Chapter Six: Shadows in the Light
599 Words
Adrian didn’t knock—he never did.
He simply texted, **“Downstairs.”**, and Zara let him up.
It was late, nearly 10 p.m., and she was in one of her oversized hoodies and socks with cartoon sushi rolls. She didn’t care. He’d already seen her unravelled. There was no point pretending to be polished now.
He stepped in, hood down, eyes tired.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied.
And then silence. Again.
They were becoming professionals at this—saying everything in what they didn’t say.
Zara moved toward the kitchen. “You want tea or something stronger?”
“Tea’s fine.”
As she boiled water, Adrian hovered by her bookshelf, running his fingers along the worn spines of her poetry collection.
“You like words,” he said, almost to himself.
“They don’t lie as easily as people.”
He nodded.
She handed him a mug—chamomile, no sugar, just heat and honesty.
They sat on the couch. Side by side. Again.
And for once, Zara didn’t dance around it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice soft but certain. “That Lena is your mother.”
Adrian tensed. Slowly placed the mug on the table.
“I figured you’d walk away.”
“I’m not afraid of mess,” she said.
He let out a hollow laugh. “It’s not mess. It’s rot. You can clean mess. You bury rot.”
Zara turned toward him. “What happened between you two?”
Adrian was quiet for a long time. Then:
“She left. When I was eight. Packed a bag and said she’d be back by Sunday. I waited by the window every night that week. She didn’t come. I told myself maybe she got lost. Maybe she needed help. But by the second month... I stopped asking.”
Zara’s heart clenched.
“I bounced between foster homes after that. Some okay, most not. I got good at disappearing. I stopped hoping.”
“She says she tried to contact you.”
Adrian snorted. “A few letters and some therapy books don’t undo a childhood.”
“She says she wants to make things right.”
He looked at her then. Eyes sharp, glassy. “She’s a professional fixer, Zara. Fixing people is how she hides from the ones she actually broke.”
Zara swallowed hard. “Do you want to forgive her?”
Silence.
Then, Adrian whispered, “I want to stop *needing* to.”
Zara reached out and gently touched his hand.
It was the first time she had ever touched him deliberately, outside of a moment of crisis. He didn’t pull away.
“I know what it’s like to carry someone else's choice like it’s your own scar,” she said. “But maybe—just maybe—choosing to let them explain doesn’t mean surrender. It just means you get to set the terms.”
He looked at their hands, then at her.
“You think I should see her?”
“I think… if you don’t, it’ll eat at you. Slowly. Quietly. Like it already has.”
He leaned back, closing his eyes, like her words were sinking into the cracked floorboards of his memory.
After a long while, he said, “If I agree to meet her… will you be there?”
Zara nodded. “I wouldn’t let you do it alone.”
Adrian looked at her again—really looked.
And for the first time, she saw something behind the pain.
A flicker of hope.
- Writer
