She got home at four thirty-seven.
She knew the exact time because she looked at her phone when she walked through the door and then turned it face-down on the kitchen counter and didn't look at it again. The penthouse was quiet in the specific way of a space that had been empty all day—the particular stillness of a place that had been waiting.
She didn't open her laptop.
Didn't call anyone.
Didn't move through the apartment with the restless efficiency she usually brought home with her—the emails answered from the kitchen counter, the calls taken from the window, the way she had made even stillness into a form of productivity over the years because stillness without purpose had always felt like a luxury she couldn't afford.
Tonight she sat down on the couch and looked at the city through the floor-to-ceiling glass and let herself be still without making anything out of it.
The city did what it always did. Moved. Lit itself. Continued without her.
She sat with the week.
