Chapter 104

• The sun had begun to lower behind the buildings across the street, casting soft amber light through the windowpanes, bending shadows across the hardwood floor. I did not move from the chair. The archive felt different now. Less like an exhibit and more like a resting breath—one held through decades of creation, loss, and return, now slowly exhaled.
• Julian crossed the room with two mugs of tea. He did not speak, just handed me one and sat in the other chair across from me. His gaze swept the space, pausing on the smallest things: the tilt of a card that had slipped, the open sketchbook someone had left behind, the coat sleeve brushing lightly against the mannequin’s arm. I followed his line of sight and saw it too—this was not stillness from fatigue. This was the hush that comes when something begins to settle into its purpose.
• “She would’ve liked this,” I said after a while.