[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/260611/ec618e6b.png[/img] [color=#B77B89]_________________________________________________________[/color] [sup][color=#B77B89]_________________________________________________________[/color][/sup][/center] [indent][color=#c0c0c0]Cedar Grove was the kind of neighborhood that took quiet pride in its own orderliness. [/color] [color=#c0c0c0]The townhomes sat in neat rows behind iron railings, window boxes still holding the last of the season's colour, the streets wide enough that two cars could pass each other without either driver holding their breath. Sienna had grown up here. She knew every pavement crack between the bridge and her parents' front door, knew the particular way the light fell through the oak trees on a Friday morning when the rest of the city was still deciding what kind of day it wanted to be.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She’d hailed a cab from her apartment, and the driver had inadvertently taken the long way over the bridge. Normally the ride was a breezy 20 minutes, but today, it had taken upwards of 35, which she didn’t seem to mind.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She hadn't called ahead and her mother answered the door with the expression of someone who was pleased and slightly suspicious in equal measure - the particular combination Sienna had been navigating her entire life.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Sienna."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]A brief assessment, the kind her mother had never quite learned to make less obvious. [/color][color=#6580b8]"This is a surprise."[/color] [color=#b77b89]"I had the morning,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna explained, which was true, as well as succinct.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her mother held the door open. [/color] [color=#6580b8]"Come in then."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]The house smelled the way it always had - fresh flowers in the foyer and living rooms, coffee already made, along with the faint suggestion of something baked earlier in the week that her mother was quietly proud of. Sienna followed her through to the kitchen and sat at the island the way she had sat there a thousand times before, shrugging her leather jacket onto the back of the stool with the ease of someone returning to a place that still held the shape of her.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]The kitchen was the brunette’s favorite room in the house, though she had never openly admitted it. It was the least curated - her mother's eye for composition extended into every other corner of the townhouse, every surface considered, every object earning its place. But the kitchen had always been slightly more forgiving, a little less arranged, the kind of room that had absorbed too many ordinary mornings to maintain any particular pretension about itself.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her mother set a mug down in front of her unceremoniously and moved to lean against the counter.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"You look tired,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] she commented in the tone she reserved for observations that were intended to be neutral but weren't entirely.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"I'm fine,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna replied, with a raise of her brow.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"You're always fine."[/color] [color=#b77b89]"And I'm always right."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her mother made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite argument, which was as close to a concession as she generally got, and poured the coffee. She was immaculate, as always - dressed as though the day had been planned rather than arrived at, her hair set with the kind of precision that suggested she had been up for several hours already. Sienna had inherited her mother's eye for a room and her father's talent for walking into one, and she was aware, not for the first time, of exactly where she had come from.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"How is the bar?"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother asked, in the careful tone she had developed over the years - not warm, not cold, the particular register of someone who had made peace with something and yet still hadn’t come around entirely.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"Full,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna asserted, a smirk tugging at her lip. [/color][color=#b77b89]"Every night this week."[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Mm."[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Her mother reached for her own cup. [/color][color=#6580b8]"And you're sleeping?"[/color] [color=#b77b89]"When I get the chance."[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Which is?"[/color] [color=#b77b89]"Enough."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her mother looked at her for a moment and then looked away, which was her version of letting something go that she had perfected over the years. Sienna simply drank her coffee.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her father appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, the Friday paper folded under one arm. He looked at her the way he always did - with the particular warmth of a man who had learned, over many years, that his daughter came and went as she so pleased and that the best thing he could do in either case was simply make sure she felt welcome. He had never pushed. She had always been grateful for that, more than she had ever told him.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"Morning, sweetheart."[/color][color=#c0c0c0] He settled onto the stool beside her, opening the paper with the unhurried ease of a man who had nowhere more important to be. [/color][color=#8dab5f]"To what do we owe the pleasure?"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna leaned over and kissed him on the cheek by way of greeting.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"Does there have to be a reason?"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] She asked, and he glanced at her over the top of his glasses. [/color] [color=#8dab5f]"With you? Usually."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Sienna picked up her coffee. [/color][color=#b77b89]"The oak tree looks better,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] she commented. Her father folded the paper, eyebrows raising. [/color] [color=#8dab5f]"Don't get your mother started-"[/color] [color=#6580b8]"It was overdue,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother interjected from across the kitchen without turning around.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"It was perfectly fine-"[/color] [color=#6580b8]"It was not perfectly fine, Richard, it was a liability. The Hendersons agreed with me."[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"The Hendersons agree with whoever spoke to them last."[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Which was me,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother indicated with the quiet satisfaction of someone closing an argument they had been winning for a while now.