Through the glass, he saw bolts of fabric stacked against one wall, a dress form draped in gray muslin, and a woman standing behind the counter with her head bent over a sleeve.
She was singing.
Elias stopped so abruptly that a passerby cursed behind him.
It was the melody.
Older now. Slower. Not the roof song exactly, but the same heart moving through different weather.
He opened the door.
A bell rang.
Mara looked up.
The song died in her throat.
For several seconds, they stared at one another like survivors from opposite sides of a disaster.
She was still beautiful, but not in the careless way memory had preserved her. She was thinner. Stronger. Her hair was pinned severely at the nape of her neck. There was a small burn mark near her wrist, a needle tucked into her cuff, and a ring on her finger.
Elias saw the ring and felt something inside him give way.
“Mara,” he said.
Her face changed when he spoke her name. Not softened. Not hardened. Changed, as if the sound had touched a bruise she thought had healed.
“You should not be here.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She came around the counter slowly. “Because you always knew things in theory. Hunger. Risk. Shame. You could explain them beautifully. Living with them was different.”
He deserved every word.
“Yes,” he said. “It was different.”
She looked toward the street, perhaps to see if anyone had noticed him. Perhaps to keep from looking at him too long.
“I am engaged.”
“Madame Fournier wrote that.”
A flash of pain crossed her face. “Of course she did. That woman never could leave a wound unpressed.”
“Is he good to you?”
Mara laughed once, without humor. “That is a cruel question when asked by the man who was not.”
Elias lowered his eyes.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “He is good. His name is Luc. He owns a bookshop. He asks before touching my hand. He remembers when I dislike olives. He did not vanish.”
The last sentence hung between them.
Elias reached into his coat and took out the brown wrapping paper.
“I have no defense,” he said. “Only this.”
Mara did not move.
“What is it?”
“You know what it is.”
Her hand trembled before she could hide it. She took the paper carefully, as if accepting something that might burn her, and unfolded it.
The melody stared back at her in Elias’s small, precise hand.
A sound escaped her. Not a sob. Something smaller and more private.
“You kept it?”
“It kept me.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
There it was, finally. Not the girl from the roof. Not the woman with another man’s ring. Both at once. Hurt and longing and fury braided so tightly that Elias knew no apology could untangle them.
“I waited,” she said.
“I know.”
“No, you do not. You imagine waiting as a clean thing because men make poems of it. It was not clean. It was humiliating. I listened for your step until I hated every staircase. I defended you until I sounded foolish even to myself. I wrote to you once.”
Elias went still.
“You wrote?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do not.”
“Mara, I never received it.”
She turned away, pressing the folded paper to
