(Kaelen)
She finds me in the garden.
I'm not hiding — I'm just outside, in the early morning before the house is fully awake, sitting on the stone bench near the rose wall with coffee I've been holding long enough that it's cold. I've been thinking about last night. The push-away. His hand still warm on my jaw even after I put space between us. The things still in the yets.
I hear her footsteps on the garden path before I see her. Measured. Deliberate. The walk of someone who has decided something.
Seraphine stops a few feet away. She's dressed for travel — coat, bag slung over one shoulder. She's leaving today. That was the arrangement, or the implication of it; she came to see, she's seen, she has no claim on this house and she seems to know it.
She looks at me for a moment.
"May I