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Sienna felt the corner of her mouth move. She hadn't meant to smile and didn't try to stop it. Her father caught it and gave her a look that said he had noticed but was choosing not to make anything of it, which was its own small kindness. He reached over and refilled her cup from the pot without being asked, the way he always had since she was old enough to drink coffee, and turned back to his paper.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"Council meeting this afternoon,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] he said to no one in particular.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"The new Docks development ?"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna asked.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"The new Docks development."[/color][color=#c0c0c0] He sighed in the way of a man who had been having the same conversation in different rooms for the better part of six months. [/color][color=#8dab5f]"Sterling Silver has opinions."[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Sterling Silver always has opinions,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother stressed.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"Loudly,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her father agreed.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"I told your father he should bring it to Alderman Pruitt,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother continued, moving to the refrigerator with the efficiency of someone who had already decided what needed doing and was simply executing the plan. [/color][color=#6580b8]"He has considerably more pull with the planning committee than Silver gives him credit for, and he knows it."[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"I know, dear,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her father said, in the tone of a man who had also been having this particular conversation for the better part of six months.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Sienna sat at the island with both hands around her cup and let it wash over her - the gentle, familiar friction of a household that had been running at this frequency for her whole life. The docks development. Sterling Silver. Alderman Pruitt, whoever he was, and his considerable pull with the planning committee. The oak tree, still apparently a live debate. Her mother refilled her own cup and set a plate of something on the counter between them - small, neat, the kind of thing that looked effortless and wasn't - and the morning arranged itself around the three of them with the ease of long practice.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Nobody asked why she had really come. She was grateful for that.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her father finished his paper and folded it with particular care, still believing a newspaper deserved to be treated as an object of value, and set it on the counter before looking at his only daughter over the top of his glasses.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"You good?"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] he asked. Just that. Two words, the particular shorthand they had developed over the years for the longer question he never pushed her to answer.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She looked at him for a moment - at the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there ten years ago, at the reading glasses he still refused to admit he needed full time, at the man who had watched her choose the Lantern District and the Velvet Room over their life Cedar Grove and had never once told her she was wrong, even when she suspected he wasn't entirely sure she wasn't.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"Yeah,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] she replied. [/color][color=#b77b89]"I'm good."[/color][color=#c0c0c0] He held her gaze for just a beat longer than the question required, the way he sometimes did, and then nodded and reached for the coffee her mother had just poured for him.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Outside, a car moved slowly down the street. The oak tree cast its trimmed shadow across the pavement. Somewhere in the house, a clock marked the half hour with a sound so familiar she had stopped hearing it years ago.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She stayed for another hour and left just before noon.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Her mother saw her to the door, pressing a small container of something into her hands that Sienna didn't argue with, straightening the collar of her jacket in the way she had been doing since she was seven.[/color] [color=#6580b8]"Next time call first,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] her mother insisted. [/color][color=#6580b8]"I would have made something proper."[/color] [color=#b77b89]"This is proper,"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] Sienna said, meaning it. Her mother looked at her for a moment, then nodded once, which was as close to pleased as she generally allowed herself. Her father appeared behind her mother in the doorway, paper still in hand.[/color] [color=#8dab5f]"Get home safe, sweetheart"[/color][color=#c0c0c0] he expressed.[/color] [color=#b77b89]"Always do."[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]The door closed behind her and she stood on the front step for a moment, the late morning air cool and Cedar Grove doing its quiet, orderly thing around her. Then she pulled out her phone and called a cab, which arrived in four minutes. She spent three of them on the front step watching the oak tree cast its shadow across the pavement and not thinking about anything in particular, which was its own kind of achievement given the previous twenty four hours.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]The ride back over the bridge took the usual twenty minutes. The city changed register as it always did on the Lantern District side - the streets narrowing, the buildings thickening, the particular energy of a neighbourhood that never quite switched off pressing in at the windows as the cab moved through it. Familiar. Hers. She paid the driver and stepped out onto the street in front of her building, the corner quiet in the way it only was in the hours between sunrise and sunset, and stood for a moment with her key in her hand.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Then she felt it.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Not anything she could point to - no sound, no movement, nothing that would have held up as evidence of anything. Just the particular prickling awareness at the back of her neck that she had learned, over the years, to take seriously. The sense of being the subject of someone's attention without being able to locate the source of it. She let her gaze move across the street - the parked cars, the windows, the narrow gap between the laundromat and the coffee shop that had always been slightly too convenient a place to stand if you didn't want to be noticed. [/color] [color=#c0c0c0]Nothing. Nobody.[/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She looked a beat longer than she might have otherwise, then turned and let herself in through the front door of the building, the lock clicking behind her. [/color] [color=#c0c0c0]She stood in the dim stairwell for a moment, one hand still on the door, and listened to the street outside settle back into its ordinary frequency before going upstairs.[/color][/indent] [center][color=#B77B89]_________________________________________________________[/color] [sup][color=#B77B89]_________________________________________________________[/color][/sup][/center]