Isla didn't speak on the walk home.
Not even after Lennox gently said, "You don't have to go," as the social worker stood awkwardly in the doorway of his studio with a manila folder and too many facts.
She just looked at him—really looked—and saw it.
That flicker of panic. The internal unspooling. The boy who had only just learned to breathe in the light now being pulled back under.
So she left.
Not out of fear.
But because he needed space.
And she needed to understand what she was feeling.
Now, in her cottage, she sat at the kitchen table in yesterday's sweater, the one with the unraveling sleeve. Jasper rested at her feet, sensing something was off, letting out a soft whine every few minutes like a lullaby turned sideways.
She stared at the tea cooling beside her. Untouched.
Her thoughts were a chaos of unfinished lines:
He has a child now?
What kind of child?
Why didn't he know?
Does this change everything?
And beneath it all:
Why did this feel like heartbreak when nothing had been broken yet?
Her phone buzzed once.
A message.
> I'm sorry I didn't ask you to stay.
But I couldn't even stay in my own body for a minute there.
Her name is Juniper.
I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do, Isla.
– L
She read it twice.
Three times.
Then typed.
> You're supposed to breathe.
Then you figure out the rest.
We can breathe together, if you want.
He didn't reply right away.
But he read it.
And that was enough—for now.
---
Later that night, Isla wandered back into her grandmother's room.
The one she hadn't touched in months.
Still full of dried lavender, old romance novels, and a faint floral perfume that hadn't faded despite time doing its best.
She opened a drawer and found a stack of photographs.
Her as a child.
Barefoot. Messy-haired. Grinning so wide it cracked the photo's edge.
No bruises. No silence. Just sun.
She ran her thumb over the image and thought of Juniper.
A name like spring.
A name that didn't belong to chaos.
Then she did something she hadn't done in years.
She pulled out a notebook.
The notebook.
The one she used to write in after the bruises. The one with pages torn and rewritten and stained with tea and tears.
She wrote one line.
If he has to relearn how to love, I'll wait while he does.
---
Meanwhile, across town, Lennox Vale sat in the studio alone.
The social worker had left.
Juniper was real.
Five years old.
In foster care since October.
He hadn't known.
But now he did.
And her photograph sat in front of him, heavy in his hand.
She had his sister's eyes.
And his crooked smile.
A sketchbook lay open beside the photo.
He drew her slowly, quietly.
Tiny shoulders. Bright hair. A stuffed fox in her lap.
And below the image, he wrote:
Not just a mural.
Not just a ghost.
A beginning I never asked for.
A reason to stop running.
Then—softly, shakily—he reached for his phone.
> Come by tomorrow?
I need help figuring out how to be a person with a past again.
I'll make the good tea.
– L