora's voice was soft. Her arms came around Catherine, slow and close, her hand moving to the back of her neck to hold her. Catherine's chin found its place against Theodora's temple, and she held on.
"It was just a piece of paper. Why did you have a panic attack over it?" Theodora asked quietly, her arms still around her.
"Because I'd lost the last piece I had of you," Catherine said.
Theodora tightened her grip, and Catherine felt the careful way she did it, like she understood the weight of what she was holding. The press of her lips to Catherine's jaw was tender and wordless and said everything that didn't need saying, and Catherine closed her eyes and let it.
She didn't know how long they stood there. Long enough for the crying to finish the way it did now—cleanly, without the old shame that used to follow it. She stepped back and said, "I've missed you. So much."
Theodora looked at her with an expression that was open all the way down. "Me too," she said.
Neither of them moved. Then Catherine's eyes dropped to the book on the desk, her hand settling against the cover without quite meaning to, and that was the thing that broke the stillness.
Theodora exhaled, something releasing in her shoulders, and reached for her coat from the arm of the chair.
The shift was gentle, unhurried, the natural end of an evening that had already given everything it had to give. Catherine walked her to the door.
Theodora paused with one hand on the frame, half turned, and looked back across the length of the apartment.
"For the record?"
Catherine looked at her.
"I kept your notes, too. Every single infuriatingly wonderful one." She smiled. "Goodnight, Catherine."
"Goodnight, Theodora."
The door closed, and Catherine stood in the quiet of 14D for a moment. Not with the ache she'd carried for seven months. Nor the careful numbness she'd constructed around it. But something lighter than both, something without a name yet, and that was fine. It didn't need one.
One thing she knew for sure, though, was that Mary Stevenson was, without question, the most effective person she had ever met in her entire life.