Chapter 36Ingrid. Mid January, Five years ago
INGRID. MID JANUARY, FIVE YEARS AGO
Since leaving New York, the holidays had drifted past in a blur.
Christmas lights flickering on strangers' windows, the countdown to midnight whispered through a screen.
It all slipped by like background noise to a life she no longer felt part of.
Days bled together, muted and weightless, as if she were living behind glass. Watching. Untouched. Unmoved.
But the airport stayed with her. That moment cleaved through the haze like a blade.
The plastic chair biting into her spine.
The sterile sting of disinfectant. The murmur of distant voices and flight calls that barely registered.
And her thumb, trembling, hovering above the power button.
One breath. One press. The screen went black. Silence. She didn’t want to be found.
Her flight to Paris was delayed for hours, but she barely noticed.
She sat motionless, staring at nothing. The numbness had seeped into her bones, thick and suffocating.
Her mind kept looping through the chaos like her brain was trying to reorder the pieces, to make sense of something that refused to make sense.
The fall. The crack of the stage beneath her body. The rush of pain. The silence that followed. She had never fallen before. Never in front of an audience. Never during a performance.
Weston’s hands had slipped. Or maybe he had let them. It didn’t matter. Either way, she was the one who hit the floor. The one who had to be carried off the stage while the spotlight kept burning.
But it wasn’t just the fall that left her broken. It was Beck. It was the subway platform. It was the way he had looked at her like she was already gone.
And when she landed in France and finally turned her phone back on, her heart stuttered. No missed calls. No messages. Nothing. Just a blank screen. Silence, loud and cruel.
She told herself she hadn’t expected anything. That she was done hoping. That she had let go the second she walked away. But part of her had still waited. Waited for him to prove her wrong. Waited for him to show up. To say something. Anything. But his silence said everything.
She had been wrong.
She’d believed in them. Believed they had something real, something worth fighting for. But now, she couldn’t find the strength to fight anymore. And clearly, neither could he. He had let her go. Stood there, motionless, like it didn’t destroy him.
What had been the point of chasing her to the station if he was just going to watch her leave?
She couldn’t shake the image of his beautiful, bleary eyes. The way he had looked at her like she was already slipping away. And maybe she was. Maybe she had always been something he reached for but could never quite hold on to.
So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She buried the pain beneath muscle memory. Threw herself into ballet like it was the only thing keeping her alive. Rehearsals, drills, corrections, sweat. There was no time to think. No room to remember.
She stayed late during the intensive, pushing her body until it trembled, until every muscle screamed and her mind finally, mercifully, went quiet. She trained past the point of pain, past the point of thought, until she was too exhausted to feel anything at all.
And the hosting ballet company noticed: her unshakable focus, the way she moved like she was chasing something only she could see.
They offered her a full-time position and accepting it meant leaving Juilliard.
Once, that choice would’ve felt impossible.
But now? It didn’t bring regret. It brought relief.
Walking away from a place that had once meant everything felt less like giving up and more like peeling off a version of herself she no longer recognized.
Maybe it made her a coward to run, to put an ocean between herself and the possibility of seeing Beck again.
But bravery hadn’t gotten her far.
She’d been brave when she kissed him in the subway. Brave when she let herself fall headfirst into the chaos of him. Brave when she confessed her feelings. Brave when she let herself believe.
And what had it brought her? Broken promises. A silence that echoed. A heart too battered to beat the same way again.
So she didn’t just walk away from him. She slammed the door. Without hesitation. Without looking back. Not because it didn’t hurt but because she decided it wouldn’t. Because it had to stop hurting.
She stepped into her mother’s apartment and was immediately hit by the scent of cigarettes and expensive perfume. It was a cocktail of memories she had spent years trying to outrun.
On the narrow balcony, her mother stood poised like always, cigarette nestled between two long, manicured fingers. Her blonde hair, swept into a perfect chignon, hadn’t moved an inch despite the breeze.
Ingrid closed the door behind her, the soft click echoing in the stillness.
Her mother turned her head slowly, smile curving like a blade. The kind of smile meant for cocktail parties and press junkets. Not daughters.
"Ma chère," her mother purred in her put-on Parisian accent, shifting slightly. Smoke curled lazily from the cigarette between her fingers. "How was practice?"
Ingrid’s movements were mechanical as she dropped her bag by the door. Her shoulders ached, her feet were raw. "I was offered a full-time position at the company."
"Good," she said briskly, stubbing out her cigarette in the porcelain tray beside her. "Finally, you can stop wasting time on that ridiculous dance program and focus on something real."
The words sliced clean through Ingrid, but she didn’t flinch.
There had been a time when a comment like that would have gutted her. When she would twist herself into impossible shapes, starving for approval that never came. When she would replay every conversation for days, wondering how she could have been better, quieter, more perfect. But not anymore.
Now, her mother’s praise, if it could even be called that, rang hollow.
And the strangest part was that Ingrid didn’t care.
Not in the way she used to. She was tired of the games.
Of the criticism packaged as concern. Of chasing after someone who only loved the version of her that was easy, polished, convenient.
"Yes, Mother," she said flatly, her voice devoid of warmth. "You finally got your way."
