SOFIA
I didn’t go to dinner the next night.
Not because I wasn’t hungry, my stomach was a hollow, aching knot but because I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting across from him in that oppressive silence, pretending that nothing had shifted. I didn't want to watch the deliberate way he cut his meat or the way his eyes tracked my every movement like I was a data point on a graph. I was tired of being an equation he was solving in real time.
Clara knocked at the usual time. The sound was rhythmic, identical to every other night.
“Dinner is ready, Miss Russo.”
“I’m not coming,” I said, not moving from my position by the window.
A pause followed. It was longer than usual, a tiny glitch in the house’s perfect, mechanical clockwork. I could almost hear her processing the deviation from the
