She was smaller without twenty people around her.
Not smaller in presence, her presence was extraordinary, the specific gravity of a person who had spent decades being the most important variable in every room she entered. But humans scaled in a way the street view had not conveyed.
She stopped at the edge of the circle and looked at the half dissolved anchors and at Senna working her quiet perimeter and at me sitting cross legged in the center, and her expression moved through several things quickly before settling on something that was not what I expected.
Regret.
Not guilt. Not defeat. Something more specific, the regret of someone who had chosen the fastest route to a good destination and was now watching someone else take the better road.
“It is not too late to stop,” she said t