Her mother’s brow twitched, just a flicker, the only crack in her otherwise polished veneer. "Watch your tone," she warned, straightening her spine like she could still command obedience through posture alone.
"Or what?" Ingrid shot back, her voice low and tight, sharpened by years of swallowed resentment. "You’ll walk away?"
A charged silence dropped between. Her mother blinked, lips parting, then pressing back together in a thin, controlled line. Without another word, she stepped back inside from the balcony, tightening the belt of her silk robe.
"You’re being dramatic," her mother said, her tone cool and clipped as she turned her back and walked toward the kitchen, dismissing the moment like it was nothing more than a smudge on her immaculate countertop.
Something inside Ingrid fractured.
She stared after her, numbness giving way to heat. She didn’t have the energy anymore, not for pretense, not for her mother’s evasions.
Her voice, when it came, was cold steel. "Were you planning to move to Paris before you found out I was cutting, or did that just make the decision easier?"
The words sliced through the air. Her mother froze, one hand still gripping the doorframe. But she didn’t turn around. Of course she didn’t.
And for once, Ingrid didn’t drop her eyes.
"Ingrid," her mother said sharply, like the name itself was an offense. "We are not dredging that up again."
"No. We never did in the first place," Ingrid said, the bitterness rising like bile. "You didn’t want to ‘dredge’ anything. You just left. You ignored it. You ignored me. You pretended it wasn’t happening because it made you uncomfortable."
Her voice cracked, sharp and trembling, but she didn’t stop.
"I was bleeding out right in front of you. And you walked away."
Her mother still wouldn’t face her. Her knuckles whitened against the frame. Her silence was louder than shouting.
"You cared more about keeping up appearances than about what I was going through," Ingrid said, her voice tight with hurt. "It was always about how my pain made you look, how it disrupted your perfect world. I was falling apart, and all you saw was the mess you didn't want to deal with."
Her mother finally turned, but her face remained untouched–cool, composed, distant. A mask Ingrid had known her whole life.
"I didn’t understand," she said flatly. "How someone like you, so beautiful, so talented, could destroy herself like that. It made no sense."
Ingrid flinched. But the pain only fueled her.
"That’s it?" she hissed. "That’s all you ever saw–my looks, my performance. Not me. Never me. Just your little ballerina in a box."
Her mother’s expression wavered, just slightly, but she didn’t speak.
"You left me!" Ingrid shouted. "You ran off to Paris and pretended I was fine. You left me to pick up the pieces, alone. And I almost didn’t."
Her mother looked away.
"I’m not responsible for your emotions," she said, as though reciting a line from some cold, polished manual on detachment.
Ingrid laughed, harsh and strangled. "No," she said. "You’re just responsible for the silence. For making me believe I wasn’t worth saving."
She swiped at the tears on her cheeks, her chest tight with the years she’d swallowed.
"But I’m done," she whispered, then louder–stronger, steadier, like it mattered that she said it. "I’m done chasing scraps of love from someone who never wanted to give it. I won’t be your collateral damage anymore."
Her mother opened her mouth, but Ingrid stepped back.
"No," she said, her voice soft but immovable. "You don’t get to speak anymore.”
She met her mother’s gaze without flinching, silencing her, for once.
Ingrid packed her life into two suitcases and walked away from the mausoleum of silence and shame that was her mother’s apartment.
She rented a small place near the Seine. The walls were scuffed, the floors groaned with age and history. Nothing matched. Nothing sparkled. And yet, to Ingrid, it was liberation.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers.
On her first night, she stood by the window, watching the city lights ripple across the river like shattered glass.
Paris was supposed to be magic, meant for lovers and artists, a city of reinvention. But as she looked out, it felt distant. The romance of it all belonged to someone else. The beauty didn’t welcome her. It mocked her.
She thought of all the years spent contorting herself into something her mother might approve of, polished, perfect, poised. The endless hunger for scraps of affection that never came.
She didn’t need her mother’s approval anymore. She didn’t need anything from her. She had a spot in a company, and was making her own money. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to carve out her own space.
Her thumb hovered over Beck’s name on her phone, the familiar letters like a sore spot she couldn’t stop pressing. She wanted to hear his voice, just for a second. But what would she even say? What could he possibly say?
He hadn’t called. Hadn’t tried. Hadn’t fought for her. And maybe that was her answer. She didn’t need anything from anyone.
With a breath, she turned off her phone, slipped on her coat, and stepped into the night. The city buzzed around her, laughter spilling from cafés, music drifting from cracked windows, lovers leaning into each other like the world beyond them didn’t exist.
She walked aimlessly, letting the city's heartbeat pull her forward. But wonder never came. Only an ache, a quiet rattle inside her chest. The streets, the art, the life, it all slipped past her like water through her hands.
A café window caught her reflection. The eyes staring back were fractured—fragments of a girl held together by resolve, stitched with grit where gentler seams had torn. She had come for the ballet intensive. For a fresh start. A chance to begin again, to breathe a little easier.
But even in this new place, with everything ahead of her, she knew: some ghosts don’t keep their distance; they follow without footsteps, always a whisper behind.