I walked up the narrow wooden staircase, every step creaking like a memory. When I reached the door marked 2B, I didn't knock right away. I stood there, listening to the rhythmic, familiar hum of a heavy-duty sewing machine—the exact same sound that had kept me awake during the winter of 2011, when we had forty-seven dollars in our bank account and a dream that felt like madness.
I raised my hand and knocked three times.
The machine stopped. A long silence followed, heavy and suffocating. Then, the latch turned, and the door swung inward.
Isabelle stood before me. She wore a simple charcoal wool sweater, her hair pinned back loosely with a wooden needle. She looked thinner than she had four months ago, the contours of her cheekbones sharper, but her eyes—those dark, perceptive eyes that had always seen through my posturing—were clear and steady. There was no rage in them. No madness. Only a vast, terrifying stillness.
