Chapter 222

• I woke to silence that first morning without Julian. It was not the peaceful silence of a slow Sunday or the soothing quiet of the boutique after the lights had been switched off at night. It was a different kind of silence, one that carried a sharp edge, reminding me of the absence that had taken his place beside me. The sheets were cool where he had usually been, and I lay there longer than I meant to, tracing my hand over the empty space, as if I could still find the heat he had left behind.
• The boutique waited for me downstairs, but I lingered at the table with my coffee, letting it grow cold. I had always known this day would come, the moment when his overseas project would take him away. We had prepared for it with calm voices and steady words, promising to write, promising to call, promising to carry each other in the spaces where we would not meet. Yet preparation does little to soften reality. I felt the distance the moment the front door closed behind him, and it had only grown louder with each passing hour.
• At the boutique, life did not pause for his absence. Orders came in, clients arrived, fabrics needed cutting, fittings needed to be scheduled. I walked through the space slowly that day, running my hand along the racks, adjusting a dress that Simone had left perfectly aligned, smoothing the collar of a coat that Claudia had checked twice before she left. Their departure still weighed on me too, another kind of absence layered upon this one. The boutique had always been our shared space, alive with their laughter, their sudden arguments about which shade of fabric better suited a design, their steady voices telling me to eat when I forgot. Now it was quieter, and though Lena still carried her brightness, even she seemed to pause sometimes, as if listening for the echoes of what had once been.