where wounds speak

Chapter 2 — The Unspoken

Morning broke beneath a sky the color of lead. The storm had moved on, but its memory clung to the air: gusts carried the tang of salt, and the windows rattled as if refusing to let the night go. Élise moved slowly through the house, trying to impose a semblance of order on rooms that felt more like ruins than shelter.

She had gathered a stack of dusty glasses from a cupboard and set them in the sink. The simple, repetitive act calmed her nerves. She opened a window to let in fresh air, though the cold stabbed her skin. The salty wind swept into the kitchen, bringing with it the briny smell of dried seaweed and the faint cry of gulls.

As she stood there, staring at her hands submerged in cool water, a sharp sound broke the silence: the front door slammed shut with a violence that echoed through the entire house. She froze.

A figure filled the narrow hallway.

Clara.

Her presence struck like a blow. She stood framed in the doorway, tall and rigid, her dark blue uniform still damp from the rain. The cap she wore was snatched off with a quick movement, freeing strands of hair plastered against her forehead. Her green eyes, sharp and unyielding, locked onto Élise’s.

Time seemed to fold back on itself. For Élise, it was as though eight years had vanished in an instant—and yet, the bitterness in Clara’s stare reminded her just how long that time had truly been.

"You didn’t warn me," Élise whispered, her voice trembling, almost apologetic.

Clara’s reply was ice.

"I don’t have to warn you."

The silence that followed was suffocating, thick with everything left unsaid. Even the walls seemed to hold their breath.

Élise’s fingers curled against the sink. She searched for words, but they faltered before they left her mouth.

"I wanted… I thought… to start gently," she murmured, as though offering a fragile excuse.

Clara laughed—short, sharp, without humor.

"Think? You never thought of us. Not of Mom. Not of me. Not of Mathis."

The child’s name cut through the room like a blade. Élise flinched, her throat tightening.

"Mathis… is he well?" she asked, her voice thin, uncertain.

Clara’s jaw clenched. Her words came like strikes against a wall.

"He’s well because I took care of him. Alone. Because I worked, because I fought. While you were gone—tell me, Élise, where were you?"

The accusation rolled through the kitchen like thunder. Each word struck deep, echoing in the hollow place Élise had carried all these years.

She opened her mouth, desperate to defend herself, but the truth was heavier than defense.

"I… I made mistakes. You know what happened at the hospital."

Clara’s eyes flashed.

"Yes. I read the papers. I heard the whispers. But while you were running from your ghosts, I was the one burying our mother. I was the one answering a child when he asked why his aunt never came."

The words landed harder than any storm. Élise’s breath hitched. Her hand trembled as she reached out, a gesture of peace, but Clara recoiled instantly, as though her sister’s touch would burn her skin.

"Clara… I’m sorry."

The words barely left her lips before the silence swallowed them. The only sound in the house was the relentless ticking of the old clock on the wall.

Clara shoved her cap back onto her head, her movements sharp with suppressed rage.

"Keep your apologies," she said, her voice low but vibrating with anger. "I don’t have time for them. I have work to do."

She turned, her boots clicking hard against the floor. At the threshold, she stopped. Her back remained to Élise, but her voice, when it came, was filled with venom sharpened by years of hurt:

"Mathis must not suffer a second time from your absences. Don’t forget that."

The door slammed again, this time with finality, making the glass panes tremble in their frames.

The door’s echo lingered long after Clara had gone, as if the very walls were still vibrating with her anger. Élise remained motionless in the kitchen, her hand still hovering midair where she had tried to reach out. Slowly, she lowered it to her side. Her fingers trembled as though they no longer belonged to her.

The house felt smaller now, as though Clara’s fury had pushed the walls inward, squeezing the air out of the rooms. The silence that followed was not peace—it was suffocation.

Élise leaned against the counter, closing her eyes. She could still see Clara’s face, the way her mouth had curled with contempt, the shadow of rain on her uniform. Eight years. Eight years of absence.

She tried to draw a steady breath, but the air scraped against her throat.

Her gaze fell on the table in the center of the kitchen. For a moment, memory blurred with reality: she saw it covered in steaming bowls of soup, her mother moving from chair to chair, Clara laughing too loudly, her younger self rolling her eyes. For an instant, the room had been alive again. Then it was gone, leaving only the bare wood and the faint tick of the clock.

She pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. The wood creaked beneath her weight. Her palms pressed against her face, trying to block out the sharp words still ringing in her ears: Mathis must not suffer a second time from your absences.

Mathis. The boy with eyes too wide, the boy who should have known her laughter, her presence, not only her absence. Clara had raised him in her place, and the shame of that knowledge gnawed at her like teeth.

Élise’s thoughts drifted to the hospital again—the boy she had lost. One failure had spiraled into all the others: a patient, a career, a family. The weight of that chain of losses pressed hard against her chest until she felt her ribs ache.

She rose suddenly, restless, as though movement could scatter the ghosts clinging to her. She walked into the living room, her footsteps echoing in the emptiness.

There, too, memory betrayed her. The sofa sagged beneath her touch, and she remembered curling up on it as a child, reading while her mother mended clothes beside her. A faint stain on the carpet recalled the time Clara had spilled tea and laughed as they tried to clean it before anyone noticed.

Every object in the house whispered accusations. Every silence was a reproach.

Élise moved toward the hallway, her reflection catching her in the tarnished mirror. The woman staring back was not the sister Clara remembered. Not the daughter her mother had loved. This reflection was older, harder, a stranger to her own past.

She placed her palm flat against the mirror. The cut from the rocks throbbed beneath its bandage, a sharp, honest pain that reminded her she was still flesh, still alive. But the deeper wound—the one Clara’s words had reopened—bled invisibly inside her.

She whispered, almost to herself:

"I don’t know how to fix this."

The mirror offered no answer.

She drifted back into the kitchen, the tick of the old clock filling the silence like a heartbeat. She sat again, folding into the chair as if trying to disappear into it. For the first time since arriving, she let her tears fall. They slipped down her cheeks quietly, without sobs, as if even grief had to be discreet in this house.

Outside, the sea roared faintly in the distance, waves beating against the cliffs. The storm had left behind a residue of restlessness in the air. And within her, that same storm raged, quieter but no less destructive.

Clara’s absence was more painful than her presence. The slamming door still reverberated in Élise’s chest, and she knew that this was only the beginning. The walls of Saint-Lazare held long memories, and none of them were forgiving.

She wrapped her arms around herself, leaning over the table, the tears drying cold on her face. Alone, she whispered one more time, not knowing if she spoke to herself, to the empty house, or to the ghosts it contained:

"I’m sorry."

But the silence swallowed her words, leaving only the relentless ticking of the clock, steady and merciless